The chart I started on December 31, 2025 just hit its best reading so far.

All holdings combined sit +21.83% versus that starting point.

Left: 31 Dec 2025
Right: 31 Aug 2026

+21.83% YTD

I am not calling that “performance” with a straight face. We reinvest every dividend, often several times a month, and money has moved in and out of the accounts. So this is portfolio value, not a clean time-weighted return. Anyone who pretends those two are the same is either lying or has a simpler life than I do.

Still. The line is up, and the hyper-competitive idiot in me will take it. The S&P 500 is roughly +12% year-to-date. Our mix of leftover dividend stocks and the growth names we added in January is doing the job I actually care about: the pile is bigger than it was on New Year’s Eve. That was the whole point of the shift, even after the dividend forecast took a hit.

Next chore, the one I have been ducking: pull the year-end value of the portfolios for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020 as well. I want a rough split between price appreciation and dividends per year. An exact split is close to impossible when cash hits the account and gets bought again before the month is over. I know that. I am doing it anyway, because I am tired of staring at one pretty 2026 line and calling it history.

I sincerely hope this is the last retroactive excavation I inflict on that Google Sheet.

If you track a portfolio the messy way — dripped dividends, more than one broker, no neat annual reset — how do you separate the raise from the paycheck? I would rather hear an honest workaround than another lecture about XIRR.