Liquid net worth tracking from 1994 to 2022
I gathered over 18 years of personal financial data from my old bank and brokerage account statements from 2004 till 2022 and plot a graph (1st diagram below) that track my liquid net worth growth (excluding property as valuation is difficult to determine). The source of my liquid net worth are from my salary , interests from banks/bonds ,dividend and stock trade from my investment.
For my liquid net worth data older than 2004 , I could not find any paperwork and can only estimate on what I remember in 1994. As I graduated in 1994 and started my first job, I knew I have a negative -25k debt due to a PSC student loan. I have no saving at that time as I lost all in my first business venture during my undergrad days. Therefore, I can only estimate my liquid net worth for my first 10 years from 1994 to 2004 based on the assumption I have a -25k net worth in 1994 right after I have graduated to the amount of net worth I have gathered from my all 2004 financial statements. For the first 10 years of my working, I was able to save a 6 figures amount pretty quickly due to the nature of my job..
From the graph I have plotted, my net worth was languishing between 2004 to 2014 but started to increase rapidly from 2014 to 2022 as I restarted my investment using my dividend strategy. The second diagram below shows the dividend and interest received from 2012 to 2021. There was a substantial increase in my investment income after I restarted my investment and focus on reits and dividend stocks from 2015. I started slowly and cautiously between 2015 and 2016 before seriously ramping up my investment from 2017. I believe my net worth increase come mainly from my investment as my salary increment has been stagnant @ 3% for 20 years with only 2 promotions increment of 10% and 5%. Overall average increment from salary probably come in less than 4% between 2004 to 2022.
When I first started work in mid-90s, Most of my investment did
not do well in the the earlier day. I have lost more than 100K from the
Clob, S-Chip,97 Asian currency crisis and 2008 GFC. During my generation, investment was based on online rumors and punting on
speculative penny stock or some unicorn. Due to the
massive loss I have sustained from my investment between1994 to 2004, I
was on a 10
years investment hiatus from 2004 to 2014. I purely
relied on FD during the lost decade until the 2009 GFC caused FED to drive global interest rate to less 1%. I only restarted my investment journey rather late in 2014 until I met an ex-schoolmate who told me about S-Reit in 2013 . I went on to research S-Reit and later on, I read more on fixed income investment and become more confident on that investment philosophy of passive income. I have gone through almost 3 different decades of financial cycles. The first 10 years (1994 to 2004) was trading of stocks with no strategy (more like punting), second 10 years (2004 to 2014) of doing nothing with my investment except putting in FD and banks, and the last 8 years (2014 to 2022) investing in dividend stocks and interest bearing bonds.
You have to start believing the power of compounding as my net worth increased by almost 200% in my last 8 years compared to less than 100% in the first 10 years of moderate increase.
