You could do whatever you want to calculate your "net worth." It is a number with meaning only to you.

Declare equity in your children. Declare your happiness an asset. Assign a value to the goodwill that you have with your friends and neighbors. Nobody cares but you OP!

Gross worth?

It’s redundant. Net means asset-liability.

Why subtract the balance? Because the bank owns it!

Anonymous wrote:Pro tip: Ignore the value of your primary residence completely to keep things simple. You likely need a house to live in regardless of age. Why fool yourself into thinking you have more than you can really access?

know.

A viable option for many in this area would be to sell their home and move to a LCOL area. Property taxes are pretty high here with home values so it may make a lot of sense to cut that expense and move elsewhere for people without millions in retirement. In that case I think the net difference in housing costs could be counted.

It’s not hard. House value minus how much you owe on house is your equity.

House is worth $1 million, you owe $500k, you have $500k in equity.

The real pro tip is to ignore net worth calculations altogether as they are not particularly useful.

Having said that, the value of your home (less the mortgage) is not irrelevant, eg if you need to go into a nursing home it can be sold.

Anonymous wrote:Pro tip: Ignore the value of your primary residence completely to keep things simple. You likely need a house to live in regardless of age. Why fool yourself into thinking you have more than you can really access?

This is not a pro tip. There is a reason almost every analysis of net worth includes home equity. It is an asset (usually a major one) for the individual. There are multiple ways to make it liquid if needed.

Pro tip: Ignore the value of your primary residence completely to keep things simple. You likely need a house to live in regardless of age. Why fool yourself into thinking you have more than you can really access?