How to Calculate Your Net Worth (Formula, Example, 2026 Template)

Quick answer. Net worth equals everything you own (assets) minus everything you owe (liabilities). Add up cash, investments, retirement accounts, real estate, and vehicles. Subtract mortgages, car loans, credit card balances, and student loans. The result is your net worth. Our Net Worth Tracker does the math automatically and tracks it month over month.

The formula is one line. The hard part is gathering the numbers honestly the first time.

This guide walks through the exact formula, the categories that belong in each side of the equation, the trickier judgment calls (cars, jewelry, vested-but-unexercised stock), and a worked example with named dollar amounts you can match against. By the end you’ll have a number and a way to keep it updated without thinking about it.

The formula

Net worth = Total assets minus Total liabilities

That’s it. There’s no version of this formula that’s more sophisticated. The complications come from what counts as an asset, what gets included as a liability, and how you value things that don’t have a market price.

In a spreadsheet, the formula in cell C50 looks like:

=SUM(Assets!B:B) - SUM(Liabilities!B:B)

If the result is positive, you have a positive net worth. If negative, your liabilities exceed your assets, which is normal in your 20s if you have student loans and is a fixable situation regardless of age.

What counts as an asset

The categories below cover most people. Track them in this order; it matches the Net Worth Tracker template.

Cash and cash equivalents

• Checking accounts
• Savings accounts
• Money market accounts
• Cash on hand (be honest, but don’t bother with anything under $200)

Investment accounts (taxable)

• Brokerage accounts
• Crypto holdings (use today’s value, accept that it’ll move)
• Treasury direct accounts
• HSAs being used as investment accounts

Retirement accounts

• 401(k) and 403(b)
• Traditional IRA
• Roth IRA
• SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, solo 401(k)
• Pension lump-sum present value (if vested and quotable)

Real estate

• Primary residence (current market value, not what you paid)
• Rental properties (current market value)
• Land

Vehicles

• Cars, trucks, motorcycles (Kelley Blue Book private-party value)
• Boats, RVs (private-party value)

Other tangible

• Jewelry, collectibles, art (only if you’d actually sell, at realistic values)
• Equity in a private business (use your last valuation if you have one, or skip)

Vested employer equity

• Vested RSUs at current share price
• Vested stock options (intrinsic value: current price minus strike, times shares)
• Skip unvested grants entirely

For each row you list a description, a value, and the date you valued it. The date matters because real estate and vehicle values drift, and you’ll want to refresh them annually rather than monthly.

What counts as a liability

A liability is any debt you owe.

• Mortgage balance (not original loan amount)
• HELOC balance
• Auto loans
• Student loans
• Credit card balances (the actual balance, not the limit)
• Personal loans
• Medical debt in collections or on a payment plan
• Tax debt
• Money owed to family or friends (count it, even if interest-free)

Do not include monthly bills (rent, utilities, subscriptions) that you’ll pay on schedule. Those are expenses, not liabilities. A liability is a principal balance you owe, not a recurring payment.

A worked example

Marcus is 34. Here’s his net worth calculation, by category, as of April 2026.

Assets

Liabilities

Net worth = $604,800 minus $310,900 = $293,900

Three minutes of arithmetic, decades of compounding to get there.

The judgment calls

Three categories trip people up the first time.

Your primary residence. Two schools of thought. School A: include market value as an asset and mortgage as a liability. School B: exclude both because you can’t realistically liquidate without buying a new place. School A is standard. The Net Worth Tracker uses School A but lets you toggle a “liquid net worth” view that excludes home equity. Both numbers are useful.

Your car. Include it, but use Kelley Blue Book private-party value and update annually. A car loses real value every year; tracking it monthly is overkill but ignoring it makes net worth look artificially low for someone with a $40,000 paid-off vehicle.

Future income (Social Security, pensions, expected raises). Don’t include. Net worth is a snapshot of what you have right now. Future expected income belongs in your retirement plan, not your balance sheet.

How often to recalculate

Monthly is the right cadence for most people. Each calculation takes about ten minutes once you’ve set up the template and know which logins to pull from. Quarterly is fine if your situation is stable. Weekly is too often and creates noise; market moves dominate the signal.

The reason monthly works is that it gives you a 12-point trend line per year. Three quarterly points is too few to see anything; weekly is fifty-two points of mostly market noise.

Setting up the spreadsheet

Five steps if you’re building from scratch.

1. Create three sheets in one Google Sheets file: Assets, Liabilities, Dashboard.
2. On Assets, put columns for Date, Category, Account, Value. Fill in your starting rows.
3. On Liabilities, do the same.
4. On Dashboard, write =SUM(Assets!D:D) - SUM(Liabilities!D:D) for net worth, plus =SUM(Assets!D:D) and =SUM(Liabilities!D:D) for the components.
5. Each month, append a new column or row with the date and updated values. Keep history.

Or skip steps 1 through 4 and use the Net Worth Tracker, which ships with the structure, the formulas, the chart, and a 12-month rolling view ready to fill in.

What to do with the number once you have it

Honestly, not much, at first. The number is a baseline. The value comes from the second, third, and twelfth data points, when you can see direction.

Some context that helps frame your number:

• The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances reports the median household net worth at around $192,000 (2022 data, adjusted). That includes home equity.
• For someone in their 30s, median is around $135,000.
• For someone in their 50s, median is around $300,000.

These are medians for households, not individuals. Comparing yourself to age-bracket data is useful for orientation, less useful as a goal. Your number depends on your circumstances, your income trajectory, and a lot of luck. Direction matters more than absolute level.

For more on age-bracket benchmarks, see Net Worth by Age: What the Numbers Say.

Get the template

• Net Worth Tracker — Monthly asset and liability log with a 12-month trend chart.
• Financial Planning Spreadsheet — 40-year life projection with net worth, cash flow, and FIRE in one file.
• Financial Planning Spreadsheet — 40-year life projection with net worth, cash flow, and FIRE in one file.

Related

• How to Track Net Worth Monthly: 7 Asset Rows, 5 Liability Rows