Serious question. I have a rollover IRA in some T Rowe Price accounts that's returned 9.5% since 1997, and 18.3 over the past five years.  I have never moved any of the money since the initial purchase.  Personally,  I'm happy with it. It's weighted in stocks and deemed a growth portfolio, to the far right of their scale.

Is this a decent return for an account like that?  I'll be 50 this year, and was thinking about transferring some of the money to more stable funds. I also have a 401k where I work that I'll be adjusting.

Thanks!

"Good" would be a function of the risk associated with said investment coupled with your risk tolerance.

9.5 is  the total return of the account since inception.  I've not added anything to it since the initial purchase.

ETA: the account is divided into 4 funds that are made up of domestic stocks.

Total 18 year return was 9.5%? Uhm.....that would royaly suck.

An average of 9.5 per year would be pretty good, in general. The DOW is a little over double now what it was in 1997.

I'm probably not explaining it right.

I start.ed the account with 36k, it's now worth 188k.  Without any additional contribution by myself. My Personal Rate of Return is listed as 9.5%.

ETA: apologies if I'm getting terminology wrong.

9.5% per year is very good.        
 

Good but  not   as good if they were an index fund .

This.

Also, past performance does not indicate future performance.
Exactly what 4 funds are you invested in? (ticker symbols help)

Also, you should consider some fixed income at age 50.  If the market tumbles right before retirement you are going to regret the risk level of a 100% stock portfolio.

Gotcha. That's pretty damn good.

Thanks for the sanity check, everyone.  

The funds I'm in are RPMGX, PRWAX, PRNHX, and PRSCX.  The last one is a Science and Technology fund, that hasn't really done all that well.  I should have moved my money out of that a lot sooner than I just did, but luckily I only had about 15% of my initial investment in there.

I also have a 401k at my current employer, that I need to diversify a bit better also.  Got a little bit of homework to do.  Both of the fund families have online analysis engines that provide suggestions for where to put the money, based on your age and retirement goals.  Has anyone had much experience (positive or negative) with them as opposed to going to a financial analyst?

Thanks for all the help!

you said you are 50?

Vanguard target retirement 2030 fund is currently:
75% stocks
25% bonds

you might be able to improve the funds performance by doing nothing else by reloactating it to a firm w/ lower fees.

9.5% is actually subpar:  the S&P500 over the same period returned about the same % but I would bet that your funds a) had higher expense/fees and b) assumed more risk.

Again, return is a function of risk and your risk tolerance.

The good news is that your current funds aren't astronomically high and are no load funds.
The bad new is you could have easily had better diversification for cheaper than what you've been doing for the past decade and a half.

If you have no desire what-so-ever to learn about investing, move it to Vanguard and dump it all in to VTHRX (Target Retirement 2030 mentioned above).
If you do want to have an understanding of why I would say to go ahead and move it to VTHRX, then start reading the book list on bogleheads.org (the books aren't expensive, but the knowledge inside is worth a  fortune).

The short and dirty is:  Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds invest in their own low cost index funds, Total Stock Market, Total Bond Market and Total International Stock.  The objective is not to figure out who's going to be the "winner" or "loser" this moth/year etc.  The objective is the BE THE MARKET.  The market overall has a fair return.  Take that return, without excessive risk and only pay minimal costs - you will beat the average mutual fund that has high expenses and load fees.  Remember, the funds that shoot up suddenly tend to tumble back down just as abruptly.  There are fund managers trying to find the next big thing that fail 90% of the time, what makes you think you'll pick the right one?

on edit:
the funds you are currently in have expense ratios of 0.68%-0.78%, Vanguard Target Retirement 2030 only costs 0.17% - you are currently paying over 4 times too much

Sounds like your growth was 9.5% annualized (per year, getting you 9.5% every year). So that 9.5% compounded itself.

 

book: random walk down wall street.

TLDR version: every hot shit managed fund manager that beats the market for the next few years (this is excluding like venture capitol type things).  Overthe long term low cost indexed funds beat high cost managed funds.

The vanguard target retirement 20XX funds gradually increase you percentage of bonds etc and decrease the percentage of stocks as you near retirement and cannot afford to suffer higher risk like when you are young.  All very simple, not thought required.

I'd be happy with 9.5%

you can't determine this without a host of other factors being known.

ar-jedi

I'm 35 now and if you guaranteed me 9.5% over the next 15 years, I'd take it and dump every penny I could find into it. That's means it would double twice between now and then.

inside a tax-protected container, that is a tidy annual return -- as long as it matches your risk and asset allocation strategies.

ar-jedi