graph net worth - CD return vs S&P index return

Ibbotson publishes an annual book called "Stocks, Bonds, Bills, Inflation" (SBBI Yearbook) and a bunch of charts with similar data. It's pretty expensive to buy but some libraries have it, and the information gets republished lots of other places - some samples are on the Ibbotson web site. I don't know if you'll find anything that covers CDs specifically but short-term CDs and T-bills are similar in yield.

There are some software packages that can spit out historical returns for a variety of asset classes, but I don't know of any that are publicly available for free.

-Tad

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

Morningstar.com has total performance graphs for funds. As far as I can tell you can't actually plot two funds on the same graph, but you can certainly put them side by side (with two browsers open). The graphs all have the same starting value ($10,000) so it'll probably get you what you want for a 10 year period. You might try DFINX against VFINX for example. CDs will be more difficult, but that will get you money markets and indexes.

-Will

william dot trice at ngc dot com

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

You could do this in excel

plug in returns from a CD plug in returns of VFINIX plug in returns of a MMMF plug in returns of a bond fund

Not as smooth as using morningstar, but depending upon age of your son, learning how to track things in excel and create the graphs needed might be a good lesson too.

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.