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I hope those you who did not already have a monthly household budget, have now had chance to create one. If not, this post will help you, How to Create a Budget That you can Stick to. One stage on from creating a monthly budget is to create another simple spreadsheet that records your total net worth.
Calculating Your Net Worth
Net Worth can be defined as the sum of all of your assets minus your liabilities. For many of you, the thought of creating a spreadsheet with all your assets and liabilities recorded in one place might fill you with dread. If you have large student loans or credit card debts, recording your total amount of liabilities and assets might be a painful process. However, this is a necessary step to track your net worth.
Your personal net worth looks at the bigger picture, it’s not just your monthly income and outgoings. You also get the opportunity to track all of your assets as well as your liabilities. Assets include properties, savings, investment accounts, stocks and shares and businesses owned where applicable; liabilities include, mortgages, student loans, credit card debts and loans.
For the sake of simplicity it is acceptable to leave out all regular monthly expenses that are paid out of your monthly salary or wage. When thinking about net worth I always remember a quote attributed to the mathematician, Karl Pearson.
“That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.”
Karl Pearson
Improvements to Your Net Worth
This is exactly why we are doing this! Your net worth will improve. When you complete your first total net worth tracker spreadsheet, it will take some time. By the way, feel free to think of a more exciting title than Total Net Worth Tracker Spreadsheet. 🙂
When you come to update it after a month, unless you have suffered some financial calamity, your total net worth will have increased. For example, if you have made payments to student loans and or credit cards, their totals will come down slightly and your net worth will have gone up. If you are like me, you will find this incredibly motivating! As an aside, do not compare yourself to others, just track your own progress. In time, deficits will turn into surpluses. Money that was originally to pay debts can be diverted into savings accounts when those debts have been paid. Tracking your net worth is an excellent habit and will help you to transform your finances.
What Should you do Now?
Create your total net worth spreadsheet and update it each month. Here’s a downloadable spreadsheet that you can use.
Are you already tracking your net worth ? If so, what has been the improvement in the last 12 months? Let me know in the comments section below.
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What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?
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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only. This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.
Best regards,
Mike
