Great question brotha.

Yeah, I’ve thought about it but then I’d have to include fees to sell any stocks or when selling my car/etc/etc. I consider all that expenses at the time of doing the deed (no pun intended), which would then get accounted for on the next update.

The point of net worth to me is to get a good snapshot of how everything is *today*. It’ll fluctuate as the weeks/months/years go on, and never be “accurate” until the day stuff happens (for ex the value of my house will be exactly what it sells for on that day, and also I’m mixing taxable vs non-taxable accounts up there in the worth), but I concentrate on the bigger picture than the details. I’d shoot myself if I had to do that ;)

But to your point, yes, it’s stuff that will definitely come into play one day for sure.

If you were to hire a Realtor to sell your house, then once you got an offer you liked you’d have to pay your Realtor 3% and the buyer’s Realtor another 3%. That means if you get $300k for that house, you’re only going to pocket $282k.

Have you ever considered taking that 6% out of the value of your house, since you are gonna have to pay it? (unless of course you don’t use a Realtor and neither does your buyer)

I use a simple spreadsheet I made:

https://eliteedgemoney.com/budgets/j_budget_template.xls

It has a budget attached to it too, but you can ignore that if you wish. It’s basically just an area that deducts all my liabilities from my assets all in one nice spot.

I like to manually track my net worth every month so it holds me more accountable and I’m forced to do it – unlike with automated services.

Awesome! Welcome aboard :)

Sure, your net worth is pretty much just adding up your assets on one side of the equation (savings, investments, property, etc), and then your liabilities on the other side (debts, loans, credit cards, etc). Then all you do is deduct your liabilities from your assets and voila! Your net worth pops out :)

I’d say spend 30 mins or so tonight just logging into your accounts and writing them all down, and you’ll be off to a great start :) Then do it again each month so you can see how it’s moving!

There are lots of programs and spreadsheets you can use too to help you maintain it all and track, but I advise starting just w/ pen and paper first so you can get a good sense of how it all works together. Here’s the net worth/budget spreadsheet I still use to track it each month if you want to try that out later as well:

https://eliteedgemoney.com/budgets/j_budget_template.xls

Good luck!

I am newly 22 and I am trying to take control of my finances and plan for a beautiful retirement. Can you help me find out what my networth is? I think that’ll motivate me even more in 2014 and going into my 22nd year of life!

Thanks so much and just fell in LOVE with your blog.

I value my time and also know when I’m smart enough to do something myself and/or if I care about researching or not. And taxes is DEF not anything I want to get near anytime soon, haha… but I bet people would say the same about web coding or blogging too that we love :)

Check out these two posts:

http://www.madfientist.com/retire-even-earlier/
http://www.madfientist.com/ultimate-retirement-account/

He’s all about figuring out how to use retirement accounts to still retire early :) Lots of tax hacking stuff really – similar to this one which is also a pretty interesting reads:

http://www.gocurrycracker.com/never-pay-taxes-again/

I’d love to get into the “early retirement” mindset more – even if I don’t technically retire yet… just knowing I *could* would be amazing! So you’re right – I need to pay attention to that first bucket :) Only I hope it’s the 35-40 one instead! Hehe…

I totally understand how it can be mind boggling to think about the future! I’ve come up with a sort of framework for helping me think about retirement. One is money needed from beginning of retirement to age 65, so let’s say 40-65, and then the next is the amount from 65 to rest of your life. Now of course the money you have from 40-65 will probably (and ideally) not be spent so I see the money I am getting at 65 as a sort of bonus. And and I can contribute to this bonus tax-free which makes it very appealing. However, where the money is really needed in the 40-65 bucket, since this is the first nest egg. But there are no special accounts or tax incentives for this bucket, so I think it is less appealing to invest in. I would say you have the 65+ bucket covered and since you do mention wanting to retire early, I guess you have some thinking to do about your 40-65 bucket! Maybe we should pose this question to some other bloggers who retired early and see what they about investing in retirement accounts vs investing in general account?