While I may not always check my net worth monthly, I still at least do it annually.
Part of the reason I didn't look too often this year is because things were not exactly all that rosy for me. For example, my investment portfolio's Year to Date performance fell by roughly $40k compared to January's high.
To be fair, January's stock market was unusually high, so when we fell off of that (*cough* Tariffs *cough*) I'm just kind of glad that it recovered enough that it's "only" $40k short now....
At the same time, the value of my (paid-off) house fluctuated a bit throughout the year, but ultimately landed at roughly $5k less compared to January's listing.
The real estate market remains pretty red hot where I am, and losing only a mere $5k on an otherwise already highly-valued piece of property is definitely no sweat off my back.
The bottom line is a net-loss of $45k for me this year. It's never fun looking at losses, but at least it's not affecting my daily life or anything.
December 22nd, 2025 at 02:01 pm 1766412119
The housing market is just crazy. There's a small house near us on the market for $89K and honestly, it's a dump. Of course it hasn't sold, but it makes us wonder if our property is worth more than what DH has invested or not.
December 22nd, 2025 at 04:29 pm 1766420941
I'm wondering what your allocation is in your investment portfolio, though. I don't deal with the investments here at the firm, but as I put together client meeting reports, I've been seeing YTD returns varying between 11 and 15%. And checking the benchmarks, at least as of December 12th, every benchmark that our firm follows was up, with the S&P 500 up over 17%, foreign stocks up over 30%, and bonds up over 7%.
Do you allocate to have some of your cash for living expenses available in your portfolio so that you don't need to sell anything if you need cash from the portfolio when markets drop?
December 24th, 2025 at 06:34 am 1766558048
Dido: Haha no details escape you, Dido, and I respect that. Indeed, YTD market indices have gone up, and so should portfolios that are tracking the market as well.
Put simply, I hold too much in individual stocks, and yes, I agree that it is extremely dangerous, and I plan changing it in the upcoming year. I don't know exactly what will happen with the stock market, but it's never a good thing being over-weight regardless, but I also want to avoid paying short term trading tax so that is why I have to wait until next year to rebalance.
And yes, I also have what I believe is a reasonable of emergency buffer sitting in money market funds. By next year, it will increase to 10 months worth. That said, I am always open to suggestions.