10 Reasons Why You Should Know Your Net Worth

How are you today? I mean, how are you financially?

Know Your Net Worth:

• It is a crucial benchmark at a particular time.
• Will allow you to set near-term and long-term goals.
• Track changes for better money management.
• Highlight your liquid asset balances.
• It helps you get a loan for a house, car, college tuition, or new business.
• Pay down high-cost debt.
• Refinance your mortgage loans.
• Encourage you to save and invest more.
• Buy your own home, rather than high rent.
• Provides the best road map to building your wealth.

 

You need to know the difference between net worth and net income.

What Is Your Net Income

Your net income is based on your gross or pre-tax income and reflects your annual salary or based on hourly wages times the number of hours you worked.

Gross income consists of commissions earned and interest income from investments.

Deductions for taxes and pension and retirement accounts will be your net income for the year.

Using A Budget May Help You To Control Spending

 Net income pays your monthly bills, your monthly loans, and other items in your budget.

For a better description of what goes into your budget plan, see our post, “How To Control Spending With A Simple Budget.”

Having a reasonable budget plan and spending less than you earn will add to your net worth.

That is your roadmap to building wealth and greater financial flexibility. Take that road!

How To Calculate Net Worth

Your net worth is your personal balance sheet that provides a snapshot of your financial position at that time.

Net worth is all that you own less than all that you owe.

It is total assets less total liabilities.

An excel spreadsheet of different assets and liabilities discussed below is an excellent tool for putting all of your categories in one place. Update this spreadsheet periodically. You should do it on at least a quarterly basis. However, if you are true to your monthly budgeting, reviewing your monthly net worth is better.

Try putting it on a spreadsheet first, but you can use Personal Capital’s net worth app for tracking your investments. Frankly, any way you can keep on top of your net worth to build the amount will work.

10 Key Reasons Why You Need To Know Your Net Worth:

1. Key Benchmark

Your net worth is an important benchmark that measures your household’s successes. 

2. Set Goals

Knowing your net worth is essential to set your immediate and long-term goals and planning your family. Your net income is likely at a lower level early in your career than in the later years when your net income should rise from the potential upside coming from promotions, training, and better jobs. With careful planning and a budget plan in place, your net worth should increase over time.

3. Track Progress

You should track changes in your net worth as early as possible to make sure you are making progress in managing your money correctly.

4. An Emergency Fund Is Essential

You must have liquid or cash-like assets for the potential problems that are likely to arise. An ample emergency fund should provide some needed padding for unexpected events like a lost job. Liquidity can vary among different assets we own. A money market account is typically far more liquid than your car or your home.

5. For Borrowing

When you go for a loan to buy a house, a car, for college tuition, or invest in a new business, you will want to review your net worth to make sure you can afford the incremental costs you will be taking on. Your bankers will want to review your financial statements, including an income statement with your earnings history and net worth.

6. Pay Off Debt

Pay down your high-yielding debt, typically your credit card debt, which uses the magic of compounding interest against us if we only make the minimum interest payments.  The average credit card interest rate for new offers is 20.97%. Get rid of credit balances in full every month.

7. Refinance Mortgage Debt

You could pay off all or some of your mortgage debt if your interest rate is over 7% when interest rates start to go down. If it is significantly above that, you should be seeking to refinance your mortgage.  On the other hand, if you pay a low-interest rate, don’t make any changes. 

8. Build Assets

Contribute to your retirement accounts to the max,  earn your employer’s match and increase investments in a low-cost index fund. While stocks can be volatile year-to-year, as in 2022, S&P 500 annual returns have averaged 9.9% since the 1920s. If you are not facing imminent retirement, stocks remain a great place to invest your money.

 If you don’t own your home and pay high rent in, say New York City or San Francisco (the most expensive cities to rent one-bedroom apartments in the US), you may consider buying a home. Keep in mind mortgage rates are at 7%, higher than in a while, as the Fed raises interest rates to slow our economy and bring down high inflation.

9. Financial Planning

Your road map to building wealth starts with knowing your net worth and making valuable changes like reduced spending, increased saving, and investing. Your net worth statement is the basis for having a financial plan to achieve short-term and long-term goals, and make adjustments to your budget. 

10. Financial Security

Financial security means not worrying about money and living comfortably with peace of mind. Knowing your net worth is a tool to measure your financial security at any time. Terrific apps like Personal Capital can help you build your net worth, track spending and all key variables to this statement, and make changes.

How do you calculate your net worth?

List all your assets that have current monetary values in the following categories:

Cash and cash equivalent assets are those financial assets that quickly convert into cash. These assets include cash on hand, prepaid cards, savings accounts, checking accounts, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, and emergency funds. You can also include short-term IOUs, and money expected from tax refunds. You can get these amounts off your latest monthly statements. List these individually based on their current balances.

Other monetary assets include your taxable investment accounts, retirement accounts, real estate investment funds, pensions, and cash value of life insurance policies. List these at their current market value.

Monetary assets are more liquid, meaning they can convert them into cash more quickly with little to no loss in value.

Tangible assets would include your most significant investments that are part of your lifestyle.

Real Estate

These assets are your primary home and other real estate you own, including vacation or second home, timeshares, land, and rental property. Separate your primary home from the other real estate.

Use current conservative market values for real estate. Appraised values may not reflect actual sales or liquidated values.  You should not be inflating your net worth unrealistically.

You would need to approximate the value of your home, cooperative, condominium, cars, boats, and other large items. To approximate real estate values, look at Zillow, Chase Home Estimator, or real estate websites for your zip code.

Your Business(es)

If you own your business or businesses, use conservative market values. It can be a complex matter. A simple rule of thumb is to look at sales at simple companies or multiple revenues, such as 0.6 times annual revenues.

Personal Property Is Tricky To Value

Unless you have a meaningful fleet of cars and boats, you should not add these to your assets even though they relate to those you include. These assets depreciate too fast and sell too slowly to add much to your net worth. You can look at Kelly Blue Book, Edmunds, or AutoTrader for cars if you have that fleet. Similarly, for boats, you can consult Boat Trader.

What Else Goes Into Total Assets

Art, rare books, rugs, and antiques may be a large part of many households’ net worth. Unless they are highly desirable or rare, these assets tend to have wildly low liquidated values to count on if you need money in a pinch. Musical instruments have value but are challenging to peg, and their sales are less predictable to raise capital.

This category has a lot of sentimentalities, but it is challenging for the owners to peg its value. In my opinion, these assets should not be counted on unless you work with an estate professional steeped in knowledge and has a terrific network to help you sell the items.

Let My Mistakes Provide A Valuable Lesson

When I worked on Wall Street, my company restricted analysts from investing in financial securities. If I could buy certain securities on that rare occasion, I was often not allowed to sell that security when I wanted to. So, on either side of the trade, I was burned and finally abandoned investing until I left my career as an equity analyst.

So, what investments did I make?

Our assets were in art, rugs, rare books, and antiques.

These assets are on our walls (art), in our bookcases (rare books such as the first edition of the Federalist Papers), on the floors (ancient rugs), and in antique furniture (signed in the mid-1760s by the cabinetmaker).

Ever tried to sell an 18th-century Tiger Maplewood card table? We have! And we are still waiting for that sale.

Beautiful stuff, but they can’t pay the bills! So I don’t include these personal assets. The few pieces we sold were at prices 70% below what we paid.

I digress, but a worthwhile lesson for those who are collectors.

List all your liabilities according to their current balances.

Mortgage

Your mortgage loan balance is probably your most significant liability.

The home equity loan balance

Separate mortgage loan balances for the other real estate property (listed above in assets)

Other Loans

Student loans at the current balance

Loans associated with the business(es)

Personal loans

credit card account balances (you should break these out individually)

Professional services unpaid

Taxes owed

Total Liabilities

Total Assets minus Total Liabilities= Your Net Worth

How can you build your net worth? Start with writing out the ways.

You should look at your net worth statement with your budget to see what areas of growth and reduction in spending could build your net worth.

Look at your potential trade-offs.

Increasing your assets by increasing your savings could increase your net worth.

Making more income at your job would boost net worth.

Cutting your spending in areas that you can allow you to put more money into interest-bearing bank accounts or stock investments.

Investing in financial securities can expand your wealth.

Choose to invest based on your risk appetite and where you are in your life cycle.

Where should I invest my money to maximize my net worth?

Stocks are riskier but generate higher returns than keeping your savings in bank accounts at low returns.

According to Bankrate, the best annual percentage yield (APY) for bank savings accounts in April 2021 ranges from  0.40%- 0.60% for the top banks. Check for minimum balances and monthly fees that can go up to $15. These low rates will not make your net worth grow but will provide liquidity.

Having cash on hand is critical for your emergency fund. In November 2018, 76% of families reported having at least $400 in liquid accounts, according to the Federal Reserve.

Your net worth will grow by investing in a diversified basket of stocks, providing more significant long-term upside potential.

The younger you are, the more able you are to ride out the more significant risk found in stock investing, with the benefits of compounding effects.

Homeownership remains a worthwhile investment despite the slide in property prices in 2008-2009 but is less liquid than financial securities.

After household net worth plummeted in the Great Recession in 2008 to $58.996 trillion, having been impacted by declining home and stock market values, household net worth has improved to $130.0 trillion at the end of 2020, though consumer debt growth continues to dampen net worth for many families

Savings and investments in financial securities will enhance your net worth and are more liquid. Liquid net worth is an excellent benchmark for understanding your financial flexibility when emergencies or opportunities arise. Understanding your liquidity position, particularly when you face emergencies or opportunities. 

Decreasing your loans or debt liabilities will increase your net worth.

Reducing your debt levels will also improve your net worth situation.

Your mortgage loan deserves your careful attention

When borrowing, research rates for different time frames. Look at taking a 15-year mortgage loan versus a 30-year mortgage loan. The shorter borrowing time results in paying less overall interest. While your monthly payments will be higher for the 15-year loan, total borrowing costs will be lower.

Taking on a mortgage loan is a high cost, but home prices had generally kept pace with inflation until 2008-2009, when subprime mortgages played a massive factor in declining home values.

The median household net worth for 2019 was $121,700, up 18% from 2016,  according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey.  

The Fed has kept the fed funds rate at zero to 0.25% in 2021. According to the latest Bankrate numbers, fixed mortgage loan rates remain low at 3.110% for the 30-year and 2.400% for the 15-year. 

Final Thoughts

What would you do with the proceeds if you received a sizable tax refund this year, earned a higher bonus, inherited money, or experienced a sudden windfall?

Lower your debt where possible, Then allocate to saving to invest more. Pay off your credit card debt. Card balances are likely your highest-cost debt, so use your tax refund or bonus to lower this amount. If there is some money, pay off more of your student debt. Building wealth is by growing your assets faster than your liabilities.

Thank you for reading! If you found this of value, consider reading other articles on our blog, and join us by subscribing to The Cents of Money and finding more articles of interest.

What are some things you are doing today to increase your assets, reduce your liabilities, and raise your net worth? Where can you reduce spending to save and invest more money? We would love to hear from you!