How often do you calculate your networth

[Rhinodad]

Net worth- Never

Stash-Every day, I check all of our accounts. 529, 2 retirement accounts, bank (savings/checking) and a vanguard account(which is actually 4 different accounts). It's only the stash I really care about. I want to know what I can cash out tomorrow...literally tomorrow if I need/want to.

[bmjohnson35]

At the end of the year, though I don't really factor in home and cars.  Assuming the market is relatively stable, I monitor our main brokerage account and 401k/IRA's Qtrly.  During more turbulent times, I monitor more closely to see if I need to rebalance. 

[YttriumNitrate]

About once a year when I do my annual forum post about how much my invest made per hour (or day) in the previous year. Hmm ... looks likes I'm past due on making the calculation.

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/net-worth-increases-for-the-year/msg2526028/#msg2526028

[rmorris50]

Um, NW, daily since that is all automatically set up in an app. I look at it way too much every day. And it’s true NW, not some redefined NW that excludes illiquid assets. But NW is nothing more than a fun benchmark to track progress.

My excel cash flow analysis that projects out the next 50 years I update weekly, to see if I can still walk out of my job I hate anytime I want. I haven’t been able to convince the spouse I can retire (he’s the what the hell ya gonna do if you don’t work type) so for now I continue to pad the stash.


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[NorCal]

Updated automatically daily for all liquid investment accounts.

I value my house at cost, as changes in home value don’t impact my financial plans.

I depreciate my car value annually.

I have a few illiquid investments that I either value at cost or book value, depending on my knowledge of current value.

[SwordGuy]

Net worth?   Once a year or when there is a major change in the value of an investment property (like it changes status from "needs lots of renovating" to "ready to rent").

I monitor our stash at a minimum of once a month and have a spreadsheet with monthly history back to March of 2017, with an annual record back to 2012.

If there's a big surge or drop in the market I might check the stash value.  I did that more often in order to desensitize me to $20k to $30k swings in value in a day.   Didn't bat an eye when we had the big crash last March so it must have worked.

[Dicey]

Pre-FIRE: Monthly
Post-FIRE: I look at our checking/savings account occasionally and our primary investment account whenever the mood strikes me. DH pays the bills, for which I am ever so grateful.

I always have a general idea where we stand. Because this shit works, I get a sense of delight when I do our NW calculation, so I try not to do it too often. Being obsessed with the numbers, especially when your income is average really pays off in the accumulation years. Afterwards, not so much.

Quoting myself to add that I don't count any depreciating assets in our NW.  No cars, no household contents, no jewelry, not even the RV we bought just before the pandemic hit. Pre-FIRE I included more stuff, but now that we're well past our number, meh.

[DadJokes]

Monthly, because I like to keep an eye on progress toward goals. It keeps me motivated.

As others have said, I'm generally mostly interested in invested money and cash reserves. However, I do keep a general idea of the value of my house by assuming a modest appreciation.

[Queen Frugal]

I track my expenses daily. Takes just a minute in YNAB and I do it with my morning coffee. This helps me stay on track and not overspend.

Net worth is calculated quarterly when statements are issued - mostly so I can check my investments against my IPS and adjust holdings accordingly.

[Metalcat]

Hey OP, are you going to share why you are curious or is this just a drive-by question thread?

[aceyou]

Monthly. 

Helps keep me focused and notice any quick areas for improvement. Butnim a numbers guy, every lift ive done for the past 15 months is recoded on a spreadsheet, for example.  Kees me focused and i enjoy it. 

[Scubanewbie]

Annually when I update investment gain/loss from prior year.  I feel like more than that would setup bad fixation for me.  House just set up to appreciate $5k per year and no other illiquid assets tracked.  But aside from that I see it monthly since I reconcile checking/savings/CC in YNAB and its a report there.  Its amazing to me how much it goes up...like, makes me smile even after years of it doing so. 

[Villanelle]

Never. 

My master spreadsheet automatically adds up all our investments, since that what I use for rebalancing.  But I've never once added the value of our properties or other things we own, because that's not actionable information. 

I don't actually even know what the equity is on our properties.  Again, not actionable so I don't see the point. 

[Faramir]

Quarterly, in Excel so I can track progress.

[ericrugiero]

I've never gotten real scientific about our NW because it doesn't really change anything.  I've just done ballpark back of the napkin estimates maybe once a year for the last few years using the big items like 401K, Roth IRA, and House.  At this point, it's investments and spending that matter and even there I'm not real close to FIRE so I'm just looking at rough numbers. 

I did run some net worth numbers last week in excel because my 401K crossed a nice milestone and it made me wonder what the NW was doing.  I'm starting to get somewhat close to a bigger milestone on that as well so I will probably pay closer attention until we reach that milestone.  Even when I'm able to say "I'm a millionaire", I can't really imagine saying it to anyone.  My dad is the only one I might consider telling. 

[DeniseNJ]

Official net worth? Never. I don't count the car, since we do need a car and it's not an expensive car, 2013 Hundai. I don't count furniture (we don't have nice stuff anyway), laptops which depreciate rapidly, jewelry (don't have any), furs (ditto), or any of our possessions.

Everything else is in Mint which I look at almost everyday. 403b, tsp, vanguard accounts, even the house is listed in mint. It subtracts debt (no debt but cc's we pay off monthly). At a glance I can see what the house is worth plus our investments. The only thing not in there is my little secret Robinhood account bc Robinhood won't play nice with mint.

[markbike528CBX]

Typically, weekly, after close of business on Fridays.  I have to wait for Saturday morning to pick up the 401K update.

When fun stuff happens (ie I note a big up/down) then I'll update the taxable only.  Taxable does not get archived on a regular basis.

[LoanShark]

Quarterly.

[FIRE Artist]

Several times a week I am checking my accounts, since I invest through my main bank, it is all there when I am checking and paying the credit card, bills etc.  Actually committing it to my tracking spreadsheet I will usually do it monthly, but will sometimes only bother if things are hitting a new high, because that is fun.

[Sid Hoffman]

Like many others who have said they use spreadsheets, I do the same but I also balance my checkbook and track budgeting and taxes in my spreadsheet too. Or rather, I have about 10 spreadsheets (the tabs at the lower left) in my personal finance workbook. As long as you're staying on top of your personal finances it's hardly even work. Maybe a few minutes here and there to update that I've made a payment on something, then every week or two taking a few minutes to verify the balances of my investment accounts and that's it.

So to directly answer the question, I guess you could argue I am probably calculating it 50+ times a year, but it's not me setting out to add everything up, it's just that one box is keyed to another in the spreadsheet and all the work is done for it. Balancing my checkbook alone and just verifying a couple investment balances provides the updates to the key boxes of the spreadsheet to do all the calculations for me.

As for the point about housing, I too do not include my house as part of my net worth, which I suppose is part of what makes it easy and automated in the spreadsheet. I've looked it up in Zillow here and there, but given that I live in a very cheap house anyway, it's not like those members here who have million dollar homes in HCOL areas. I have a very small home in a modest COL area and don't plan to even move at all for perhaps 10-20 years.

[Villanelle]

I'm curious if all you people who posted that you track (which is most), whether you are actually referring to net worth, to include cars, home equity, rental property equity, and other significant assets? (Even if it's not down to the penny; I doubt anyone is adding the $50 they'd get for a used sofa and $100 for a small gold ring.) Or are you just tracking your investments? 

[Zikoris]

I'm curious if all you people who posted that you track (which is most), whether you are actually referring to net worth, to include cars, home equity, rental property equity, and other significant assets? (Even if it's not down to the penny; I doubt anyone is adding the $50 they'd get for a used sofa and $100 for a small gold ring.) Or are you just tracking your investments?

I don't have any of those things, so in my case it's just investments.

[alcon835]

I'm curious if all you people who posted that you track (which is most), whether you are actually referring to net worth, to include cars, home equity, rental property equity, and other significant assets? (Even if it's not down to the penny; I doubt anyone is adding the $50 they'd get for a used sofa and $100 for a small gold ring.) Or are you just tracking your investments?

For net worth, I track my home value, my investments, and my cash. If I were to purchase rental properties in the future, I would count those as well.

Cars? No. I don’t count them as a store of value. I also probably wouldn’t sell my car in order to increase my cash position. But I would be willing to sell my house if the need arose.

[iluvzbeach]

We do not count cars, motorcycles, furniture, jewelry or any household items at all. We don’t even count our checking account balance. We do count all savings, taxable investments, retirement accounts & HSA in our LNW. Then, add the house value itself (no mortgage or debt of any kind) to arrive at TNW.

[charis]

I only calculate my NW as far is it is already calculated on Mint.com, which includes cars and home equity, so I see it there daily.  I see it as a nice marker of our progress and it will be fun to be a millionaire on paper, but it is a fairly meaningless number.  My total investments is what I actually look at for FIRE purposes.

[daschtick]

I have been calculating networth monthly for nearly 10 years now.  This data and trendline has proven extremely helpful in determining progress towards our goals.  As importantly, if not more, I also track our monthly spending on the same sheet.  My default chart shows the last 10 years of 4% of monthly networth versus my monthly spend, including 12 month moving average.  It has been exciting watching the 4% line cross, then double my monthly spend line.  This data gives me with the absolute confidence in determining my ability to retire early.

Without data, how do you determine your progress towards your goals? 

[norajean]

Im not sure how you are defining net worth but I find it too complicated to calculate and of no value. When we die someone can liquidate everything and see what is leftover after costs and taxes.

[Villanelle]

I have been calculating networth monthly for nearly 10 years now.  This data and trendline has proven extremely helpful in determining progress towards our goals.  As importantly, if not more, I also track our monthly spending on the same sheet.  My default chart shows the last 10 years of 4% of monthly networth versus my monthly spend, including 12 month moving average.  It has been exciting watching the 4% line cross, then double my monthly spend line.  This data gives me with the absolute confidence in determining my ability to retire early.

Without data, how do you determine your progress towards your goals?

I don't really need to determine my progress toward my goals.  And I have no net worth goals anyway.  The latter point is easier to address.  We own two properties, both of which are rentals (we move a lot and are renters of the current place we live).  It is in no way actionable for me to know if we have $400,000 in equity, or $600,000 in equity because we aren't selling regardless.  And beyond that, what good would a net worth goal do for me?  Knowing that if I sold everything I owned, I'd have about $1.2345 million does nothing for me because I will never sell everything I own.  Therefore, that number has nothing at all to do with when I could retire. 

Back to the first point, we save as much as we feel we can while still enjoying our present day.  Knowing we will reach $1m invested (NOT net worth) in about 2 years if the market increases at x%, versus knowing it ill take 4 years to get to $1m if the market increases at x%--that doesn't matter.  Because I won't know if the market actually increased at x% until those 2/4 years are up.  Nor will I know if the roof goes at our rental earlier than expected and the car dies, and we spend $10,000 more than imagined, and that changes those numbers.  Knowing the exact amount today doesn't actually tell me when I will reach my goal, nor does it cause me to panic and save more because I feel we have reached a pretty optimized, balanced point of saving. 

If someone would be saving more if their back-of-napkin math, with many assumptions that could end up changing, tells them it's ~~~10 years to fire and they don't want to work 10 years, then maybe they should be giving strong consideration to saving more regardless, no? 

So again, knowing net worth is meaningless because I will never liquidate everything.  And for me, I don't need to know that $X is Y years away at A% interest to get me to be thoughtful with my spending. 

[Zikoris]

I check my numbers once every two or three weeks.  Unless I get pissed off at work.  Then it's once every two or three hours.

I, too, have been known to log into my Mad Fientist graph at work when someone does something stupid. Not so much now because I'm at a good company, but the last few places, oh yes.

[habanero]

Not as often as these guys:

https://www.nbim.no/

(divide by ~8.5 for USD btw)

[Phenix]

On the first of every month I document account balances in a google sheet I created.  Anytime there's a new top on the market, I'll update the Pretirement app and watch my FI age shed a few weeks.  I use YNAB to track spending so it keeps track of my day to day spending.  When I update my investment account balances at the beginning of the month, I update YNAB and take a peak at my net worth trend.

[Much Fishing to Do]

Im not sure how you are defining net worth but I find it too complicated to calculate and of no value. When we die someone can liquidate everything and see what is leftover after costs and taxes.

I only keep the things that are of significant value (which admittedly changes over time as net worth increases) in it to keep it easy and simple.  At this point it is made up of my 1) LNW I use to determine my FI'ness using that balance and SWR (this is admittedly the balance I look at often.)  + My home equity (my house is paid off) + my 3 kids 529s (fully funded for 12 years of college tuition room & board) + my DAF (from which most of my charitable donations will come from throughout RE).  Quicken updates these so its I guess its always calculated, but I only really look at it each year end.  It does have value re: looking at my overall financial progress over time (e.g. having a paid off house is better than having a fully mortgaged house with the same LNW, or growing my retirement accounts by $50k and increasing my 529s by 50k is better than a year in which I only grow my retirement accts by $50k....or on the flip side if I mortgage my house tomorrow and invest the proceeds it doesn't show that I "made" $300k progress, as all I really did is move money around)

I do find value in it looking at longer stretches of time

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Never because the only important thing to me is the passive income I get each year. I have no inclination to dip into principal.

[exit2019]

How often do you calculate your networth ?

Every weekday, at 5:15, I have a short sync meeting with my management and peers.  I update my networth spreadsheet as we're talking.

[bownyboy]

Like others on here I have a google spreadsheet that simply lists our cash, investments and pensions accounts which I then update the balances on 1st of every month.

I also forecast to the end of the year for each month based on some assumptions of growth and contributions so we always have a target we're aiming for. Estimates are then overwritten with actuals each month.

Also produce a couple of pretty graphs showing growth over last 7 years with a trend line.

[fat-johnny]

Networth doesn't really appeal to me but it does get tracked in Mint.  I don't really know the value of our two homes (I don't include any other physical assets in our networth calculation) outside of some unrealistic redfin or zillow speculation.

I think you might be shortchanging Zillow.  While it may not be spot-on down to the penny, I'll betcha it's accurate to within 10%.  Data point:  I recently did a refi of my mortgage, and they sent an appraiser to walk through my house.  His appraisal came back EXACTLY what Zillow said.  If you think about it, appraisers used to look at your house, and then go do a bunch of research to comparable homes in your area.  You know how the appraiser does that now??   Zillow.

[The 585]

Too often. I need to stop because it makes me want to tinker!

[lifeanon269]

I officially track mine once a month, but I'll do rough calculations probably more frequently. I track my networth in a simple text document. Once in a while I'll take that data and put it into a spreadsheet and turn it into a visual chart and also extrapolate it to get a better idea at where my growth is headed and if it aligns with my goals. Once in a while I'll also input my networth and age into a website online to see what my networth percentile is for my age. It is nice to see that being mustachian and frugal really works and makes you stand out among your peers.

Another benefit I've found with calculating my networth is that I'm able to show my wife our progress that we're making toward our goals. She was at first skeptical about the plan to retire early when we first started 5 years ago. Now that she sees how much our networth has grown in just 5 years, she's totally onboard and has really helped her see the tangible benefits and that we're creating real generational wealth for us and our family. So if you have a significant other who is on the fence about this lifestyle, tracking your networth during the process I find can really help.

I calculate my networth as being my 401k, my Roth IRA, and my after tax investments. I don't count the equity in my house since I don't plan on selling or downsizing. Only the investments that I would consider as part of my income/cash flow once FIRE'd.

I guess I wonder why some people don't calculate their networth. Isn't that a good indicator as to where you stand for your FIRE goals?

[Fishindude]

In my former business, myself and partners were required to submit personal financial statements to our bank and bonding company 1-2 times annually so we got pretty used to it.   We own a chunk of another business and I sit on the board, so they require a statement annually.

I think it's good practice to keep a current statement and update it periodically.  Good way to keep score on your financial life.

[charis]

I guess I wonder why some people don't calculate their networth. Isn't that a good indicator as to where you stand for your FIRE goals?

I think most people track their 'stache for FI purposes, which is what you described doing.  Net worth is an accounting of all assets (including equity) and liabilities. I'm not planning to sell my house either but it's part of my net worth as the term is defined. That's why many people don't bother calculating it.

[jlcnuke]

Never*, as I have no use for that particular number.

* Personal Capital calculates a number but I don't pay attention to it.