I have been tracking my financials for many years. In mid 2021, I started tracking my investment account increases (401k, savings, and personal investment account). As I learned more about investing, I updated this tracker to track other investments such as my IRA, I bonds and other savings.
Track Everything
2023 was when I started investment tracking of everything. Monthly changes, yearly changes, overall net worth including my home equity. This was extremely helpful in my finance journey. Previously I looked at my 401k occasionally and thought very little about where I needed to be financially to retire. I just assumed my 401k would continue to grow as long as I worked, and it would become enough.
Retire Early
In mid 2023, I got serious about wanting to retire early. My grandmother had passed away and a few months later, my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly at a relatively young age. Within that same year all four of my dogs passed. My mom has early onset Alzheimer’s and with my grandmother’s passing, I took on most of the financial aspects of her estate for my mom. All of this hit me hard. It was the first time I realized that all my plans could change so quickly. I didn’t want to work for 50 years to retire and pass shortly after or not be able to do the things I can only do when I’m healthy.
I accelerated our savings and investing rates. I negotiated a pay increase, that came along with a lot (A LOT) of more work and responsibility but would allow me to retire that much earlier. This is when I really started with a long-term plan of retiring early and investment tracking to make sure I didn’t get sidetracked.
How I categorize my tracking of funds
I break up my investment tracking in the following categories:
- Retirement changes
- 401k’s
- IRA’s
- Investments to live prior to being able to pull out of my Retirement accounts (Pre-retirement Investments)
- High Yield Savings Accounts
- Brokerage Account
- Bonds or Money Market Accounts
- Home Equity
October 2025
So, each month, I will update my investment changes, anything new I have learned or any mistakes I have made.
October Financial Changes by percent:
- Retirement Accounts increased 2.88%
- Pre-Retirement Investments increased 5.582%
- For an overall increase of 3.272%
- Overall Net Worth (home included) increased 2.72%
While these increases seem small, remember that the large the amount in an account, the smaller percentage can still represent a large dollar amount.
Yearly Increases
The past two years have seen increase per year in the high 20-30%.
- 2023
- Investment increase of 28.98%
- Overall net worth increase of 17.02%
- 2024
- Investment increase of 31.95%
- Overall net worth increase of 28.63%
- 2025
- I have still have two more months before I report these numbers, but I am on track to a similar increase to 2024.
How much do I Invest?
My husband and I both max out our 401k. My husband is in his 50’s so he also adds in his catch-up contribution for a total of $54,500 per year combined.
We also fully match our IRA’s with my husband’s catch up amount the total for this is $15,000 per year.
We have recently cut our expenses greatly by being more frugal with our spending so that we can invest in pre-retirement investments at the highest amounts possible. This often changes, based on expenses that come up and need to be taken out of savings – new AC replacement, car expenses, etc. This money is contained in a combination of a brokerage account and high yield savings account.
Planned Retirement Date
If we can continue our current trends, we are on track to retire in 4-5 years, aiming for 2029. So that is our goal. Could things change? Absolutely. And I will continue to update this site with monthly and yearly financials and changes that come about.
If you want help with your plans or tracking your expenses, income, debt, and net worth, reach out. I love helping people to make plans that have flexibility built in so you can live your life now and continue to live your life in your later years.