Every month I take an honest snapshot of where I actually stand — the real numbers, what moved, and the one or two stories that shaped it. Here’s August 2026.
Last month I said that from this recap on I would show how much of the change came from my investments and how much came from the exchange rate, instead of reporting one blended figure. August was a good month to start, because the two answers point in opposite directions.
The numbers this month
- Current savings: $113,779 — up about $7,000 from last month’s $106,514.
- Average dividends (trailing 12 months): $174 / month — up from $157.
Both look good. Neither means quite what it appears to mean.
My Real Monthly Dividend Income
Actual dividends received, trailing 12 months (Sep 2025 – Aug 2026).
Total ≈ $2,086 · Average ≈ $174 / month · updated monthly
Each month is converted at that month’s average exchange rate.
Where My Money Is Invested
A snapshot of my retirement-account portfolio by asset type — the whole pie is my total. Updated monthly.
Cash here includes un-invested deposits and a short-term Treasury fund I use to hold dollars. Not financial advice.
Where the change came from
Roughly, in dollars:
| An account I started counting | +$3,600 |
| My investments, after currency | +$2,600 |
| New money I added | +$1,000 |
Only the middle line is about investing. The largest of the three is an account that has existed for years and simply was not in these numbers before.
One change in method is worth a sentence. Through July I converted everything at a flat 1,500 won per dollar, which was simple but hid the currency completely. From this month I use the real average rate for the period instead. July’s actual average happened to land near 1,510, so the switch costs almost nothing in the comparison.
The month my two rulers disagreed
In Korean won, my retirement accounts finished August about 2.5 percent lower than July. In dollars, the same accounts finished about 3 percent higher. Same accounts, same day, same screenshots, opposite conclusions.
The won gained around 6 percent against the dollar during August, breaking below 1,400 for the first time in ten and a half months. Weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales and inflation data cooled expectations of a September Fed hike, and Korean exporters — semiconductor firms especially, in the middle of a very strong export run — were selling dollars heavily.
That is enough to flip the sign on my own balance. My retirement money sits in Korean-listed ETFs holding U.S. assets, and most of them are unhedged. When the won strengthens, those funds print a smaller won number even if the American holdings inside them did nothing at all. The decline on my account screens was mostly the exchange rate arriving through the back door.
I report in dollars because the goal at the top of this site is in dollars. That is not a neutral choice. It means the number moves with a currency market I have no view on and no control over. This month it moved in my favour. It will not always.
An account I started counting
I have a taxable brokerage account that has been sitting quietly for years with the remains of some small-scale investing I did a long time ago. It has never appeared in these recaps. This month it does, because it is about to become the main destination for new money and keeping two separate sets of numbers would only make this harder to follow later.
So the total jumped and I earned none of that jump. It is the same money it was in July.
There is a larger version of this coming. Later this year the proceeds from selling my apartment land in that same account, and they will move this total substantially without a single dollar of it representing investing skill. Easier to get in the habit of pointing that out now, while the amount is small.
The account also made its first purchase this month: one share of VOO. That is Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund, bought directly in dollars, which makes it the only holding I own that needs no conversion on this page. One share is not a milestone by any measure. It is the start of a queue.
What the dividend number is doing
Trailing-twelve-month dividends went from $157 a month to $174, about 10 percent.
I said last month’s figure was $153, and it was — but that was converted at the old flat rate. Re-run on the method I use now, July was $157. The comparison above is $157 to $174, which is the honest version. Unlike the headline number, almost none of this improvement is the currency: in won it is up 10.4 percent, in dollars 10.5 percent. The exchange rate contributed about two-tenths of a point.
The increase has a specific cause. In late July I moved some idle cash into a short-term U.S. Treasury fund that pays monthly, which lifted the recurring floor. August also happened to be a quarterly distribution month, and the two together produced the biggest dividend month I have recorded — a little over $319.
That $319 is not a new baseline. Strip out the quarterly payers and the underlying monthly run rate is closer to $163. September will look like a collapse on the chart without anything having gone wrong.
A note on how the chart is built, since I changed the conversion this month and it would be reasonable to wonder what happened to the older bars. Nothing did. Each month is converted at the exchange rate that applied when the money actually arrived, and then it stays there permanently. The dollars I received in March are a fact about March. Re-pricing them every time the currency moves would make the chart a running commentary on the exchange rate rather than a record of what I was paid.
What I actually did in August
Not much, and the small things were plumbing rather than strategy.
I stopped an automatic transfer into my tax-advantaged ISA and sent that money to the taxable account instead. That sounds backwards — why move money out of a tax shelter on purpose? Korean tax-advantaged accounts have annual contribution ceilings, and I want this year’s remaining room available in one piece when the apartment money arrives. Filling it slowly between now and then would waste most of it.
Everything else ran on schedule. I did not sell anything, did not react to the currency move, and did not change the monthly amount.
What this month taught me
I spent a year assuming the hard part of tracking your own money is getting the numbers right. August suggests the harder part is deciding what to measure them against.
Neither figure was wrong. Down 2.5 percent in won and up 3 percent in dollars are both true statements about the same four accounts on the same day. What separates them is a choice about which currency to call home, and that choice moved the result more than the market did this month.
I have settled on dollars, and I wrote the method down: one rate per month, the average from the first of the month through the day I take the screenshots. Balances get re-measured every month because a balance is a snapshot. Dividends keep the rate they arrived at, because a payment that already happened does not need measuring twice. Having it written matters mostly for the months when the currency runs the other way and a friendlier method would be tempting.
That’s where I stand this month. Slow and steady, one step at a time — see you next month.
This is my personal story, not financial advice. Just one 40-something engineer keeping an honest monthly record of his own journey.
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