Update #52: Growth, Savings, and Investments for 2025 – €410,390

Well, well, well, here comes another year, welcome 2026! This is the best time of the year to look at what has been happening over the last 12 months, collect some annual data, get some numbers and charts updated, think about our goals and new year’s resolutions and do a deep reflection about it all. Now, as usual, the best way for me to do that is by sitting down and starting to write and letting it flow. So it’s time for me to do so, get another update done to account for the second half of 2025, and pack it with my numbers for the year, including income, expenses, savings, returns, and some thoughts and conclusions.

2nd Half 2025 In A Nutshell

My previous update was to account for the first half of the year, which was 6 months ago; it feels like a long time ago to actually remember everything that has happened in the second half of the year. Our lives have pretty much been the same. The main event was my 40th birthday celebration with my wife and friends, and that was a nice weekend we spent in a Scandinavian-style lodge in a lake resort. We took plenty of pictures and built a great bunch of good memories. I feel grateful for having met nice, good friends. I received some gifts, one of which was a Meta Quest 3 VR headset. Been enjoying it lately, but it would be more enjoyable if I had more friends I could play/meet with online, so if you happen to read this, own one yourself and would like to connect, shoot me a message!

We’ve also been camping/hiking a lot, sometimes only with my wife, others with some other friends. We visited the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park in Scotland; despite midges being a pain, we enjoyed the views and tranquillity of the area. Scotland is great, but the midges ruin the camping experience a little bit. Lakeside camping near Castle Howard in York was another great getaway. We also camped and hiked a few times in the Lake District; we love it there.

Later in October, we stayed a week in Tenerife for so much-needed sunshine. Canary Island climate is good the whole year round, it is perfect to visit during the low season, if you can.

We spent Christmas Day at home, then travelled to Brighton/Eastbourne and spent three nights in our friend’s place. It was so good. Then we returned to the North-West to spend New Year’s Eve in Liverpool with some other friends of ours. Generally, we had a great Christmastime, ate some seriously good food, drank a lot, and most importantly put a few kilos on – YAY!

On my end, I’ve been busy with both employed and self-employed work, no changes on this, and on my wife’s side, she has started studying full-time to learn UX design. That means our household income is now lower, but we still have spare cash left every month to keep on investing.

That is mainly it. I am probably missing something, as it has been a long time, but I think that is a quick snapshot that covers the highlights of the second half of the year.

Now, let’s dip into the numbers.

Quick Recap of 2nd Half 2025 Numbers

• Net worth: €864,922 (+7% compared to previous update) – details HERE
• Portfolio value: €410,390 (+18.3% compared to previous update) – details HERE
• 2nd Half Year Total Growth: €35,546
• 2nd Half 2025 Savings Rate: 52.8%

Comments

The stock market has continued having rock-solid performance in the second half of the year, a lot derived mainly from the AI stock market boom, which has grown not only my global trackers but also some individual holdings I have in my dividend portfolio.

Is this growth in stocks sustainable? Some “experts” comments refer to financial markets entering into an AI bubble, largely financed by corporate debt, which adds to the potential risk of a big sell-off if returns on AI investments don’t turn out to be as profitable as anticipated.

I am not an advocate of timing the market. There always seems to be an argument to defend that the stock market is expensive, and we are heading towards a crash, yet just to have another year of even higher returns.

Part of me says to just keep doing what I’ve been doing and invest all new money into global trackers and dividend-paying stocks. The other side says stocks are now close to 50% of my total net worth, and perhaps looking at diversifying to other asset classes is not a bad idea.

That’s something I want to keep in mind and study a bit further in 2026.

Quick Recap of 2025 Numbers

Now, as I like to do every year, let’s compare this year’s numbers against the previous one.

My net worth at the end of 2024 was €782,903. It is now €864,922, which is an increase of €82,019. This is good growth, but it’s less than the previous year, which was €102,753, so we got around €20K less in 2025 compared to 2024.

In 2024, we spent money and time refurbishing our recently bought property. That increased the value and, therefore, also our net worth. In 2025, we didn’t upgrade any aspects of our property (except for installing a home EV charger), so we didn’t benefit from any uplift in value. This, together with the devaluation of the Pound Sterling against the Euro, explains why our network increased less this year despite gaining more from higher returns in the global market in 2025, as shown in the image below.

Below is a breakdown of my net worth value from 2019 to date. The trend is clear. Stocks have taken more protagonism, my stake in alternative investments has been reduced, my cash reserves ended the year lower, the mortgage is slowly being reduced, real estate stays relatively flat, and a car loan and a car on Total Others both decreased this year.

My investment portfolio was €328,455 a year ago. That compared to today is an increase of €81,935, which is a 25% annual increase. Last year’s was higher than €90K. Once again, the devaluation of the Pound has not helped here, and I also invested less money this year compared to 2025.

Still, I don’t think I can complain at all. My portfolio value was around the €100K mark in January 2020; six years later, I’ve doubled the value twice. It took 3.5 years to double to €200K, and 2.5 years to double again to €400K.

This really blows my mind!

Total gross passive income for 2025 was £15,445. This decreased this year by £-1,996. Rent and dividends both increased, but I received less in interest payments as I moved a considerable amount of cash to my S&S ISA to buy stocks.

My passive income will take a hit in 2026, as the current rental contract of the warehouse expires at the end of January. The business currently renting has notified me of their intention not to renew. That allows me to assess the situation and decide whether I should sell or keep it as a rental unit.

No major investments in passive income-producing assets means a relatively flatish passive income line.

Income and Expenses 2025

This year, I changed my accounting method to get a deeper picture of all ins and outs. Before, I only accounted for my NET salary; this year, I started taking the GROSS number instead and then adding taxes and NI contributions as an expense. That means that both my income and expenses will be slightly a bit inflated compared to previous years.

Expenses

In total for 2025, I spent £38,414 this year, which is much less than the whopping £54,533 I burned in 2024.

These are my monthly expenses divided by category:

And below a chart showing my expenses breakdown:

The biggest chunk of money goes to pay taxes, followed by transport (paying down the Tesla Model 3 car loan), supermarket, mortgage and housing costs. Our mortgage rate is a fixed 4.99%, but we are renewing this year, so we should see lower mortgage costs as rates are now lower. Housing costs include the repayment of a 0% loan we took to pay for our new kitchen in 2023, which comes to an end this year :).

Expenses Track Record:

Since I’ve been tracking my annual expenses for a few years now, I thought to gather data since year one and add it to these reports:

• 2025: £38,414
• 2024: £54,533
• 2023: £40,262
• 2022: £33,562
• 2021: £26,049
• 2020: £10,497

Even though it is nice to have the numbers for the years 2020 and 2021, I don’t take them much into account, as there was not much to spend money on during the COVID years, and we also lived in Spain for almost a year and paid no rent during that time. Currently, £40K feels like the number to target for the 4% rule, which translates into (any guesses?) £1,000,000 portfolio.

Income

My total income for 2025 was £73,893, and I managed to save £34,479, which is £31,234 more in savings than in 2025. This is the breakdown by categories:

My gross salary makes up 66% of my total income, then comes rental income at 17%, and third, my side hustle at 12%. Dividend income makes only 1%, I would like to see this going up to 5-10% in the future. I can do this in a relatively tax-efficient way in the long term, as I hold all my dividend-paying companies within tax-advantaged S&S ISA accounts.

This is the final outlook for my income and expenses in 2025:

My savings rate for this year is 48%. This is the best rate for the 4 years. I am glad to be back near the 50% line 🙂

Savings Rate Track Record:

These are my historical savings rates of the last few years:

• 2025: 48%
• 2024: 5.6%
• 2023: 28.6%
• 2022: 39.7%
• 2021: 55.3%
• 2020: 66.5%

Investment Portfolio Breakdown

This is how my investment portfolio breakdown looks for the end of this year:

** 20 % discounted to estimate future withdrawal tax payments

This looks a lot simpler than it used to. My S&S Isas contain global stock trackers and dividend stocks, my work pensions and SIPPs are also 100% invested in global stock trackers, then I hold a small global tracker in Spain in Euros and lastly some alternative investments in real estate and P2P/B lending that have been stuck there for years now, with hopes to partially recover this money at some point.

It is a boring and hands-off portfolio that keeps on delivering returns without requiring much of my time, so I can focus on other things such as working on my side hustle, doing overtime at work, spending time with my wife and friends or enjoying my hobbies.

Dividend Portfolio

Now, as usual, I get to look at my dividend portfolio, which generated £770 of passive income this year. That is a 5.33% increase compared to last year’s £731.

I was first disappointed by the lack of growth, especially since I’ve invested more heavily in dividend stocks this year and have a projected yearly dividend above £1,100. Then I noticed that many of my recent purchases haven’t delivered a dividend payment yet. Another factor that contributed to lower income was Trading 212 deducting 30% withholding tax on all my US shares. This has something to do with me becoming a British citizen and having to refill the W-8ben form. I’ve done so and reduced withholding tax from U.S. companies back to 15%.

In my 2024 year-end blog post, I mentioned that I wanted to pay some more attention to my dividend portfolio and add new contributions. And so I have:

Dividend Stocks added to the Dividend Roasting Machine

• Bought 20 shares of Viscofan (VIS). Almost every Spanish dividend investor will hold some shares of Viscofan. This is a Warren Buffett-type of stock. Boring (manufactures and distributes casings), easy to manage and trading at a discount. It has more than 10 years of stable growing dividends at a 9.5% average rate, with a dividend yield of around 6%.

• Bought 15 shares of Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) earlier this year. This is another Spanish dividend-paying company, but it is not as popular as Viscofan in the community. This company develops and sells rail and bus transportation solutions in Spain, the rest of Europe, the United States, the Asia-Pacific region, and internationally. I bought this one because of the growth story at a good valuation. The dividend yield is at the lower end (2.5%), and dividends have been unstable but grown at 8.5% over the last 10Y. Debt has been on a downward trajectory since 2021. The company is shifting from being a traditional train manufacturer to a global leader in digital and zero-emission mobility services, and this has plenty of potential in Europe, I believe. I understand why this company is not popular among dividend investors, though, as it looks more like a value-growth play rather than a dividend growth investment.

• Bought 15 shares of Novo Nordisk (NOV) later in 2025 after the price collapsed. Headquartered in Denmark, this pharmaceutical company became popular after developing Ozempic, a weight loss jab originally designed to combat Type 2 diabetes. Since then, other companies have developed their own, which has, as a consequence, collapsed the NOV share price. Originally, I thought, investors overreacted and saw the opportunity as a great value deal. Today, I am not so convinced about this turnaround, at least not in the short term. It is one of those to watch closely.

• Bought 3 shares of Allianz (ALV) with a yield on cost of 4.2%. It is a well-managed German insurance company with rock-solid balance sheet and dividend growth (7.9% last 10Y). It still offers good value despite the price surge since 2024. I don’t hold many insurance companies in my portfolio, so this adds diversification as well.

• Bought 15 shares of Admiral (ADM) with a whopping yield on cost of 7.1%. This is another insurance company, but based in the UK. This one is a higher risk bet that I am willing to take for this high yield. This one sits at the bottom of my portfolio.

• Bought 182 shares of Foresight Group (FSG) in early 2025 with a yield on cost of 6.26%. It is based in London and operates as an infrastructure and private equity manager in the United Kingdom, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, Spain, and Australia. Big on the energy transition and renewables. This one is a relatively new dividend payer (5Y), but it has grown at an average of 28% annually. A nice growth story that is expected to continue

• I added 11.55 shares of Realty Income (O), 41 shares of Legal and General (LGEN) and 4.6 Bristol Myers (BMY) to my current holdings.

In terms of performance, though, my holdings increased by 26.3% (25.2% last year) in value. That means I’ve beaten the US market for a second year in a row. I don’t invest in dividends to beat the US market, but for the income. But it is fun to check how your picks are doing compared to the market, and see to actually outperforming it. 😀

To conclude this section, here’s an overview of my monthly dividend income so far:

More info about my dividend portfolio can be found on the Dividend Portfolio Page.

Final words

2025 was another positive year where I continued making good progress towards reaching financial independence. Depending on what the markets do next, my net worth could hit a million euros in the next 2 to 3 years.

This year also accounts for having reached a new networth milestone (thanks to the devaluation of the $ against the €).

Thrilled to share that my net worth just crossed the $1M mark! Grateful for smart investing in dividend stocks and trackers.

Discipline pays off 🚀💰
#FinancialFreedom #NetWorthMilestone

— Tony | Onemillionjourney 💶🧠 (@JourneyMillion) January 2, 2026

It’s been a year of hard work and extra income. I enjoyed travelling, camping, and spending time with friends, while also investing more into dividends. However, it was also a year without systems or goals, and I felt that lack of structure deeply. I spent more time on YouTube than I should have and felt a bit lazy when I could have been more productive.

So, goal number one for this new year is to write a systems and goal blog post next, to start off 2026 on the right foot.

2026, here I come!