Net Worth Update 2025 Year End

 I never did a year end recap of my net worth or expenses, but better late than never! Here's a quickie version:

My net worth as of 12/31/25 was $2,994,337, an increase of $459,534 since the prior year. (As of this writing, my net worth is now up to $3,281,000.)

I'm not making a ton of money these days, but my early efforts to save and invest are paying off, as my net worth keeps growing mainly from the snowball effect of investment gains over the past 25+ years.

My 2025 income was $67,528 in gross salary, plus $3,190 in employer 401k matching funds.

My total expenses including taxes (but not 401k contributions) were $72,912. I don't love the negative cash flow of $2,194 but you can see that it was not very significant in comparison to the growth of my investments. Of course the value of the investments could fall, and sometimes does, but at this point, it could probably go up or down more in a day than I make from working in a whole year. I have to start just accepting that it's okay to spend some of my savings. (And I WAS accepting that back when I wasn't working, but then when I got a job again I was so happy I was covering my expenses that it's now disappointing when I'm not!)

My expenses were pretty consistent year on year with a few exceptions: more gift giving, more charitable giving, and more spent on household and garden stuff. Lower health insurance costs because Sweetie switched from my plan to Medicare towards the end of 2024. We spent more on travel, in part due to a business class upgrade, but Sweetie paid for more of that than I did so my travel expenses actually went down vs. the prior year. 

Looking ahead to the rest of this year, I think most of our expenses will continue to be similar, but our travel budget will take another big jump. It's a little scary to be getting into that phase of life where you have to start scheduling in all the bucket list trips before your body can't handle them anymore. But lie-flat airplane seats help with some of that! And I feel so lucky we are able to afford them now. But psychologically, it's hard to adjust to spending money on something that always seemed like an out-of-reach extravagance-- a topic for another blog post one of these days.

Seven Years of Earning and Spending

In the comments on my December 2009 net worth post, someone asked about the change in my net worth since 2003 and whether I'd gotten a higher paying job or had changed any of my spending habits to enable my net worth to grow as it did. It prompted me to tackle a project I'd been thinking about for a while: a long-term analysis of my income vs. expenses.

2003 is the first year for which I have full data in Quicken so I looked at that seven year window, and the results were quite interesting! First, let's just look at after-tax income vs. expenses (click on image for larger view):

I thought it would be easiest to take taxes totally out of the picture, so my income is net after all those deductions, and the taxes paid are also taken out of my expenses. (I also backed out my tax refunds from the previous year's taxes paid.) Income includes salary, bonus, gifts received and interest earned on bank accounts. It does not include dividends and investment gains as those are reinvested into my investment accounts.
As the graph shows, my income has been gradually increasing, and my expenses have been much more flat, and tending to increase in proportion to my income-- just what I wanted to see!

So what made up my expenses? First of all, let me explain the category definitions here, as I've grouped things slightly differently than in previous expense breakdowns.

• Household: mostly laundry and drycleaning but also includes some minor decorative stuff like curtains (not new furniture, as noted below)
  
• Education and Information: this is a new one, which I thought made a good catch-all for newspapers, magazines, books, music, French lessons, internet access and other miscellaneous entertainment. (I actually meant to name the category "Entertainment and Information")
• Travel and Vacation includes commuting, family visits and trips for fun.
• Food & Liquor includes restaurant meals, take-out, and groceries for home cooking
• Miscellaneous includes haircuts and other random "stuff" like art supplies and electronic gadgetry, etc.
• Housing includes mortgage payments (to interest and principal), condo charges, property taxes, homeowner's insurance, and gas and electric bills
• The rest are pretty self-explanatory.
  

In the chart below, I'm including taxes again just to get the full picture, though again the refunds have been backed out of the previous year's taxes paid. The next largest expense is housing.

I then did another chart of the expenses without housing or taxes, so you could get a larger view of all the types of expenses that are more variable and controllable. Here, I tried to order the different expense categories so that the bottom of each bar is the stuff that stayed really steady from year to year, with the things that changed the most on the top. It's amazing how consistent some things are!


A few things to note:

• My pay is part salary, part bonus. I got an unusually large bonus in 2004 that slightly skews the always-up trend of my income.
• I started this blog in 2005 and my expenses went down noticeably that year: did the self-scrutiny make me more frugal? Probably!
• I moved at the end of 2006 so I've had higher housing costs since then. For the purposes of this exercise, I did not include some large one-time expenses relating to my condo purchase and moving (like closing costs, moving & storage charges, and new furniture, all totaling almost $30,000 over 2 years) but I did include minor stuff like hardware store items and lots of cleaning supplies under "Household"
• I bought a new laptop in 2008, which is why miscellaneous expenses spiked.
  
• My "Gifts Given" expenses were high in some years because I bought my mother plane tickets at a point when she was separated from my father and having a hard time making ends meet.
• I took a big vacation in 2008, and another significant trip in 2004. My travel budget was also affected by the end of an international long-distance relationship in 2007.
• In 2008 I started spending more and more time with a new, local sweetie. We tend to alternate paying for things kind of haphazardly, which has blurred the line between grocery and restaurant expenses and some household stuff, even though we don't live together.
• My medical expenses have increased gradually over the 7 years, mainly due to higher health insurance costs for what's not covered by my employer.

But here's the best part: the bottom line. That differential between income and expenses is all savings that went into my 401k and other savings and investments accounts (and this time I DID include all the the one-time condo purchase expenses, including about $75,000 that went into home equity, so I still "have" some of that money in a different way).
It's great to be able to say that I saved more in 2009 than I ever have before:

2003	$27,558
2004	$34,664
2005	$5,210
2006	$-13,429
2007	$29,699
2008	$35,559
2009	$43,214

I'm sure I'll keep staring at all this data and digging into individual years and categories to see more detail-- it is weirdly fascinating! The whole thing was fun to pull together and I highly recommend that you try it for yourself!

December 2009 Net Worth

I am finally getting around to posting my year-end net worth. Drumroll please...

$408,490

Yes, I finally crossed the $400k mark! That is a good feeling... though it is slightly diminshed when I remember that in January 2008 I was hoping to hit $410k by the end of that year!

During 2009, my net worth increased by 37%-- a pretty nice recovery from last year's dismal performance. The NetWorthIQ graph says it all:


December 2009: $408,490, up 37% from '08, up 13% from '07
December 2008: $298,700, down 17% from '07
December 2007: $360,008

If you just extrapolate the trend I was on until 2007, I'm still not quite back on track, but the economy isn't the only factor affecting that, as I've had higher housing costs since then. And who knows, if I hadn't bought my condo, I probably would have been even more exposed to the crash in the stock market-- I think my home value has actually held up better than some of my investments.

Here's the breakdown for year-end 2009:

Cash & Bank Accts	$56,442
Retirement	$241,708
Stocks	$20,898
Bonds	$5,091
Home Equity	$86,318
Credit Card	-$1,967

My cash and bank accounts are almost $18,000 higher than they were a year ago, so it's not just investment performance that has bounced back-- I've saved cash, too. One thing that's actually lower than in December '08 is my home equity, as I took that down by $10,000 a few months ago due to sales data on comparable apartments in my area. My credit card balance is slightly less than it was a year ago, which I guess means I spent less on holiday gifts!

I'll post my 2009 expenses and income soon... and after I get my head around that, I will have to tackle setting some goals for the rest of 2009. Stay tuned!

2008 Income and Expenses

On Monday, I recapped the changes in my net worth in 2008. Now it's time for a look at last year's income and expenses. This year I decided to compare 2008 vs. my budget and also against 2007 to see how my spending habits might have changed. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)


Income notes:

• Salary increase was just the usual annual raise. Wish I could continue to be so blasé about that, but I already know I won't get any raise in 2009!
• Bonus increased nicely in 2008, though this was by no means guaranteed so I budgeted quite conservatively for that after some debate about putting any budget number in at all.
• Tax refund increased nicely as that is based on my first full year of having mortgage interest to deduct.
• Investment income was way down, no surprise-- this includes dividends and capital gains from both retirement accounts and my other investments at E*Trade.

Expense notes:

• This year's big increases were Charity, Travel, and Miscellaneous. I took an extremely expensive vacation which sucked up about 3 years' worth of vacation budget. Under miscellaneous, I bought a new laptop. As for charity, I keep feeling guilty that I don't give enough so I tried to up that this year.
• Gifts Given is a bit skewed as I returned a few hundred dollars' worth of stuff in '09.
• Medical is up because of the various shots and pills I needed for my vacation, as well as increases in my health insurance premiums and co-pays.
• Housing is also up a bit as I screwed up one of my mortgage payments which resulted in an entire month's payment going towards the principal. Nothing wrong with that, it was actually kind of a happy accident. (Here I am counting repayment of principal as an "expense" even though I still "have" that money in the form of home equity.)
• Big decreases were Telephone (no more long distance relationship), Clothing (for no particular reason, I guess I just managed to keep my weight stable enough), and both Household and New Home-related Expenses. Last year I was still buying more miscellaneous hardware and cleaning items, and I finished buying furniture. I still have more decorating I'd like to do eventually, but I really forced myself to put that on hold for a while.

The bottom line is that due to lower investment income and a few expensive splurges this year, my net savings were lower than in 2007. But I still managed to keep most lines of my budget well under control and sock away a pretty good percentage of my income. The Net Saved amount includes $15,500 deducted from paychecks that went into my 401k, and $12,735 in investment income/401k match that was automatically reinvested in those accounts. The remaining $14,975 is cash savings that I deposited in bank accounts and managed not to spend.

I was pleasantly surprised when I reviewed these numbers. Throughout the year, I was worried that I was losing my frugal habits and spending way too much, but I guess I managed to make up for it in other ways. I'd still like to be saving more, especially given the appalling hit my investments have taken. And 2009 will be a year where I really have to make ends meet on less, since I'm sure any bonus I may get will be much smaller than last year's.
I haven't begun to tackle my 2009 budgeting and goals, but I'll do that soon... and of course YOU, my dear readers, will be invited along for the ride!

Net Worth December 2008

Finally, I'm wrapping up my 2008 numbers! Today I'll tackle net worth, and I'll post expense and income numbers tomorrow.

Here's how my net worth fared this year:

	2008	2007	% change
Cash/ Bank Accounts/ CDs	$38,688	$30,670	26%
E*Trade Stocks/Mutual Funds	$12,556	$17,255	-27%
Bonds	$4,860	$4,583	6%
Home Equity	$90,401	$84,620	7%
Retirement	$154,143	$224,742	-31%
Credit Cards	-$1,948	-$1,857	5%
Total Net Worth	$298,700	$360,013	-17%

Given that my net worth goal for the end of the year had been $410,000, I don't feel all that cheerful about this, but there are some silver linings within the cloud.
As you can see from the above, my declines were entirely due to the lousy stock market. My cash accounts were up because I spent less than I earned. For the most part, I didn't transfer much savings from cash into investments this year other than my 401k contributions, but I did put $3,000 into a mutual fund-- the cash performance would have looked even better if not for that! (That also means my E*Trade losses would have looked even worse without the added cash.) I continue to have no debt other than my mortgage-- I had a little more outstanding on my credit card at the end of this year, but I still pay the bill in full every month. And it's nice to see my home equity growing as I pay down the mortgage-- this assumes that the market value of my home has stayed the same. (From what research I've been able to do about sales in my area, I think this is still a reasonable assumption, but we'll see how things go with the NYC real estate market!)

The bottom line is that I did a pretty good job on things I could control... and got royally screwed by the things I couldn't control! Oh well... onwards and upwards nevertheless!

2007 Expenses vs. Budget

2007 was a weird year for expenses. Not as weird as last year, when I went from being a renter to a homeowner (with a phase of quasi-homelessness in between). But this year, I still had some adjusting to do, and it will probably come as no surprise to anyone that I went well over budget!
Here's the data:

Category	Actual	Budget	Variance	% Var
Taxes	$29,070	$24,504	$4,566	19%
Housing	$19,241	$16,812	$2,429	14%
Dining	$7,984	$7,200	$784	11%
Household	$7,980	$600	$7,380	1230%
Travel	$3,354	$4,032	-$678	-17%
Clothing	$2,940	$1,800	$1,140	63%
Misc	$2,478	$1,500	$978	65%
Utilities	$2,445	$2,400	$45	2%
Gifts Given	$2,300	$1,200	$1,100	92%
Gym & Fitness	$1,199	$1,200	-$1	0%
Medical	$1,029	$1,227	-$198	-16%
Subscriptions	$969	$924	$45	5%
Education	$421	$540	-$119	-22%
Charity	$343	$300	$43	14%
Home Insurance	$320	$400	-$80	-20%
Entertainment	$291	$600	-$309	-51%
Home Repair	$290	$0	$290	n/a
Bank charge	$78	$72	$6	8%
Total Expenses	$82,622	$65,311	$17,311	26%

A few notes:

• Taxes: My income went up slightly, and I got a bigger bonus than expected, so taxes were higher.
• Housing: As I've mentioned before, my property taxes were out of whack as a 421a abatement hadn't kicked in yet. Also, this figure does not include the portion of my housing costs that goes towards my mortgage principal, as at least by some reckonings, that is money that I still have in my net worth in the form of home equity. I do include this part of my housing cost when I am looking at monthly spending budgets, though, since I do have to make sure I have the cash to pay it!
• Dining: Always my bête noire, dining continued to be a big expense this year. I am happy to report that I do not weigh 14% more than last year, though.
• Household: As you can see, I was still buying furniture and various items for my new home. The biggies were a bed and mattress, a bookcase, and DIY custom closet shelving. This category also tracks little things like laundry.
  
• Travel: My big New Zealand trip was actually not that expensive, since I used frequent flyer miles for my ticket.
• Clothing: I really needed some new ones, considering I didn't spend much on clothes last year. Also, I became single again and needed to start thinking about more colorful feathers with which to attract a mate.
• Miscellaneous: This was mainly thrown off by my purchase of a new Treo and some related accessories.
• Gifts Given: This includes a $1,000 savings bond purchased for my nephew, which won't be an annual occurrence.
• Entertainment: Funny, I didn't spend much but I haven't felt the least bit bored this year! I think I budgeted higher after buying theater tickets last year, but this year I didn't do anything that expensive and mainly entertained myself by reading free books!
• Subscriptions: I subscribed to a couple new magazines in order to get some decorating ideas, but I've let them expire without renewing, as I didn't find them that valuable. One of them was Martha Stewart's Blueprint magazine, which I just heard has folded anyway-- good thing I didn't renew! The person who told me this said they would have substituted another Martha Stewart magazine for the rest of the subscription. I had to laugh at the idea of getting a forced subscription to Martha Stewart Weddings! What would my mother say if she came to visit again!?!?
  
• Charity: I had wanted to increase my giving a bit, and did so. (This doesn't include the donations I do with all the proceeds from this website.) I still don't feel like I'm giving a huge amount, but I think I'll be in a position to prioritize that more later in life.
  
• Home Repair: You're probably thinking "huh? She lives in a brand-new home, what could possibly need to be repaired already?" This category might overlap somewhat with Household, but I had intended to use it to track things that would go towards the cost basis of my home if I were to sell it. These are supposed to be things that permanently increase the value of your home, that can't be taken with you when you move. The IRS doesn't seem to give any more specific guidelines, but I may have to go back over my receipts from Lowe's and Home Depot, etc. to see what really counts and maybe recategorize some things.
• Bank charge: I thought that seemed high until I remembered that I pay an annual fee for my credit card, which is now $60. That seems kind of annoying but I do earn a ton of frequent flyer miles on that card, and use them for things like tickets to New Zealand which cost way more than $60.

Stay tuned for some further analysis on how my spending changed from 2006 to 2007, and how I'll finalize my budget and goals for 2008.

2007 Income

Here's how much money I made in 2007:

Salary	$91,029
Investment Income (div, cg, etc)	$19,001
Bonus	$10,500
Other Income	$5,496
Tax Refund	$2,844
Gift Received	$1,645
Interest Income	$1,163
TOTAL INFLOWS	$131,678

Notes:

• As I'd previously mentioned, it was very nice to finally hit a six-figure income this year. My total income including investment dividends, etc. was over six figures last year, but that is not the same as seeing a number over $100,000 on your final paystub! I wish my salary alone was over $100k, but that will take another couple of years, I think, and in the meantime, I'm happy to have a bonus that makes up the gap, assuming it's big enough to do so again next year!
• All the investment income-- dividends and capital gains-- ends up being reinvested in either my 401k or my E*Trade investment account, so I don't think of it as spendable income.
• Other Income is mostly my employer's matching contributions to my 401k.
• A tax refund doesn't really feel like "income" to me, but that is how Quicken categorizes it.
• $1,000 of the Gift Received line is a check given to me by my mother, which I see more as money that I am holding in trust for her, in case she gets into debt again. (backstory here)
• I am not including the (very modest) ad revenue this site generates, as I have been donating it to various charities.

That's the scoop-- coming soon will be a post on my 2007 expenses.

Year-end Net Worth

It was a squeaker, but I made it!
I was so depressed the other night when I was looking at my net worth in Quicken and seeing a figure of about $349,300. I knew all my salary and credit card transactions had been entered for the year, and the interest on my main bank accounts. I was bummed out that my net worth was below my $350,000 goal, and nowhere near my $370,000 revised goal that I set mid-year. When I got to work the next day, I remembered to check Paypal and another bank account, and sure enough, I had a little more interest but not enough to save the day. My last hope was that my investment accounts would be showing some pretty nice dividends in December, and sure enough, they managed to save the day! Here's how things ended up:

ASSETS:

Cash and Bank Accounts

• Cash $119
• Chase CD 6 mo. $3,054
• Chase Checking $179
• Chase Savings $5,018
• E*Trade 2-Yr CD $5,972
• E*Trade Money Market $5,021
• E*Trade Savings $12
• FNBO Direct Savings $11,104
• Laundry Quarters $6
• PayPal $152
• Misc foreign currency $30

Retirement

• 401k $195,613
• E*Trade Roth IRA $23,453
• Chase Roth IRA CD $3,037
• Chase Roth IRA CD $2,639

Investment

• E*Trade $17,255
• Treasury Direct & Bonds $4,583

Other Assets

• Condo equity $84,620

LIABILITIES:

Credit Cards

• Visa $1,859

Net Worth as of 12/31/07: $360,008
+$7,331 (up 2%) in December
+$47,237 (up 15%) for the year.


A few notes:
As usual, I am showing the equity I have in my condo, rather than breaking out its value and the balance owed on my mortgage. I haven't adjusted the value of my condo up or down since I initially determined the number last year after I moved in. Despite the rocky real estate market, I think my valuation is probably slightly conservative, but I'm going to sit tight until I see more condos similar to mine being sold in this area. The rest of the accounts are pretty self-explanatory, I think.

Overall, I feel okay about my result at the end of this year, but now that more and more of my net worth resides in assets other than cash, it's hard to use net worth alone as a goal. If I wanted to, I could reasonably assume that my condo is worth $10,000 more and say I'd met my goal of $370,000 net worth. Or I could look at the peak prices of my stocks and mutual funds this year and say that if they hadn't fallen from there, I "would have" made my goal. Neither of these things would change how much money I managed to save or spend or earn this year, which is more important.
I can't just compare the total for my "cash and bank accounts" group to try to break out the investment fluctuations, since I moved some money between that group and the retirement and investment groups. So where did the gain in my net worth come from? Here's a few factors:

• My 401k statement says my rate of return was 6.8% for the year.
• My main E*Trade account was up 8.4%, and my Roth IRA at E*Trade was down 9.5% for the year. (The S&P 500 was up about 3.5% for the year.) I think have to make some changes in that Roth IRA portfolio-- it's never done all that well, but this is ridiculous.
• I had a little more than $20,000 of interest and investment income from all accounts for the year. This includes dividends and capital gain distributions which were reinvested. I was kind of amazed at this number, and it really shows you how important it is to build up capital! It's not like I'm anywhere near the point where I could live off my investment income, but it's encouraging to feel like I'll get there someday! And to put this in perspective, it was only 16 years ago that my gross salary was less than $20,000...
• I had about $5,500 in "other income" this year, which is mainly 401k matching contributions from my employer.
• My "savings," as defined as salary and bonus earnings minus my expenses, not counting what went into equity on my condo, was about $18,500. (Of that, $15,500 was from payroll deductions for my 401k.) 2007 may mark the first time I ever made more from investments than I saved in cash!

Looking at all the factors that contributed to my net worth increase has been helpful-- it's made it easier for me to start thinking about goals for 2008 in terms of things that I can actually control as well as outside factors like market performance. But that is a topic for another post! Until then, onward and upward!