本文作者分析了自2014年以来个人净资产的变化情况。尽管作者从2024年开始动用储蓄进行捐赠,但由于房产增值和股票市场表现良好,其净资产并未下降。作者统计了包括现金、股票、退休账户和房产在内的资产,并使用通货膨胀调整后的数据进行分析。结果显示,房产增值是净资产增长的主要因素。作者认为,这一结果支持其继续捐赠一半收入的决定,并表示将继续思考如何为退休和子女教育进行储蓄。

🏠作者统计了自2014年以来个人净资产的变化，涵盖现金、股票投资账户、401k、HSA退休账户以及房产价值等资产，但不包括信用卡余额、日常用品价值、Wave公司的期权、Zepz公司的股票以及人力和社会资本。

📈作者使用6月1日作为数据节点以避免年底捐赠交易带来的波动，并使用CPIAUCSL对数据进行了通货膨胀调整，以便以2024年6月1日的美元价值进行比较。

💰尽管从2024年开始动用储蓄进行捐赠，但作者的净资产并未下降，主要原因是房产增值和股票市场的良好表现。

🧐作者表示，净资产未下降的结果进一步支持了其继续捐赠一半收入的决定，即使收入有所下降，也不会减少捐赠比例。

🤔作者最后提到，对于如何为退休和子女的大学教育进行储蓄，他仍然感到相当不确定。

Published on December 7, 2024 11:10 PM GMT

Julia recently posted about how we're stilldonating 50%, which included this chart of monthly spending fromour 2024spending update:

While each year before 2024 we'd been saving some, 2024 was the firstyear in which we were drawing from savings to make donations.Noticing this prompted David Denkenberger to ask:

If you don't mind me asking, how does the return on your investmentsfactor in? E.g., is the negative savings offset by return such thatyour net worth is not falling?

This is a good question! Our net worth hasn't been something I'vebeen regularly calculating, but this seemed like a good opportunity tofigure out how it's changed over time.

Things I counted:

Liquid: cash in our bank account, stocks we own in a standardinvestment account.

Retirement: 401k, HSA

House: value of the house according to Zillow, less loanbalance

Things I didn't count:

Credit card balances (we pay these off in full each month)

The value of our other stuff, which has been going up a bitover time. The biggest single possession is probably our half of theshared car (~$2.9k), followedby my mandolin(~$2k). A full accounting here would be a ton of work.

The value of my 7,049 options for Wave and 56 shares of Zepz, from when Iwas laid off fromWave. I have no idea how much these are worth.

Human and social capital.

While I would have liked to go back to ~2008 when we had essentiallyzero net worth, since I haven't been tracking this I was reliant onthe records various providers keep, which seem to go back ten years.I took values as of June 1st each year when possible, because rightaround the end of the year there's a lot of variability due to whendonation related transactions hit our bank account. In cases where Icould only get January 1st numbers I interpolated to get a June 1stnumber. I adjusted for inflation using the CPIAUCSL, so Icould do this in constant 2024-06-01 dollars.

Here's the chart:

The biggest factor is appreciation on our house (which is bad),followed by the stock market doing well (which is good).

To answer David's question, it looks like our net worth hasn't beengoing down as we draw from savings. This seems like more reason tocontinue donating half, and not to respond to our now-lowerincome by donating a smaller fraction.

(I continue to be quite unsurehow to think about saving for retirement and kids college.)

Discuss