My 2023 Portfolio Performance

Well, 2023 in now a few months in the bag and 2024 has arrived. A few weeks ago I was going over my investment accounts and thought it would be fun to share how Selenid and I did. So, here is our 2023 portfolio performance.

But first…

The rules of the game

This is how this 2023 portfolio performance review is going to work:

• I’m going to go account by account. I’ll include what investments we have in that particular account, our stock/bond split as well as our return. I think this is the simplest way to do it without getting too confusing.
  
• I won’t include our direct real estate investments in this analysis. You can find individual long term annualized return analyses for my properties in posts like this one and more wholistic analysis here. This analysis will include only my REIT investments in terms of real estate.
  
• I won’t include our 529 accounts for our 3 kids as, despite including them in our net worth, they are not “ours.”
  
• I’m not going to tally this all into net worth as that is not the point of the post. You can see my net worth updates here.

A quick primer on how I invest

Many of you following will already be familiar with my investing strategy and philosophy. But, for anyone who isn’t, I’ll give just a very quick primer here to put my 2023 portfolio performance in perspective.

I invest in broadly diversified index funds of stocks and bonds in my preferred asset allocation which I rebalance as needed yearly. I initially did this through individual index funds but more recently use the two funds for life approach a la Merriman and Buck.

And I do this because passive investing beats active investing 80% of the time with lower taxes and fees. And rebalancing has been shown to improve returns (albeit slightly).

You can also see all of this and more in depth in my written financial plan here while, as you may recall, Selenid and I made these 7 changes to our plan on 2023.

Ok, with all of that set, lets get into it…

My 2023 portfolio performance

Again, we will do this based on investment account…

403b

This first category will be broken into my 403b and Selenid’s 403b.

My 403b

This is by far our biggest account. In this account, my investments are split as such:

• 31.5% – TIAA Access Vanguard 500 Index T1
• 6.5% – TIAA Access Vanguard Extended Market Index T1
• 7.1% – TIAA Access Vanguard Small-Cap Value Index T1
• 32.8% – TIAA Access International Equity Index Fund T1
• 6.5% – CREF Inflation-Linked Bond R3
• 11.1% – TIAA Access Vanguard Total Bond Market Index T1
• 4.4% – TIAA Real Estate REIT

The reason I have two small cap funds (Vanguard Extended and Vanguard Small Cap) is because the offerings available in my 403b account surprisingly changed.

This means that my asset allocation here is approximately:

• 77.97% Stocks
• 17.6% Bonds
• 4.43% Real Estate

And my return over the past year in this account was:

• 16.1%

Selenid’s 403b

In this account, her investments are split as such:

• 42.3% – TIAA Access Vanguard 500 Index T1
• 34.9% – TIAA Access International Equity Index Fund T1
• 9.4% – CREF Inflation-Linked Bond R3
• 8.8% – TIAA Access Vanguard Total Bond Market Index T1
• 4.5% – TIAA Real Estate REIT

This means that her asset allocation is:

• 77.18% Stocks
• 18.28% Bonds
• 4.53% Real Estate

And her return over the past year in this account was:

• 16.7%

457

One of the changes that Selenid and me made in 2023 was we started to invest the maximum into my 457 account.

In this account, my investments are split as such:

• 88.98% – Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX)
• 10.12% – Vanguard Small Cap Index I (VSCIX)

This means that my asset allocation here is approximately:

• 87.5% Stocks
• 9.35% Bonds
• 3.15% Cash

And our return over the past year in this account was:

• 16.95%

Roth IRA’s

2023 was the first year as well that Selenid and I both contributed to a backdoor Roth IRA. I invested a bit into a Roth IRA through the “front door” as a resident. But otherwise this is the real first time we dipped into the Roth.

I’ll break up the analysis therefore between my Roth IRA and Selenid’s Roth IRA.

My Roth IRA

In this account, my investments are split as such:

• 37.2% – Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Investor Class (VFFVX)
• 32.9% – Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Admiral Class (VSIAX)
• 29.8% – Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Investor Class (VTIVX)

That means that my assets allocation here is:

• 92% Stocks
• 8% Bonds

And my return over the past year in this account was:

• 20%

Selenid’s Roth IRA

In this account, her investments are split as such:

• 100.0% – Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Investor Class (VFFVX)

That means that her assets allocation here is:

• 89% Stocks
• 10% Bonds
• 1% Short term reserves

And her return over the past year in this account was:

• 10.2%

Taxable accounts

Our Vanguard taxable account

In this account, our investments are split as such:

• 89% – Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Investor Class (VTIVX)
• 2.7% – Vanguard Small Cap Value ETF (VBR)
• 8.3% – Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)

The reason that we have some ETFs here is because they have a lower purchase minimum. But after a few months of doing this (we automatically contribute to this account monthly), we just decided to save in a money market account until we had enough to buy the target date fund just to simplify things. You can learn more about the important differences between ETFs and index funds here.

That means that my assets allocation here is:

• 88% Stocks
• 12% Bonds

And our return over the past year in this account was:

• 6.1%

This return is bit lower as we didn’t start investing here until April 2023. That was another one of our changes to our written financial plan.

Our Acorns taxable investment account

I really love Acorns. I don’t have a financial interest but I just think it’s a cool service that basically invests you change. Through it, we’ve investing near $10,000 over the past couple of years.

In any regard, in this account, our investments are split as such:

• 5.3% – iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF (IJR)
• 10.0% – iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF (IJH)
• 54.7% – Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO)
• 30.0% – iShares Core MSCI Total International Stock ETF (IXUS)

I choose these based on a “Core Aggressive” portfolio option within the account.

That means that our assets allocation here is:

• 100% Stocks
• 0% Bonds

And our return over the past year in this account was:

• 14.37%

Summing it all up

For those keeping track, our overall asset allocation is therefore roughly:

• 87.4% Stocks
• 10.7% Bonds
• 1.3% Real Estate
• 0.6% Short Term Reserves

Our goal asset allocation started out at 80% stocks and 20% bonds 3+ years ago. However, as I talk about here, we now changed it to 90% stocks and 10% bonds roughly.

So we are right in the ballpark given this transition. No need to rebalance this year!

Meanwhile, our overall return was:

• 14.7%

Obviously, I am really excited and happy about this return. Does that mean that I am such an incredible investor? Of course not! I just invested passively and the market rewarded me. It could have been a down year and I had bad returns but I would have done then same thing.

Because I’m investing for the long term! Just like you should.

I hope you enjoyed this insider peak into my 2023 portfolio performance. If you are looking to get started or refine your path to financial freedom and are looking for a helpful resource, check out my best-selling book, Money Matters in Medicine!

In the meantime, here are some additional useful posts:

• How Much Is Enough Retirement Savings?
• Physician Side Gigs to Make You Passive Money
• The 3 Most Tempting Current Investments to Avoid

What do you think? What was your 2023 portfolio performance? How did you invest? Let me know in the comments below!