Net Worth Calculator: What You Own Minus What You Owe

Built by SimpleFinances — the guidance on this page is based on 35,000+ real transactions analyzed inside the app.

What is net worth, exactly?

Net worth is the single number that summarizes your whole financial position, and the net worth formula is one line: assets minus liabilities — everything you own that has monetary value, minus everything you owe. It's the number behind every other money metric. Income tells you what's flowing in; spending tells you what's flowing out; net worth tells you what all that flow has actually built. Two people with the same salary can have wildly different net worths, and the difference is the whole story of their financial lives: savings rates, debt, housing choices, and time.

A negative net worth is common early on — a new graduate with student loans and a starter savings account is usually underwater on paper — and it is not a verdict. The number matters far less than its direction, which is why the calculation is worth repeating monthly, not once.

What counts as an asset (and what doesn't)

• Count at full value: cash, checking, savings, CDs, brokerage accounts, retirement accounts (401(k), IRA), HSA balances.
• Count at realistic market value: your home (what it would sell for, not what you paid), vehicles (current resale value, not sticker — they depreciate the day you buy them).
• Count only if you'd genuinely sell: collectibles, jewelry, equipment. If it would never actually be converted to money, it inflates the number without changing your position.
• Don't count: your income (that's flow, not stock), points and miles, or anything you can't sell. And every debt counts on the other side — including the mortgage that accompanies the home value you just entered.

What's a "good" net worth?

The honest answer: there is no universal number, and most published averages are distorted by a small number of very large fortunes (medians run far below averages for exactly that reason). What makes a net worth "good" is context — your age, income, cost of living, and how the number is moving. If you want benchmarks, our guide to average savings by age walks through Federal Reserve survey data honestly, including why the comparison game usually asks the wrong question. The better yardstick is your own trend line: is this quarter's number higher than last quarter's, and do you know why?

Why tracking beats calculating

A one-time net worth number is a snapshot; the value is in the film. Calculated monthly, net worth catches things nothing else catches: lifestyle creep (income up, net worth flat), quiet progress (debt shrinking while the balance feels unchanged), and the compounding turn where investments start doing visible work. The manual version of this is a spreadsheet you update on the first of the month — workable, and most people stop by month three. The automatic version is connecting your accounts once and letting the timeline draw itself, which is exactly what the SimpleFinances net-worth timeline does: every account, updated continuously, with the trend line that makes the number mean something.