CNW less the tax/insurance ect accrual (took the place of escrow) and vacation accounts is what I put on NWIQ. I’m going to be spending those accrual type accounts this year, so they need to drop out of the picture.

CNW less house value and accruals (which is close to your Investable NW above). This is the one that I really watch, track, analyize. Like many of you, it’s the one where the decisions need to be made. I’m not planning on selling my house any time soon.

Investable NW less the retirement accounts is my ‘go to hell’ fund. This is all the taxable investment accounts, the efund, some misc stuff like EEbonds and so forth. Cash and quick to liquidate things that let me play the ‘I could tell you to GTH’ mental game when the boss finds my last nerve and camps on it. This one is about 2.5 years gross pay right now – it’s a nice feeling.

Thank you.

I use Quicken too and it automatically tracks our net worth. My wife and I don’t own a home but our cars are paid for so they enter into the calculations as assets. It’s definitely worth looking at the numbers without the house/car to see how you’re really doing in terms of wealth to support your currnet lifestyle.

I DO include my car, because it’s a significant asset that will be sold at some point. I mean, it’s almost guaranteed — you will sell your car (trade it in) and get something for it, or it will get wrecked and insurance will pay for it, or if you don’t have insurance, you’ll have to buy a new car anyway. It’s an asset whose value actually matters to your financial picture. It also offsets the loan, and it’s good to know how much car equity you have if you want to trade it in. I deduct depreciation from my car value every month based roughly on the current trade-in value, taking mileage into account. It takes about one minute to look up the value, so this is not a big deal at all.

I don’t include other items of “personal property” because they don’t matter to the financial picture — I’m highly unlikely to sell them, and tracking their depreciation is not useful. Those get booked as expenses when I buy them, no matter how long they’re intended to last.

If I counted my non-liquid assets for example I would have about $1000-1400 in guns and about 2000-4000 in my two old cars (96 grand marquis and a temporarily disabled 85 Camaro Iroc/Z28 which is worth more in parts). In a quick sale I would get the bottom part of those numbers while in a non-desperate sale would get me towards the higher amount with some work and time. Those are my own assets plus a bunch of computers of negligible value and a ton of books. My retirement accounts while really not liquid could still be liquidated but would have huge penalties since there is nothing saying everything has to stay there they just penalize you so you get very little.

I do use an even narrower measure, though- my Net Realisable Asset Value(NRAV) which, while excluding the value of my home, car, and other personal property, includes the associated loans (including mortgage) as liabilities. I also give an extremely conservative estimate of the value of my real assets, and then adjust them for transaction fees and taxes that would be incurred in the event of a sale of those assets.

In the end, one’s measure of wealth necessarily includes some element of subjectivity in order to properly reflect the use which an individual intends to make of his “assets” as well as his overall perspective on the purpose of asset-building.

My measure is reflective of a projected near worst-case scenario and seeks to answer the question: What is the minimum amount of cash I would end up with If I were forced to sell all my assets,repay all my debts and retain what I adjudge to be my basic comforts(ie car and house)? This then provides me with a basis for projecting how long I could survive at a basic standard of decency – as adjudged by me- If all sources of income were to suddenly dry up.

The real estate estimate is a very conservative value from a five year old appraisal minus the balance due on the mortgage. I don’t change the RE value since I’m more interested in the mortgage paydown than the changes in the market.

We update this every month for the first four items, and keep track of the changes from month to month. The personal items are not included in the “net worth” total – they are there for insurance purposes.

If I had a particular goal and was making the net worth balance sheet to reflect that goal, I might choose to leave off various things.

I pretty much look at what you’ve just described: net investible assets. I like to look at our liquid funds, investment funds, retirement funds, and consumer debt. I don’t include our residence, vehicle values, or personal belongings when I see how things have changed (except for my 2 crates of pet rocks which I fully expect to liquidate for thousands of dollars when they have a revival in a few years!).

OK. I’m kidding about the pet rocks. But the investible assets you mentioned are good indicators of how well our net worth is currently balanced, our current financial situation, and a possible indicator of how prepared we might be for retirement (though that is many years away).

Very nice article.

You’ve given me something to think about here.

I think there is value in all 3 metrics. You have to be careful that your net worth is not too heavily inflated by home value, since you don’t especially want to tap that to achieve “independence” . . . and also not too heavily inflated by retirement accounts if you plan on retiring early. But it’s still nice to view net worth as an overall picture of where you are financially.

Thanks nickel and FMF. Excellent points.

As much as I might like to (for financial accountability), I don’t publish these numbers on my blog, because when I did the 1st time it just felt wrong. Like I’d be embarassed if someone from my church read my blog, as if I was parading around my net worth (or lack thereof). I think being a good steward is keeping some matters within the family–exact financial figures being one of them.

We also try to keep track of how well we succeed (or badly we fail) at following our budget. This helps us stay accountable to the goals we set at the beginning of the year.

My home and auto estimates are pretty rough because but, like you, I’m really most interested in tracking my financial assets which will be my retirement resources.

In fact, net investible assets is a component of your total net worth, so if you are tracking your net worth, you are already tracking both.