For four decades, patient savers able to grit their teeth through bubbles, crashes and geopolitical upheaval won the money game. But the formula of building a nest egg by rebalancing a standard mix of stocks and bonds isn’t going to work nearly as well as it has.
FXIAX has been pretty much flat for the last couple years. Your 2019-2020 contributions should have nice gains, but they’re a relatively small part of your total contributions. FSPSX & FSMAX are pretty flat going back to 2019, with significant declines from 2021. FXNAX has been hit hard by the interest rate hikes. You’ve had a slow couple of years, without enough accumulation to outweigh them.
That’s just the way it goes sometimes. If you look at your returns after a +20% year, it’s going to feel great; if you look after a -5% year, it’s going to feel bad. Retirement progress, in my experience, having lived the dot-bomb, 9/11, the Great Recession, and Covid, does not feel slow-and-steady; it feels like treading water and then rather suddenly having a credible chance. You put money in slow-and-steady, so that it’s invested during those infrequent and unpredictable +20% years. The first year you rack up gains greater than your salary is amazing.
That’s a good reminder. Just haven’t had one of those years yet. Thanks for the perspective.