I finally built the tool I kept writing about

The app that shows what your portfolio paid you and what you kept. Open to everyone today, free to start.

Six years ago I wrote about a $1,200 repair bill.

It came from a BMW I could not justify and bought anyway. That bill was the first honest number I had looked at in years, and it changed how I handle money. I sold the car, cut the restaurant nights, and saved $19,500 in a year without a raise. I have told that story more than any other.

Since then, readers have sent me the same question in a hundred forms.
Am I doing this right?

I never had a clean answer, because I had the same problem.

A couple of years ago I started selling options against the portfolio I already held. Covered calls, cash-secured puts, the wheel. My income now came from two places, dividends on the shares and premium on the options, and no screen anywhere would put them side by side. Dividends sat in one report. Premium hid in my trade history. And the big number at the top of my brokerage app kept telling me what the account was worth today, which is a different question from what it earned me.

I knew that kind of number. The BMW was that kind of number. It looked like success and said nothing about what was underneath.

So I did what you would probably do. One spreadsheet, then a second. Then every tracker people recommend. The dividend apps could not see my options. The options tools could not see the rest of my book. A few told me I was doing better than I was, which is worse than telling me nothing. Every Sunday night I reconciled three screens to answer one question. What did my portfolio pay me, and what did I keep?

That question became a product. It is called OneMoreMillion, and as of today it is open to everyone.

Here is what it shows you that your broker will not.

Your combined income. My book pays me about $3,900 a month, roughly $18,000 a year in dividends plus $28,800 in option premium. My broker has never once put that number in front of me. OMM puts it on the first screen.

Your honest total return. Time-weighted, the way funds report, with dividends included and deposits handled correctly, charted against the S&P 500. Last I looked, mine was +12.4% against the S&P’s +7.8%.

And it never blends the two. Premium is income. Total return is total return. Mixing them is how investors flatter themselves, and I built this app so it could not flatter me.

One more thing it will not do. It will never touch your money. OMM places no trades and never asks for your brokerage login. You enter your positions, it does the accounting, and your broker keeps doing the executing.

The free plan covers one account with ten holdings and five options positions, and it takes no card. That is enough to run it next to your spreadsheet and see which one you trust by the end of the month. When you outgrow it, there is a paid plan, and founding members get 90 days to prove it on their own numbers before paying anything.

My parents raised three of us on one civil engineer’s salary in India, and they were never in the dark about their own money. It took a $1,200 repair bill to bring me back to what they knew. This app is how I stay there.

Go see what you kept.

Jay

P.S. If you sign up and a number reads wrong, reply to this email. I want to know.