Every month, same drill: total assets, dividends received, what changed, no dressing up. The starting line was $96,000 and it never moves.
This month’s total: about $119,862. Last month it was $113,659. That’s up $6,203 — the biggest monthly jump since I started tracking, and before anyone gets excited, I should tell you immediately that I didn’t earn most of it.
The won did most of the work
Here’s the honest decomposition. Of that $6,203 gain, roughly $3,900 came from the exchange rate. The dollar averaged ₩1,404.97 in August; through September 18 it has averaged ₩1,357.35 (Fed H.10 daily data). My accounts are Korean-listed funds holding U.S. assets, tallied in won and reported here in dollars — so when the won strengthens, my dollar total inflates even if nothing else happens.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll notice the symmetry. Two months ago the sliding won made my accounts look worse than my investments were doing, and I wrote a whole post talking myself out of selling everything. This month the same coin landed the other way up. Same holdings, same plan, same guy — and currency noise that made me feel like a fool in July makes me look like a genius in September. I am neither. The remaining ~$2,300 is what markets and my payday contributions actually added.
The accounts, all of them
Same format as always — every fund, every position, fund names exactly as they appear in my Korean app — with one improvement a reader shouldn’t have needed to wait for: everything is now in dollars. These are Korean-listed funds priced in won, so I’ve converted every value at September’s average rate of ₩1,357.35 per dollar. Rows are rounded to the nearest dollar, which is why a table can look a dollar off from its account total.
Pension Savings Account 1 (연금저축, tax-deductible) — $52,494
| Holding | Shares | Value | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| KODEX 미국S&P500 | 1,124 | $19,717 | +2.6% |
| TIGER 미국초단기(3개월이하)국채 | 1,200 | $8,319 | −5.2% |
| ACE 미국30년국채액티브(H) | 1,000 | $5,275 | −13.5% |
| KODEX 미국AI전력핵심인프라 | 350 | $5,094 | −21.9% |
| Cash | — | $14,090 | — |
Pension Savings Account 2 (연금저축, non-deductible) — $36,253
| Holding | Shares | Value | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| TIGER 미국S&P500 | 965 | $18,627 | +3.7% |
| TIGER 미국배당다우존스 | 1,276 | $13,636 | +5.6% |
| SOL 미국양자컴퓨팅TOP10 | 200 | $3,715 | −20.2% |
| Cash | — | $276 | — |
IRP (Individual Retirement Pension) — $8,185
| Holding | Shares | Value | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| KODEX 미국나스닥100 | 207 | $4,219 | +16.6% |
| SOL 미국배당미국채혼합50 | 501 | $3,959 | +3.8% |
| Cash | — | $6 | — |
ISA (Individual Savings Account) — $18,588
| Holding | Shares | Value | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| TIGER 미국초단기(3개월이하)국채 | 1,000 | $6,933 | −7.0% |
| TIGER 미국배당다우존스 | 536 | $5,728 | −5.7% |
| KODEX 미국나스닥100 | 265 | $5,401 | −0.1% |
| Cash | — | $527 | — |
Regular brokerage account — $4,342
| Holding | Shares | Value | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) | 2 | $1,420 | +0.2% |
| Cash | — | $2,922 | — |
The two thematic funds I keep on this list as a public reminder of my past self are still here: AI infrastructure at −21.9% and quantum computing at −20.2%. Both clawed back a few points this month. They remain mistakes; mistakes are allowed to have good months.
The Treasury money: I promised the full picture, so here it is
Last month I sold 3,120 shares of my 30-year Treasury fund and booked a realized loss of about −$2,500 (−13.21%). The proceeds — roughly $14,000 — are still sitting in cash in Account 1, almost untouched.
The small share-count increases you can spot in the tables (24 more KODEX S&P 500, a few TIGER shares, one more VOO) aren’t redeployment. They’re just my automatic payday buys doing what they do every month. And I’m going to be honest about the rest: I don’t have a redeployment plan yet, and I’m not going to pretend I do. I spent two years feeding a position because a confident feeling told me to. I’m not in a hurry to find out what my next confident feeling costs.
There’s also a reason this particular month feels like a bad time to improvise. On September 24 the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.47% — by the Fed’s own daily series, the first close that high in at least two decades. Two days earlier, the Nasdaq Composite closed at an all-time high of 27,244. Bonds pricing in trouble and stocks pricing in euphoria, in the same week. I don’t know which one is wrong, and my entire system is built on not needing to know. When the machine sends two opposite signals at once, the least dangerous thing an engineer can do is stop touching the controls.
So the cash slice of my allocation looks embarrassingly large this month (about 28%). It’s not a market call. It’s a man declining to guess.
(Yes, rising yields mean the fund I sold has kept falling. That doesn’t make the sale smart — I judged it by my reasons, not the outcome, and that standard has to hold on the weeks it flatters me too.)
Dividends: $165 this month
September’s deposits came to about $165, all of it from the monthly payers: $79 from the 30-year Treasury fund’s final full distribution on my remaining shares, $40 from the dividend-growth fund, $38 from the ultra-short Treasury fund, and $8 from IBM — a trailing payout from my stock-picking days; the shares are long gone, and this was the last check those fifteen years will ever send me. One VOO dividend (about $3.64) was declared but hadn’t hit my account by the time I closed the books, so by my usual rule it counts next month, when it actually arrives.
After August’s $319 high, $165 might look like a step back — it isn’t. My quarterly funds deposit in February, May, August, and November; September was never going to be a big month. The calendar, not the portfolio, sets that rhythm.
Where that leaves the journey
$119,862 against a $96,000 starting line: +24.9% since day one, and about 2% of the way to the goal in the blog’s name. The month flattered me and I’ve told you exactly how. The plan for October is identical to the plan for September: payday buys on schedule, the Treasury cash waiting until I have a reason that’s a fact rather than a feeling, and the two mistake funds staying right there on the list where I can see them.
Nothing on this site is investment advice.
