How to track your net worth: a simple monthly habit that shows if you're really getting ahead
What counts as an asset or a liability, how often to update, and a worked example of one household's net worth over four months.
Your bank balance tells you about this month. Your net worth tells you about the whole picture: everything you own, minus everything you owe.
It's the one number that shows whether paying down the mortgage, putting money into retirement and skipping that new truck are actually adding up. And it only takes a few minutes a month to track.
What counts as an asset
An asset is anything you own that has a money value you could reasonably get for it.
- Cash and bank accounts: chequing, savings, cash on hand.
- Investments: retirement accounts (an RRSP or TFSA in Canada, a 401(k) or IRA in the US), brokerage accounts, any other investments.
- Your home: what it would realistically sell for, not what you paid or what you hope.
- Vehicles: what someone would pay you for it today. Cars lose value every year, so use a conservative resale figure.
- Other big things: a cottage, a trailer, a business you own. Leave out furniture, clothes and electronics. They're worth far less used than new, and counting them only makes the number look better than it is.
A workplace pension is a judgement call. Some people include its current value from their annual statement; others leave it out and track it separately. Either is fine, as long as you do the same thing every month.
What counts as a liability
A liability is anything you owe. Use the balance you owe, not the monthly payment.
- Mortgage
- Car loans and leases
- Credit cards (the full balance, even if you pay it off every month)
- Lines of credit
- Student loans
- Personal loans, money owed to family, tax owing
How often to update it
Once a month is the sweet spot. Pick a day, like the first of the month or the day after payday, and update every balance on that same day. Same day each time means the numbers are comparable.
Quarterly works too if monthly feels like too much. More often than monthly isn't worth it: investment balances bounce around, and daily changes are noise.
Some values barely change, so don't overthink them. Update your home's value once or twice a year, and your car's once a year. The balances you check every month are the bank, investment and debt accounts.
A worked example
Here's one household at the start of their first month.
| What they own | Value |
|---|---|
| Chequing | $2,500 |
| Savings | $8,000 |
| Retirement accounts | $42,000 |
| Home | $450,000 |
| Car | $18,000 |
| Total owned | $520,500 |
| What they owe | Balance |
|---|---|
| Mortgage | $310,000 |
| Car loan | $12,000 |
| Credit card | $1,500 |
| Line of credit | $4,000 |
| Total owed | $327,500 |
Net worth: $520,500 − $327,500 = $193,000.
That's the starting line. The number itself matters less than which way it moves. Here are their next few months:
| Month | Own | Owe | Net worth | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | $520,500 | $327,500 | $193,000 | |
| Month 2 | $521,800 | $326,200 | $195,600 | +$2,600 |
| Month 3 | $520,900 | $324,900 | $196,000 | +$400 |
| Month 4 | $523,600 | $323,500 | $200,100 | +$4,100 |
In month 3 their investments dipped, so what they own went down. But they kept paying down debt, so their net worth still went up a little. That's the point of tracking both sides: one bad month in the markets doesn't erase progress you made on the debt side.
Over three months they're up $7,100. Without the tracker, they'd probably only have noticed the investment dip.
What to do with the number
- Watch the trend, not one month. A dip happens. Three or four months in a row of going backwards is worth a closer look.
- Look at both columns. Net worth can grow because you own more, or because you owe less. Paying off a credit card raises your net worth just as surely as saving the same amount.
- Don't compare yours to anyone else's. A new homeowner with a big mortgage can have a lower net worth than a renter and still be doing fine. Compare yourself to you, last month.
- Use it to make one decision. If your debt column is barely moving, that's where to focus. Our post on debt snowball vs avalanche walks through two ways to speed it up.
This is a way to track your money, not financial advice. Home and vehicle values are estimates, so treat them as rough.
Track it without the arithmetic
Our Net Worth Tracker works in Google Sheets and Excel. It shows what you own against what you owe every month, with a chart, so the trend is right there. Your bank, savings, cash, card and investment balances on the Accounts tab fill it in for you, and you can add a house, car or pension in seconds. The Debt tab lists every debt with its balance and the month it'll be paid off.
