Investing, by the record

What a century of returns says: no asset class wins every year, time narrows the range, starting early does most of the work, and fees quietly take a share of all of it.

Asset class returns · 2011–2025

The Asset Quilt

Eleven asset classes, from US stocks to gold, sorted best to worst inside each of fifteen years. Follow one through the quilt and watch it jump: seven different classes took first place, last year’s winner repeated only twice, and the 60/40 balanced fund never finished first or last. A second view grows $10,000 in each.

From Vanguard’s published calendar-year fund returns, and T-bills and gold from Damodaran’s NYU Stern dataset, checked against Yahoo Finance · sources

Holding periods · 1928–2025

Time in the Market

The best, worst and median return of every rolling 1- to 30-year window, stocks against Treasuries, bills or corporate bonds, before and after inflation. Stocks beat Treasuries in 85% of 10-year windows and 99% of 20-year ones; after inflation, Treasuries lost money far more often.

From Damodaran’s historical returns (NYU Stern), checked against Shiller and BLS CPI · sources

Compounding · every starting age

Start at 20 or 50?

What it takes each month to reach $1 million, or any goal, by retirement, for every starting age from 18 to 60, what each year of waiting adds, and how much of the ending balance the market supplied. In today’s dollars or nominal, after the Money Guy’s Wealth Multiplier.

S&P 500 and CPI from Damodaran’s historical returns, 1928–2025 · sources

Fund fees · 10 to 50 years

What Does 1% Cost?

The same savings grown three ways: an index fund, an average active fund, and a 1% advisor on top, with the dollars the fees took shaded between them. Beside it, how many active funds trail their index over twenty years, and how much fund investors lose to their own timing.

Fees from the ICI’s 2025 expense study; SPIVA U.S. Year-End 2025; Morningstar’s Mind the Gap 2026; returns from Damodaran · sources

Taxes

What a raise really costs, what the tithe saves when you itemize, and how much the state you live in takes.

Marginal vs effective · 2026

Will a Raise Cost Me?

The federal bracket staircase for 2026 wages, with Social Security, Medicare and optional California tax: your marginal and effective rates, what a raise leaves you, and whether a 10% tithe makes itemizing worth it, including the new deduction rules for gifts.

From IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, the 2025 tax law’s text, IRS Pub. 15, and California’s Franchise Tax Board and EDD · sources

State & local taxes · 2026

Where Taxes Bite

Every state’s income, sales and property tax on one map: top rates and the tax owed on your wages, combined sales tax, effective property tax by state or county, and the overall state-local burden. Then one household priced in California, Texas, Washington or any states you pick.

From the Tax Foundation’s 2026 income-tax and midyear sales-tax tables and its tax-burden study, and Census ACS 2024 home values and taxes · sources

Earning & spending

How American households actually spend, and what they earn and own at each age, so your own numbers have something to stand beside.

Household budgets · 2024

Where Does the Money Go?

The average American household’s spending in fourteen categories, by age of householder, income fifth and household type: compare two groups side by side, follow one category such as giving or healthcare across them, or set your own budget beside any group.

From the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, calendar-year 2024 tables, checked against its news release · sources

Net worth & income · by age

Where Do I Stand?

Household net worth and income by age as percentile bands, median against mean, and where your own figure falls among families your age. For a middle family, home equity and retirement accounts make up most of what it owns.

From the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances and the Census Bureau’s CPS household income by age, 2025 · sources

Time & health

The two budgets money can’t refill: the hours with the people we love, and the strength to spend them well.

Time use · a parent’s lifetime

The Tail End

How much of the time you will ever spend with a child has already happened: about half by age 9 and four-fifths by 18, counted in minutes from Americans’ own time diaries. Put in your age and your children’s, or see who Americans spend their days with, from fifteen to eighty.

From the American Time Use Survey microdata, 2010–2024, and the SSA period life table; after Tim Urban’s “The Tail End” · sources

Social time · 1972–2026

Where Did the Evenings Go?

Evenings with friends, neighbors and relatives, having people over, dinner parties, cards, books, church and the bar, over fifty years of the same questions asked the same way, with minutes a day from the time diaries and what took their place. After Putnam’s Bowling Alone.

From the General Social Survey 1972–2024, the DDB Life Style surveys behind Bowling Alone (1975–98), Data for Progress (2026) and the American Time Use Survey · sources

The body · ages 20–79

The Oxygen Budget

VO2 max by age and sex against what everyday activities cost in oxygen: follow your percentile forward to see when brisk stairs or an uphill hike drops out of reach, or work back from what you want to do in your seventies to what you need now. After Outlive’s centenarian decathlon.

From the FRIEND registry (Kaminsky et al., 2015), the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, and Mandsager et al. (2018) · sources