Welcome to the May 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.
May 2025 Net Worth
Here’s how May compares to last month:
May Account Breakdown
Let’s take a quick look at what happened in May.
Cash ($8,313.99)
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 average month for us both in terms of income. I received an “extra” paycheck, but my wife worked fewer hours this month. This month did include medical bills for an elective surgery. We also had car maintenance this month to make sure everything is how it should be on the car we bought last month.
We were able to make some positive movement this month, in terms of savings, but not much.
Our spending was above average this month.
Investment Cash ($890.31)
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.
I forgot to transfer savings from last month, so this is all earnings from having the investment cash invested in an ETF. As I mentioned before, 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 February. 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) (-$3,732.65)
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.
I suppose this is where all the exciting news for the month is.
We bought another new (to us) car to replace one of our other vehicles that needed new suspension. The repair would cost more than the car was worth, so we sold it. The new car has about 71k miles, but it is an EV and has lost a decent amount of battery capacity. Hopefully, it lasts at least a few years. To be honest, I’m already looking to upgrade to a newer model.
As I’ve said before, 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.
The planning for vacations turned into a purchase this month. I put down a deposit to go on a cruise in summer 2026.
We also decided to put $200 a month into car savings, instead of saving it up 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.
These two newer cars should hold us over for a while as we build up the car fund. However, I’m keeping my eye out for a specific EV that we might buy if the price is right.
Retirement Accounts
401(k)s ($25,764.90)
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.
IRA ($14,103.99)
All market performance here.
Overall, that’s a gain of 5.09% between the 401k and IRAs.
College Fund ($4,693.47)
The college fund is invested in mutual funds, just like the IRAs. It was up 5.77 percent.
Net Worth ($44,608.90)
May was a pretty good month, especially compared to February, March, and April. You have to be happy when you make gains.
We did have some big expenses this month, but we still ended up in positive territory and were able to put some money towards savings, so I’m happy.
In total, our net worth rose. We had an increase of approximately 3.56%.
Accessible Net Worth ($4,740.01)
Monthly Blurb: This is the money we are able to put away, not including the tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
Our income was average, and our expenses were above average this month. This amount reflects the amount we earned minus the cost of the 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.
The interest rate in my savings account remained at 3.60%. The market is becoming increasingly volatile, and what will happen in the remainder of 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 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.
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. I failed that goal for May, but we’ll get back on track next month.
This month, we saved 25%, which dropped our YTD Savings Rate to 42.8%, down 5% from last month.
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. That means right now! Summer break has started, so we will have daycare bills for the rest of the summer.
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 24.81% in May YTD.
Income ($11,488.02)
Right now, our only source of active income is through our full-time jobs.
This is what an average income month looks like for us.
Expenses ($8,638.19)
Our expenses were above average this month.
Here is a quick breakdown:
1) Home Escrow ($789.00)
The normal amount we put aside every month to pay for property taxes and insurance, plus HVAC annual maintenance.
2) Giving ($903.38)
The usual 10% we give every month.
3) Cost of living ($6,945.81)
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 May include daycare, medical, car, and travel.
April 2025 Vs. May 2025 Expenses
Where do I begin comparing the two months?
April and May were pretty different in terms of where our money went. One similarity between the two months is buying a car. May tacked on a bunch more expenses. But the markets did do a lot better in May, which has a bigger impact on our net worth.
Hopefully, June will go smoothly, and we won’t encounter any problems. Other than daycare, I think most of the big expenses are behind us.
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 still close enough to 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 and again in May. We recovered about 8% in March and shaved a hair in April. Hopefully, we can recover the rest of the way before the end of the year, although this summer will be rough.
Blog Goal!
As usual, I didn’t get around to posting anything in May, but I posted one article in January and have more planned. I need to find time to write them. Take a look and let me know what you think of the latest posts.
I’m finding it hard to create posts that provide value when there is AI available.
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). 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 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, 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 20 pounds so far.
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.
May 2025 Roundup
May was a good month overall. I didn’t expect to buy another new car so soon, but all the other expenses were planned for. We remained relatively healthy and didn’t miss any school or work days.
The weather was great for most of May. We had a few rainy days, but most days were warm and dry, and we got to play/work outside a bunch. It’s starting to heat up as we go into June, so I’m trying to enjoy the nice weather.
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 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.