Welcome to the March 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.
March is over, and we’re already a quarter of the way through the year. March felt like spring. Flowers, warm rain, and lots of pollen!
Financially, March was another bad month, not just for us but for everybody. The markets continued to fall from the dip that started in January. The markets hit correction territory.
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.
March 2025 Net Worth
Here’s how March compares to last month:
March Account Breakdown
Let’s take a quick look at what happened in March.
Cash ($2,760.19)
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 both in terms of income. Thanks to a work bonus, we brought home more money than last month. Our spending included our medical bills, so that was a bit higher, but we also had money saved for that from last month. As a result, we were able to make positive movement this month.
Our spending was below average this month if you don’t count the medical bills.
Investment Cash (-$1,774.50)
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 normally goes, but we chose not to transfer any from February to save up for the pending medical bills.
This account is down this month because we had to pay insurance for our investment property.
February 2024, we bought our first investment property. We put it back on the market last month. It’s going to get sold this year, even if I have to take a loss. Hopefully, it’s not much, if any. So far, we have had no offers.
Remaining Cash Accounts (Emergency and Sinking Funds) ($1,059.10)
Nothing exciting here. Just the usual. We are back to saving up for our property tax bill for when it’s due early next year.
For right now we are putting $200 a month into our travel fund. There is no end date set, and we are planning more vacations, so this will probably go up.
Retirement Accounts
401(k)s (-$18,821.65)
Let the fun begin! (That’s sarcasm) February ended on a negative note. Substantially and worse than February. The markets continued their dive. They’re scared about the pending tariffs.
IRA (-$20,227.94)
All market performance here.
Overall, that’s a loss of 4.80% between the 401k and IRAs.
College Fund (-$4,606.76)
The college fund is invested in mutual funds, just like the IRAs. It was down 5.36 percent.
Net Worth (-$37,732.67)
February ended up being even more lousy than February. All of the retirement accounts are negative for the month.
Our expenses were than as last month because of the medical bills. Otherwise, we didn’t spend a whole lot.
In total, our net worth fell a significant amount. We had an decrease of approximately 2.91%.
The year started out on the right foot, but that didn’t last long. We’ll see how the market performs the rest of the year. There was a lot of uncertainty last year, and I feel like that sentiment is rolling into 2025. Last year, the markets were up over 20%.
The tariffs are rolling out in early April. I suspect the market will rebound once we become more comfortable with them.
We’ll see how the market performs the rest of this year, but having a positive first half of the year would be nice. I need to be able to sell this house now.
Accessible Net Worth ($1,316.92)
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 well above average this month. Our accessible net worth increased, though, as a result of making a bunch of money and saving last month for the medical bills.
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. Now, March is here, and, as expected, we saw a bump in dividends.
Our dividends in March are the ray of sunshine in an otherwise bad month. We set a record for March dividend income! It’s only a few dollars more than last year, but hey, it’s more! So I’m happy.
The interest rate in my savings account stayed at 3.70% for the month. We started 2024 close to the high at 4.35%. The market is becoming more volatile, and what will happen in 2025 is up in the air.
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 this month (March).
This dropped our Year-to-date average to 40%. I’m confident we can recover as long as we don’t continue to have unexpected expenses.
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.
This month, we saved 63%, which brought our YTD Savings Rate up to 47.6%
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 tax has gone down, and there’s no more daycare! (Mostly)
We only have daycare bills during school breaks for now, until the kids are old enough to be left alone.
In March, the kids had spring break, which means we had to pay for a week of daycare.
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 one of the kids.
Those are relatively cheap compared to paying for daycare.
Here’s how we did this month.
We were at 47.63% in March YTD.
Income ($12,562.57)
Right now, our only source of active income is through our full-time jobs.
This is what an above-average income month looks like for us.
Expenses ($4,634.82)
Our expenses were above average this month. If you don’t include the medical bills, we were below average.
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 ($1,209.06)
The usual 10% we give every month.
3) Cost of living ($8,577.71)
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.
Cost of living without medical bill was $1762.59. Well below our average of $3,000.
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.
February 2025 Vs. March 2025 Expenses
Where do I begin comparing the two months?
I didn’t have to take a trip to the ER in March, so that’s good. The bad part is that I had to pay for last months visit. The good part about that is we saved most of that money in February.
February and March were similar in terms of finances, otherwise. The markets were down and down some more..
Hopefully, April will stay smooth, and we won’t encounter any problems. we do have some expenses coming up for our cars, including insurance and maintanence.
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, it’s the beginning of the year, so I’m not completely sure how the other goals are going to turn out.
I’m unsure about the Real Estate (RE) Investing goal since the property is on the market. I’ll include the net profits here since that will become future investment money.
However, if we take a loss on the property, that will subtract from any money we save up.
The passive income goal is a stretch after hitting records last year. Hopefully, we’ll break the record this year.
The savings rate goal took a big hit in February. We recovered about 8% in March. Hopefully we can recover the rest of the way before the end of the year.
Blog Goal!
I didn’t get around to posting anything in March, but I posted one article in January and have more posts planned. I need to find time to get them written. Take a look and let me know what you think with the latest posts..
I did create some compound interest calculators though. 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). I mentioned last month that
I also finished my second book From Paycheck to Purpose by Ken Coleman. It had a few insights, but I didn’t really find it that helpful.
Now I’m trying to decide if I was to 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, and then I went crazy eating whatever I wanted from Thanksgiving to the end of the year. I at least 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 15 pounds so far. My goal to start was 20 pounds, but I may need to up that to 30 and then regain some as I add muscle mass.
March 2025 Roundup
The month of March was overall good. Nothing too unexpected happened. We remained relatively healthy and didn’t miss any school or work days.
The weather was great for most of March. We had a few cold days, but most days were warm, and we got to play/work outside a bunch. I’m still not sure I’m ready for the grass to start growing again, though.
I continue to be excited as we progress into the new year. As always, there’s really a lot to be thankful for.
Stay tuned for next month’s New 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.