Net Worth Calculator

How this is calculated

net worth = total assets − total liabilities

Worked example: $250,000 in assets, $120,000 in debts → a net worth of $130,000. Update it every few months; the trend matters far more than any single reading.

What counts as an asset, and what quietly does not

Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe. The discipline is in valuing the first half honestly. Property should be entered at what it would realistically sell for after costs, not at what you paid or what a neighbour asked. Vehicles depreciate faster than owners expect — a new car typically loses a fifth of its value in the first year — and entering a car at its purchase price is the most common way a net-worth figure flatters.

Household contents, unless genuinely valuable and insured as such, are worth little on resale and are usually best left out entirely. Retirement funds count, at their current value, with the note that some are inaccessible for decades and taxable on withdrawal, so a rand inside a pension is not the same as a rand in a savings account.

Liabilities people forget

Bonds and vehicle finance are obvious. Less obvious: store accounts and buy-now-pay-later balances, outstanding tax, personal loans from family, guarantees you have signed for someone else, and the settlement figure on a lease as distinct from the remaining instalments. Use settlement figures rather than balances where they differ, since that is what it would cost to be free of the debt today.

The number that matters is the trend

A single net-worth figure means little without context — it depends on age, career stage, country and whether you have children. What it does well is measure direction. Calculated the same way every quarter, it captures the combined effect of saving, debt repayment and asset growth in one figure, and it exposes situations where a rising income is producing no progress at all because spending rose with it.

Expect it to move erratically and even to be negative for years, which is normal after study debt or early in a bond. Negative net worth is a stage, not a verdict; the slope is what to watch.

Liquid net worth, the more urgent number

Total net worth includes assets you cannot spend this month. Liquid net worth — cash and readily sellable investments, minus short-term debt — answers a different and often more pressing question: how long could you cope without income. Someone with substantial net worth entirely inside a house and a pension can still be unable to survive three months of unemployment, and only the liquid figure shows it.