net worth – My Investing Discoveries

When Saving Becomes Self-Sustaining

Good news in my financial universe:

My net worth has officially more than doubled since I started tracking, even though I haven’t been saving much of my aftertax income lately; we’ll discuss why that is, the behavioral side and how I got here
I have already made more petsitting income halfway through 2026 than I did last year in full—I’m endlessly grateful to have such a fun side gig that allows me give back to my friends and circle of clients 😻
My portfolio is up 13.67% year to date as of the close on July 2, 2026, beating the Morningstar Global Markets Sustainability index I’ve been using as a performance benchmark; I won’t be making changes, but there is a holding I’ll be watching 👀
I requested a credit line increase with my Discover account up to $13,000; do this whenever you get a raise to ensure you’re using a lower percentage of your overall credit, one of the factors that boosts your credit score!

Net worth: Go with it, it will hold you

When I began tracking my net worth on a quarterly basis in October 2022, I was already pretty impressed with what I had. At that point, I had been working full-time for over five years, paid off my (thankfully) measly student loans and I was ready and eager to save more in my new high-yield savings accounts and employee retirement account.

Less than four years later, I have increased my net worth by 110.91% on a cumulative basis, with an average quarterly increase of 5.04%. In April, I was nervous to track my net worth because I knew I had been spending too much, not saving anything from my paychecks and I truly thought my process was going to fall apart. Instead, when I crunched the numbers, I found I had increased my net worth by nearly 8% since the end of 2025 🤯.

How could this be possible?! I looked at all my different savings vehicles and realized: This was the foundation making me more money. I have two retirement accounts that are increasing with the market, and my current employee retirement account is automatically investing amounts from each biweekly paycheck. My portfolio is healthy and sustainable, and my high-yield savings account with Happen Bank (formerly LendingClub) has been steadily making me money every month with a current interest rate of 3.30%.

The process held, even though my mechanical short-term saving slipped. I was reminded of a phrase I heard in summer 2010, when I attended the Lake Forest Writing and Thinking Workshop (camp for writing nerds 🤓). My writing instructor’s way of telling us to trust the process came from a poem: “Go with it, it will hold you.”

The journey of saving up to even have a net worth has not been a straight line. Out of the 15 quarters I tracked so far, there were three when my net worth decreased by 2% to 8%. If I put those quarters together, that’s almost an entire year of declines—yikes! However, all these time periods were when I knew I would be spending more on moving, concerts and travel. These are all valid reasons for my net worth to drop, as my spending eclipsed my saving. Each time my net worth decreased, the following quarter rebounded and I was right back on track.

Breakdown of my net worth:

16% in personal investments
25% in high-yield savings
50% in retirement savings

The rest is in my checking and emergency savings bank accounts. I can’t believe I made it here, sustaining myself as a woman living alone in a city, and the first person in my lineage to do such a thing! Still, the most thrilling part of making more money for me is that I can donate more to people who need it and give back to causes I care about.

Hitting some portfolio high notes

My portfolio has remained in the green this year, up 13.67% year to date, 19.81% over the last 12 months and 19.78% over the last three years. When I first did research to find a benchmark to compare my performance against, the Morningstar Global Markets Sustainability index was beating my returns. Now, the Morningstar index is only up 6.70% year to date. My portfolio has consistently beat this index over all three periods, something I didn’t know was possible!

During my last portfolio review, I mentioned there were some new grades with no data in As You Sow’s sustainable investment database: diversity disclosures, racial justice and LGBTQ+ equity. The one sustainable exchange-traded fund (ETF) in my portfolio that’s being watched for these grades is the Stance Sustainable Beta ETF (CHGX), with grades of D for diversity disclosures and gender equality. This means the holding is no longer on probation (military weapons grade improved from D to A) and will remain in my portfolio.

You’ll notice that Stance Sustainable Beta is labeled with a “sustainability mandate.” According to As You Sow, this mandate applies to “funds that are members of US-SIF, the sustainable investing industry group, and to funds identified by Morningstar as having ‘a sustainable investing focus as a central feature of their strategy.’”

Here’s what the sustainability mandate means for my portfolio:

In theory, increases the likelihood that a holding will improve its grades over time, signaling that the fund manager is either waiting for more data or more time for these grades to improve
Still not adding an ETF with any C, D or F grades; once a holding is in my portfolio, the grades are allowed to shift as low as D based on the work being done in the background to make these ETFs more sustainable
People problems within companies and industries are going to take much longer to solve than the increasingly dire climate-related issues on the grades list

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To Think or Not to Think: The Financial Question

I hope you are all enjoying some crisp fall weather, wherever you are.

With my latest quarterly net worth check-in, I discovered that I have nearly doubled my net worth in the three years since I started tracking my progress! The beauty of compounding is at play here: The more money I have invested that is making me money, the more money it continues to make. It’s that simple!

Other than that, I want to update you on what I have been thinking about vs. what I have been (choosing) not to think about when it comes to my money lately. This is sometimes by design, as a behavioral finance trick. Each link in this list will take you to a category of articles on this blog for you to explore further.

Bank accounts—I think about them weekly, but don’t always check them that often. My checking account and regular savings account are my most visited; my two high-yield savings accounts are reviewed quarterly for my net worth update, and are regularly invested in whenever I have savings from a biweekly paycheck ✅
Budget—I don’t think about it as much as I used to; I have regular payments that aren’t accounted for in my budget ❌
Credit cards—I think about them a lot, sometimes multiple times per week. This is the primary focus of my finances: What am I spending and—when it comes time to pay the bill—how much do I owe? This is also a good way to prevent fraud, but your credit providers should be alerting you to any unusual activity ✅
Investments—I don’t think about them, but I check my Charles Schwab brokerage account periodically during market shifts (thanks for the heads up, AAII!) and review them for performance and potential deletions twice per year ✅
Retirement accounts—I don’t think about them because I check my progress quarterly, I have a system in place ✅

The aspects of my personal finance that regularly haunt me are my bank accounts and credit cards. These are top of mind since I handle them on a short-term basis, whereas my investments and retirement accounts are for the long term. The one area I need to improve is my budget, hence the “x” instead of the checkmark. At this point, it’s next year’s problem!

The state of my retirement accounts

My retirement accounts are doing well, especially when I don’t think about them! I still have my first 403(b) plan account with Vanguard from AAII, and it remains invested in the mutual funds I chose at the start of my retirement savings journey. My second retirement account is with Fidelity from my current job at Red Ventures. It’s a straight up 401(k), so now I have a fun collection of all these letters and numbers!

I’m actively contributing 5% of my salary to my Fidelity account on a biweekly pretax basis, meaning the money comes out of my paycheck before I even get to see it. Meanwhile, with my employer matching most of that contribution, I’m sitting on nearly $6,500 after over a year of steady contributions and positive returns!

I invested my Fidelity account in these mutual funds that were available to me, using the same weights I applied to similar funds in my Vanguard account: 30% invested in the T. Rowe Price Large-Cap Growth fund (TRLGX), 20% in the Fidelity Mid Cap Index fund (FSMDX), 20% in the Fidelity Small Cap Index fund (FSSNX), 20% in Emerging Markets II (ticker not listed) and 10% in the Principal Real Estate Securities Fund Class R6 (PFRSX).

When I invested in these funds back in fall 2024, two of them had higher expense ratios than I would like for my investments: the real estate fund’s was 0.81%, and the large-cap growth fund’s was 0.70%. My investing strategy is to find mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with expense ratios under 0.60%, otherwise we’re getting dangerously close to 1%, which is way too much to be giving any fund or money manager. Thankfully, the large-cap growth fund’s expense ratio has since decreased to 0.55%.

My petsitting venture

This year, I started petsitting cats and dogs. It took off when I started networking through the dogs, finding more animal friends to hang out with. My closest human friends also have some of the cutest cats ever, so I can’t resist spending scheduled time with them when they are required to pay attention to me 😂.

So far this year, I have made over $1,600 from this venture! Since I haven’t been as regular with saving this year as I would like, at the end of 2025 I plan to match the amount I’ve made from petsitting and move it into my emergency savings account.

When I initially drew up my rules for this savings account, I wanted to keep $10,000 in it at all times. However, I’ve learned since that I don’t really need that much money available, even for emergencies. I settled on maintaining my emergency savings at $7,000. In the current market environment, it makes more sense to keep money in my high-yield savings accounts so they can make more than the measly 0.01% interest my emergency savings will.

Some other financial decisions I made since we last talked:

I signed a two-year lease for my current apartment so I could lock in the increased rate of $1,450/mo. for the next two years to save myself another $50/mo. increase down the line
I chose my health insurance plan for 2026, and went with the lowest tier for around $30 per paycheck

I’ll be back in early 2026 for another portfolio review! Wishing you all a wonderful and safe holiday season.

More articles on rethinking retirement:
Retiring Early: Memoir or Fiction?
Should Young People Still Save for Retirement?
How Much Should I Contribute to My Retirement Account?

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Investing Through the Inferno

A midyear check-in light on the data, some charts and how it all feels.

There’s no way we’re already halfway through 2025—you’ll just have to bear with me as I run it back to April. You remember her, right? A time before it was 90 degrees everyday, before I thought I would burst into flames right on the concrete.

April was the beginning of my tour, Nick Cave in Boston, St. Vincent in New Haven, pour me another tequila soda. Then May in Texas for one suffocating minute, then the madhouse, then the grave. Just kidding—June was another story, but we did it to death, avoided the rain and the heat almost took us out completely. The Kills killed it three times until we prayed for mercy from the sun. No longer our god, we watched it sink behind the stage while the heat tore through Queens of the Stone Age’s set. We don’t even have to talk about how much my credit card statement was after all that, you get the idea!

Net worth & portfolio in the green

April was also when the tariffs brought everyone to me, asking what they should do with their investments. I told my friends, “Don’t look at your accounts,” and then opened every single one of mine to calculate my net worth as of the end of March. My strategy won’t be stopped by the nonsense! At the end of June, my Charles Schwab brokerage account is not only back to where it was before the announcement, but it has now surpassed that amount. I said, “Everything will be fine in, like, two months,” and thankfully, the numbers didn’t make a fool of me like they usually do!

Despite the ongoing destruction of the Earth and the people who live here, my net worth is increasing and my portfolio is profitable. I haven’t been checking my investments as often because I know it doesn’t matter what they look like now. All that matters is I’m keeping my money in the market so it will continue making me more money.

My portfolio of sustainable exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is performing well. When I checked their grades on As You Sow as of the end of June, almost all the ETFs had A’s and B’s. The Amplify Etho Climate Leadership U.S. ETF’s (ETHO) gender equality grade improved from F to B, removing it from the probation it was placed on after my last review. My Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (SCHH) maintains its gender equality grade of C—come on real estate sector, let’s get that up! One of my latest additions, the Stance Sustainable Beta ETF (CHGX), is now on probation with a gender equality grade of F. If the grade doesn’t improve by my next review in six months, the ETF will be removed from my portfolio. Since no changes are needed, my portfolio will remain untouched until then.

Finance charts? Sure, why not?

I have some new resources to share with you all, in the form of charts! I promise I’ll keep it light, but if you’re looking for a free website to track your investments and their performance, FinanceCharts.com is a helpful place for beginners to start. Here’s the Schwab U.S. REIT ETF’s price over the last year. I can see exactly when the beginning of April sent the holding downward, and I can see its steady climb back up to around where it was in March. I can also see that the ETF has some more recovery ahead if it wants to get up to its last high price from September 2024. The charts are interactive and you can select the time period you want to analyze. I don’t usually do much price analysis with my individual investments, but if I ever need more insight, FinanceCharts.com is waiting.

A line graph showing the price movement of the Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (SCHH) over one year, with data points indicating an upward trend and various fluctuations.

Source: FinanceCharts.com.

A few months ago, I read the book “Stikky Stock Charts” by Laurence Holt. For full disclosure, I was sent this book for free so I would review it. You can read my full review on Goodreads, but I found “Stikky Stock Charts” a helpful introduction to using charts. I was able to understand the purpose of them with very simple descriptions of different chart trends. The book itself is quite image-heavy, with a chart on almost every page. It covers significant historical events, like the meme-stock craze, and how certain stocks reacted at the time. This grounds investing in the real world, where it belongs. “Stikky Stock Charts” will be another resource to consult when I’m looking at a potential ETF for my portfolio.

Putting my investments on snooze

AAII taught me well, I can sleep at night. I don’t think about my money much anymore. Of course, I want to save more of it, but I also have to stay realistic. Everything keeps getting more expensive. My life is expanding, allowing more experiences in. This is the life I’ve been working toward, and I get to see the dividends—both literal and figurative—that are being paid out.

Here’s to your portfolio going up in the second half of 2025. I won’t wait this long to check in with you again, but I will wait for the temperature to fall a bit!

Learn more about my investing strategy:
New Year, New Investments, Same Strategy
PRISM Step 4: Selecting and Managing Your Investments
Midyear Portfolio Review and Finding an ESG Benchmark

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Adding a New Climate Leader and Evaluating My Net Worth

Happy new year, it’s time to check in on my portfolio! At the middle of 2023, my portfolio consisted of five index exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that fit my sustainable investing strategy. It has been pretty difficult to find investments for this approach, so I have had to learn as I go, stretching some of my rules to fit what is available to invest in. The financial industry is still catching up to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement, so some patience is required!

The two troublemakers I decided to keep in my portfolio last year have continued to be unimpressive: the Global X CleanTech ETF (CTEC) and the Global X Wind Energy ETF (WNDY). They have average As You Sow grades of B, but Global X CleanTech still has a gender equality grade of F and Global X Wind Energy’s fossil fuels grade remains at C—both grounds for deletion in my strategy. Though their expense ratios are favorable at 0.50%, they are the two worst performers in my portfolio, down 30.8% and 23.6% since addition.

When I searched for possible replacements for these two ETFs, I struggled to find even one that qualified. I began my quest on As You Sow, but the highest-graded ETFs on fossil fuels were severely lacking in all other areas: deforestation, gender equality, civilian firearms and military weapons, prison industrial complex and tobacco. So many had grades of D or F—a far cry from sustainable. I also used AAII’s ETF screener to see if I was missing anything, but the ETFs I found with low expense ratios had abysmal As You Sow grades.

Finally, I stumbled on the Etho Climate Leadership U.S. ETF (ETHO). It has an average As You Sow grade of B, with a gender equality grade of C. It has an expense ratio of 0.45%, which is below my 0.60% threshold. However, it has an expense ratio grade of C compared to its category. I’m trying to invest in ETFs with expense ratio grades of A or B, but I’m choosing to make an exception in this case. Ultimately, this expense ratio is lower than that of my two deletion candidates, meaning it will cost me less to hold it. Etho Climate Leadership also has decent five-year performance but significantly underperformed the market last year along with most stocks and ETFs.

Since I could only find one ETF to add to my portfolio, only one ETF will be deleted. The worst of the two, Global X CleanTech, has got to go! That gender equality grade of F has been dragging it down for too long, and it’s not even helping my portfolio’s performance—what’s the point?

Though I said in my blog post about reprioritizing my goals that I would invest another $2,000 in my Charles Schwab brokerage account if I made changes to my portfolio, I discovered that I should have enough between the proceeds from removing Global X CleanTech and the cash balance in my portfolio to invest an amount in Etho Climate Leadership that is equal to my other holdings. I’m choosing not to add more money this time because I’m also funding some other short-term goals. However, at my midyear portfolio review, I will invest more money into each position regardless of whether changes are made since I’ve been so consistent with my saving.

Speaking of saving, when I was evaluating my portfolio, I also calculated my net worth. I have been tracking my net worth on a quarterly basis consistently since October 2022. Since then, my net worth has increased by a cumulative 45.6%! I have added around $10,000 to my net worth, and I’m excited to see how the next year goes. Time to get even more competitive with myself!

Given all this traction I’ve made on my overall finances, I wanted to see how my net worth stacked up. According to The Hill, as of November 2023, the median net worth for those under age 35 is $39,000, while the average is $183,500. My net worth is below the median for my age range but not by so much that I couldn’t surpass it before turning 35. This gives me some idea of a goal to set for my rate of saving and increasing my net worth going forward.

Wishing you all a prosperous 2024!

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One-Year High-Yield Savings Accounts Update

Shortly after I last discussed my high-yield savings accounts, interest rates increased again and haven’t showed any signs of slowing! On October 6, 2022, LendingClub increased my annual percentage yield (APY) to 2.85%; later that month on October 26 it reached 3.12%; and by the new year, we broke 4%! As of mid-March 2023, the APY is 4.25%—12 times the national average, according to LendingClub. For perspective, LendingClub was offering a 0.65% interest rate back in March 2022 when I opened these accounts.

My SmartyPig high-yield savings account is not getting as much love, but the interest rate is holding steady at 3.50%. When I opened my SmartyPig account, the interest rate was only 0.70% on my savings. I started a new goal with SmartyPig to have $2,000 ready to invest in my Schwab brokerage account by June 30 to correspond with my next portfolio review. Unfortunately, my SmartyPig goal didn’t come with a higher yield as it did the first time I set this goal back in the fall.

In total, I’ve made over $175 across these two high-yield savings accounts in the last year. Meanwhile, my investments have lost money since March 2022. When going through my transaction history to see how much I made on my savings, I saw the huge differences in interest payments that were a result of not only the increasing yield but also the compounding interest I’m making on my savings. The interest I’m being paid increases because there’s more money in my account to make interest on (like magic!).

Back in October 2022, I calculated my net worth for the first time. Since then, I performed a net worth checkup on a quarterly basis. My net worth has gone up by roughly $2,000 each quarter, which is directly attributed to how much I’ve been putting away in savings. If I wasn’t saving on a regular basis, and specifically if I didn’t have these high-yield savings accounts to make the most of my money, I wouldn’t have made as much progress on increasing my net worth.

Before writing this, I moved the $580 I have allotted for monthly savings into my regular bank savings account. Now that I can actually see the difference my savings are making to my overall wealth, I’m feeling more motivated to save. My goal isn’t to make the most money I can, but to be disciplined with the money I already have. As the many financial voices I have in my head keep telling me: Pay yourself first! It pays off.

One Year Closer to Maturity: Happy Birthday, My Investing Discoveries!

As of October 7, My Investing Discoveries has been in existence for an entire year! To celebrate, I went through all my blog posts so far and updated them with links to posts and categories that didn’t exist when I wrote them. Now, all posts are self-referential to help you find the related information you need from the links within each post.

In addition, I created a Categories page so that you can more easily find exactly what you’re looking for when you come to My Investing Discoveries. The list includes links to my specific series on Hereditary Financial Habits, The Carrie Finances and book reviews, as well as personal finance and investing topics like budgeting, saving, retirement and sustainable investing. Some of these categories only have one post in them, while others are more fleshed out. Let me know the topics you want more posts about in the comments below!

There’s also a new section on the Resources page with financial resources specifically for women. When I started researching whether financial literacy should be gendered, I found through “Clever Girl Finance” by Bola Sokunbi that women are still paid less than men despite women living longer than men. For these compounding reasons, women—particularly marginalized women—are more in need of financial advice tailored to them. Since women were kept from even participating in the economy for centuries, there’s quite a bit of catching up to do. See the Women in Finance category for more!

Speaking of Sokunbi, I decided to go back through some of her helpful “Take Action” sections and try one out. The first one that caught my eye was on calculating net worth:

To perform this exercise, I opened every single one of my financial accounts: my Fifth Third bank account, which contains my checking account and regular savings account; my Discover credit card account; my Schwab brokerage account; my SmartyPig and LendingClub high-yield savings accounts; and my Vanguard retirement account.

I wrote down the value of each account and added them up to find my total assets. I included my latest credit card payment that had yet to go through, my current credit card balance with pending transactions and an approximation of my tab at the dentist under the “total liabilities” section. When I subtracted my liabilities from my assets to find my net worth, I was happy to see the number didn’t dwindle too much.

Sokunbi recommends calculating net worth every quarter, but I recalled that Erin Lowry in “Broke Millennial” mentioned doing so on a monthly basis. I think a quarterly review will work best for me, but even annually would be fine. Monthly net worth updates would be too often, and I would likely feel that I wasn’t making enough progress month to month. I’ll start with doing this quarterly and see how it goes!

For the next year of My Investing Discoveries, I have exciting things in store—including going through each step of the AAII PRISM Wealth-Building Process. Stay tuned for more!