What You Own, What You Owe
This is the first sheet we fill in with anyone we work with. It takes about fifteen minutes with your statements, and it gives you a starting line to measure everything else against.
What you own
What you owe
Used only to work out how long your cash would last.
The number under the number
Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe, and on its own it is a poor guide to how your month is going to go. A household can be worth six figures on paper and still put a car repair on a credit card, because most of that six figures is a house they live in and a retirement account they cannot touch for thirty years.
So this tool shows you a second number: liquid net worth — cash and taxable investments, minus everything you owe that is not the mortgage. That is what you could actually settle up with. It is often negative in households whose headline figure looks healthy, and it is the number that decides whether a bad week becomes a bad year.
What to put in it
Balances, not estimates of what things ought to be worth. Look them up. The exercise loses most of its value if you round in your own favor, and everyone does that by a few thousand without noticing.
- Property and vehicles at what they would actually sell for today, not what you paid and not what you owe on them.
- Retirement accounts at their balance. Bear in mind that is a pre-tax number, and it is not what you would keep if you took it out early.
- Debts at the current payoff balance, including anything you are not being billed for yet — a deferred student loan is still owed.
- Tag your emergency fund separately from everyday cash. It counts toward your net worth either way, but the months-of-expenses reading uses only what is actually set aside — counting a checking balance that is already spoken for makes a thin cushion look like a real one.
What this doesn't do
It does not know your income, and net worth is not a measure of it. It does not model tax on anything you would sell, or the penalty on money pulled out of a retirement account early. It does not value a pension, a business you own, or anything with a value that depends on who is buying.
It is also a snapshot, not a trend. The useful version of this exercise is doing it again in six months and comparing, which is why the print button exists.
Print it
The print button produces a clean one-page statement — your lines, your totals, and the readings underneath — with the calculator's own controls stripped out. Choose "Save as PDF" as the destination and you have a copy to file, or to bring to a session.
If you would rather not do this alone, filling it in together is where we usually start.