Net Worth Calculator

How to calculate net worth

Net worth is the simplest number in personal finance and the hardest to fake: add up everything you own, subtract everything you owe, and whatever is left is yours. Income tells you what came in this month. Net worth tells you what you actually kept. Someone earning 80,000 with a leased car, a maxed card and no savings can easily sit below someone earning $70,000 who has paid down a mortgage for a decade.

The formula is assets minus liabilities. Assets are cash and savings, brokerage and retirement balances, the market value of your home, vehicles at resale value, and anything else you could sell. Liabilities are the payoff balances — not the monthly payments — on your mortgage, car loans, student loans, credit cards and everything else you owe.

Worked example: a typical US household

Take the sample values loaded in the calculator. Assets: 5,000 cash and savings, $60,000 in investments and retirement, a $350,000 home, 8,000 of vehicles and $5,000 of other assets — $448,000 total. Liabilities: a $280,000 mortgage balance, 2,000 in car loans, $20,000 of student loans and $3,000 on credit cards — $315,000 total. Net worth is $448,000 − $315,000 = 33,000.

Two secondary numbers do the real work. The debt-to-asset ratio here is 315,000 ÷ 448,000 = 70.3%, which is normal early in a mortgage and should fall every year. And the liquidity split: only $75,000 of that $448,000 — about 17% — is liquid. The other 83% is a house you live in and cars you drive. That is why a household with six figures of net worth can still be one boiler failure away from the credit card.

Should the house be in there?

Two camps, both reasonable. Include it, and the number reflects your full balance sheet the way a lender sees it; a mortgage paid down is genuine wealth, and ignoring the asset while counting the debt would be nonsense. Exclude it, and you get "investable net worth" — the number that actually funds retirement or an emergency. This calculator includes the home and subtracts the mortgage, so only your equity counts, then reports the liquid share separately so you get both readings from one entry.

Net worth by age: a sanity check, not a scoreboard

The Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances puts median US household net worth near $39,000 under age 35, about 35,000 for 35 to 44, roughly $247,000 for 45 to 54, and around $364,000 for 55 to 64. Medians, not averages — the average for the 55 to 64 bracket is several times its median, because a handful of very wealthy households drag the mean upward. UK figures from the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey follow a similar curve once private pension wealth is included.

Read those brackets as terrain, not as a grade. A 32-year-old doctor with 80,000 of student debt can be deeply negative and doing fine; a 60-year-old with a paid-off house and a defined-benefit pension may look average on paper and be extremely secure. The bracket you sit in matters far less than the direction you are moving each quarter.

Which lever moves the number fastest

In rough priority order: kill balances above about 8% interest first — credit cards at 22% are a guaranteed 22% return, which no investment offers reliably. Second, capture any employer retirement match in full; that is an instant 50-100% return on those dollars. Third, raise the gap between income and spending, because every long-term projection is driven by savings rate far more than by picking good funds. Fourth, avoid new depreciating debt: a financed car destroys net worth from both ends, adding a liability while the asset behind it loses value.

What this calculator will not tell you

It counts pre-tax retirement accounts at face value, so a traditional 401(k) or SIPP is worth perhaps 70-85% of the figure shown once withdrawal tax is applied. Property values are your own estimate, and estimates drift optimistic — check a recent comparable sale rather than the number in your head. Illiquid business equity, restricted stock before vesting and pending legal settlements all need judgment this tool does not have. Recalculate on the same day each quarter using the same valuation method; the slope of the line, not any single reading, is the information you are after.