Welcome to the August 2025 edition of our net worth tracker, where we’ll track our net worth month over month. I first started tracking our net worth when this blog was started at the beginning of September 2019. I started by creating the Net Worth Baseline report.
You can view Previous Net Worth reports HERE.
Let’s dive straight into this month’s report.
Monthly Roundup
Previously, I would go through my month and go over the highlights. These days, I’m doing it a little differently. Unless you convince me that you want to hear about my month, I’m not going to talk about it.
August 2025 Net Worth
Here’s how August compares to last month:
August Account Breakdown
Let’s take a quick look at what happened in August.
Cash ($6,128.82)
Monthly Blurb: This is where our paychecks get deposited. All our income goes into this account and then gets transferred to the proper accounts as set by my budget. As usual, I do the net worth report before transferring money to the appropriate accounts.
It was an above-average month for us in terms of income. This month, we managed to keep our expenses down, which was a little below average.
The cash balance is a little higher than it should be because I didn’t transfer last month’s savings out of this account.
Investment Cash ($2,825.46)
Monthly Blurb: All of our cash left over at the end of the month is transferred here and is considered part of our savings rate.
This is where our leftover income usually goes, plus all earnings from having the investment cash invested in an ETF. As a reminder, a portion of the investment cash is now invested in an S&P 500 index fund.
February 2024, we bought our first investment property. We put it back on the market this past February. It’s going to get sold this year, even if I have to take a loss. Hopefully, it’s not much, if any. We have dropped the price far enough now that we will be taking a loss on the property.
So far, we have had no offers.
Remaining Cash Accounts (Emergency and Sinking Funds) ($1,188.21)
Nothing exciting here. Just the usual. We are also saving up for our property tax bill, which is due early next year.
We are putting $200 a month into our travel fund right now. There is no end date set, and we are planning more vacations, so this will probably go up at some point.
We are also putting $200 a month into car savings, rather than saving it all at once. That way, we have the savings ready when we need it, and it doesn’t completely blow up our savings rate for the whole year! Check out 2024 if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Our current cars will hopefully last us until 2030.
Retirement Accounts
401(k)s ($20,582.37)
February ended on a negative note. March was substantially worse than February. The markets continued their dive in April after “Liberation Day”. Fortunately, those losses were all recovered by the end of the month.
In May, the markets continued to recover earlier losses, although they are not back to the highs we saw earlier in the year.
The markets continued to rise through June, July, and August, but ended the month coming off the record highs, slightly.
IRA ($12,576.12)
All market performance here.
Overall, that’s a gain of 3.73% between the 401k and IRAs.
College Fund ($1,539.84)
The college fund is invested in mutual funds, just like the IRAs. It was up 1.68 percent.
Net Worth ($42,569.19)
August was a pretty good month, especially compared to February, March, and April. You have to be happy when you make gains.
Our expenses were significantly less than last month. Utilities were a tad higher, but we had no unexpected expenses, and the daycare bill was substantially lower.
In total, our net worth rose. We had an increase of approximately 3.14%.
Accessible Net Worth ($9,410.70)
Monthly Blurb: This is the money we are able to put away, not including the tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
Our income was above average, and our expenses were below average this month. This amount reflects the amount we earned minus our expenses this month. We would have been in the positive if I hadn’t bought another car.
Liabilities
Status: None, as usual. They’re a burden, so I avoid them. The cars, the house, they’re all paid for. Student loans…never used them. Credit Card debt? I only use one, and it gets paid off every month, and often, I’ll pay it off multiple times per month. Just depends on how many times I think about it.
Passive Income
January and February are very boring months for dividends. March, as expected, saw a bump in dividends.
We set a record for March dividend income! It’s only a few dollars more than last year, but it’s more! So I’m happy.
April was the worst month of the year in terms of dividends. May beat April by $2.
June had some dividend income, making it better than the last couple of months.
July didn’t have much going on, but it was better than May and April.
August had even less going on than July, but September is finally here, and we should have a more exciting month.
The interest rate in my savings account remained at 3.50%. The market is still volatile, and what will happen in the remainder of 2025 is still up in the air. And there really isn’t that much of the year left!
Saving’s Rate
I track my savings rate in order to help keep my feet to the fire so that later I can be Gone on FIRE. As a bonus, you get a glimpse into my cash flow by looking at the income and expense rows.
I had to adjust the savings goal to 50% a couple of years ago. In 2022, we barely missed that goal, but we met it in 2023!
As a result of meeting the goal in 2023, I raised the bar to 55%.
In 2024, we missed the 55% goal by about .5%, if you include our car savings in our total savings number. Otherwise, we were around 35% in 2024.
I’m keeping the goal at 55% for 2025. In January, we exceeded that goal thanks to our “extra” paychecks.
We had no savings for February — 0%! We put all our leftover money towards medical bills, which were paid in March. This dropped our Year-to-date average to 47%.
April was very close to our YTD average, so there was little change. We’re still at 47%.
May was our second-worst month in terms of Savings. We had to pay for car repairs, medical bills, and we funded vacation items. All that adds up pretty quickly.
June followed by being our third worst month this year. Or fourth best, depending on how you want to look at it.
I’m confident we can recover as long as we don’t continue to have unexpected expenses. July is our last month of full-time daycare.
As expected, we were able to save significantly more in August. We didn’t have much daycare to pay for, and I didn’t buy any more cars!
Also, starting in February, we started beefing up our travel fund for some vacations we would like to go on. I may adjust this number, but we are going to start by setting $200 aside each month for the rest of the year.
I’m trying to keep the travel savings low so that we can still achieve our 55% savings rate goal. We failed that goal again for June.
We saved 27% in June, which dropped our YTD Savings Rate to 40.4%.
We saved 30% in July, which is our best month of the summer, but it dropped our YTD savings rate to 39%.
Our savings rate for August was 61.1%. Double our summer savings rate. It’s going to take a few more good months to pull up our annual savings rate. Currently, we are at 41.8%.
We should be saving a lot more the rest of the year. There is very little daycare, fewer car expenses, gas should be near zero, and the birthdays and vacations are over. We are considering a small vacation in November.
Of that 45% we are spending, we give 10%, and property tax is another 10%, so that means we are living on 25% or less for everything else.
Housing and daycare alone used to eat up over 30%. Fortunately, property taxes have gone down, and there’s no more daycare! (Mostly)
For now, we only have daycare bills during school breaks until the kids are old enough to be left alone.
Hopefully, we can get our savings rate above 55% with daycare gone, although other kids’ activities have started. We’ve been doing gymnastics and now have ballet for both of the kids.
Those are relatively cheap compared to paying for daycare.
Here’s how we did this month.
We were at 41.78% in August YTD.
Income ($12,009.07)
Right now, our only source of active income is through our full-time jobs.
This is what a slightly above-average income month looks like for us.
Expenses ($4,670.77)
Our expenses were above average this month.
Here is a quick breakdown:
1) Home Escrow ($700.00)
The normal amount we put aside every month to pay for property taxes and insurance.
2) Giving ($957.14)
The usual 10% we give every month.
3) Cost of living ($2,968.06)
This includes all our bills (Gas, Electric, Water, Internet, Phone), transportation, food, shopping, and car insurance. Home insurance is paid for out of our Home Escrow savings account.
Like last year and years before that, we are going to drain our dependent care account at the end of the year in one lump sum. Doing it that way is less paperwork for us.
Additional expenses for August include only one week of daycare. That’s it!
August 2025 Vs. July 2025 Expenses
August and July were significantly different in terms of where our money went. In July, we exceeded our budget in nearly every category, plus we bought a car. In August, we were mostly under budget, and we didn’t have any unexpected or unplanned expenses pop up. …and I didn’t buy another car.
The markets did do slightly better in August, which has a bigger impact on our overall net worth.
Hopefully, September will go smoothly, and we won’t encounter any problems. September is historically bad for the markets, so we’ll see what happens there. Other than that, no big planned expenses are coming up.
Goals Progress
Financial Goals
The Roth IRA contribution is done, and the money has been transferred to the proper accounts.
Aside from the 401k, which is on automatic contributions from my paycheck, I’m not completely sure how the other goals are going to turn out.
I’m becoming more certain about the Real Estate (RE) Investing goal. I don’t think our investment property is going to sell for much of a profit, so this goal will most likely fall short.
The passive income goal is a stretch after hitting records last year. Hopefully, we’ll break the record this year. It all depends on how we do in September and December.
The savings rate goal took a big hit in February, May, June, and again in July. We recovered about 3% in August, 8% in March, and made slight gains in April.
Hopefully, we can recover the rest of the way before the end of the year. The worst months for our savings are over. Let’s see how much positive traction we can get. I’m pretty sure we’ll hit 50%, but I’m less certain about 55%.
Blog Goal!
I’m struggling to create posts that offer value when AI is available. I don’t plan on creating any posts for the rest of the year.
I created some compound interest calculators in March. The calculators can be found here: Calculators
Personal Goals
I’m doing a reading goal again this year with two books. Last year, I read 2, and that seems like a good amount for me. That seems to be my sweet spot.
I’ve finished my first book (Developing The Leader Within You) and my second book, From Paycheck to Purpose, by Ken Coleman. It offered a few insights, but I didn’t find it particularly helpful.
Now I’m trying to decide when I should start a third book. There are a few I want to read: Build The Life You Want by Arthur Brooks, Cues by Vanessa Van Edwards, and Millionaire Mission by Brian Preston.
And then there is my physical health. I didn’t get to where I wanted in 2021, 2022, 2023, …or 2024.
I was actually doing fine in 2024, but then I went a little overboard eating whatever I wanted from Thanksgiving through the end of the year. Still, I proved to myself that I can lose fat.
I want to lose fat, and part of that is going to be by eating healthier. I have been on target so far this year. I’ve been tracking my eating and exercising regularly, and I’m down about 20 pounds so far. I stayed steady with where I was last month.
My goal to start was 20 pounds, but I may need to up that to 30 and then regain some weight as I add muscle mass. I’m still fatter than I would like to be.
August 2025 Roundup
August was a fun month as we rounded out the summer and spent time hanging out with friends. We remained healthy and didn’t miss any school or work days.
The weather was hot for most of August, but it was a pretty mild summer overall. Temperatures are ramping down as we head into fall.
I continue to be excited as we progress through the year. As always, there’s really a lot to be thankful for.
Stay tuned for next month’s Net Worth update!
FIRE Away!
REMINDERS:
- 2 big items not included in my net worth:
- House & Cars – Their value will be added to my net worth if and when I sell them.
- 2 accounts not included in the net worth total (even though they’re listed):
- 529 – This is my money for my babies. Consider it their net worth summary.
- Home Escrow – This is Uncle Sam’s money. We don’t mess around with Uncle Sam and his money.
- Total income only includes our active income, which is currently our full-time jobs.