Net Worth Calculator
↻ Updated 2026List what you own and what you owe to see your net worth, with a visual breakdown of assets against liabilities.
Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your net worth
$303,000 is a true number that overstates what you can actually use. $140,000 of it is home equity — 46% of the total — which pays no income and can't be spent without moving. Strip the house and its mortgage out and the same household has $163,000. Both figures are real; they answer different questions.
How net worth is calculated, and why the total misleads
Net worth is the least controversial equation in personal finance: everything you own minus everything you owe. There's no rate to assume, no projection, no argument about methodology. Whatever it comes to is what it comes to.
The difficulty is entirely in what you put in it. Assets should be current market value, not what you paid — a house is worth what it would sell for today, and a car is worth Kelley Blue Book, not the sticker. Liabilities are outstanding balances, not monthly payments. Get those two conventions right and the arithmetic takes care of itself.
total assets = cash + investments + retirement + home + other assets total liabilities = mortgage + loans + credit cards + other debts net worth = total assets − total liabilities liquid net worth = net worth − (home − mortgage) home equity = home − mortgage
- cash
- Checking, savings, money market — anything spendable today — $15,000 on the defaults; this is the only line that's worth exactly its face value
- investments
- Taxable brokerage holdings at current market value — $60,000; carries an embedded capital gains bill you'd owe on sale
- retirement
- 401(k), IRA, Roth, HSA balances — $90,000; a traditional balance is pre-tax money — worth roughly $70,200 after a 22% rate, a Roth balance is worth its full face value
- home
- Current market value of real estate you own — $400,000 — what it would sell for, not what you paid and not what Zillow guesses
- mortgage
- Outstanding principal on the home — $260,000; the balance, not the payment, and not the original loan
- home equity
- Home minus mortgage — the part of the house you own — $140,000, or 46% of this household's net worth
- other assets
- Cars, valuables, business interests — $20,000; use resale value, and be honest — this is the line people inflate
The composition matters more than the total, and the defaults show why. $303,000 of net worth sounds like a coherent amount of money until you notice it's four different kinds of thing: $15,000 you can spend today, $60,000 you can sell this week with a tax bill attached, $90,000 you can't touch before 59½ without a 10% penalty, and $140,000 locked in a building you live in. Only the first is money in the sense people mean when they say money.
This is why home equity is the line that starts arguments. It's unambiguously part of net worth under the standard definition — it's an asset less a liability. But it produces no income, costs money to maintain, and can only be accessed by selling (and then needing somewhere to live), refinancing, or borrowing against it. The common practice is to carry both numbers and know which one you're quoting. For retirement planning specifically, the house usually comes out: the FIRE calculator asks only for the portfolio that does the withdrawing.
Worked examples
Example: the default household — $585,000 owned, $282,000 owed
The calculator's shipped figures: a homeowner with a mortgage, some retirement savings, a taxable account and modest consumer debt.
| Cash & savings | $15,000 |
| Investments (taxable) | $60,000 |
| Retirement accounts | $90,000 |
| Home & real estate | $400,000 |
| Other assets | $20,000 |
| Total assets | $585,000 |
| Total liabilities$260,000 mortgage + $18,000 loans + $4,000 cards | $282,000 |
| Net worth$585,000 − $282,000 | $303,000 |
$303,000, and 92% of the debt is the mortgage. Note how the house dominates both columns at once: it's 68% of assets and 92% of liabilities, and the $140,000 of equity left over is 46% of the entire net worth. This household's financial position is mostly a statement about one building.
Example: the same household, three ways of counting
Nothing changes but the definition. This is why two people can quote wildly different net worths for identical circumstances — and why comparing your number to someone else's is close to meaningless.
| Total net worththe standard definition, house included | $303,000 |
| Home equity within it$400,000 − $260,000 | $140,000 |
| Liquid net worthexcluding the house and its mortgage | $163,000 |
| Investable assetscash + taxable + retirement | $165,000 |
| …less non-mortgage debtafter the $22,000 of loans and cards | $143,000 |
| Retirement after 22% taxif the $90,000 is traditional, not Roth | ~$70,200 |
$303,000, $163,000 or $143,000 — all defensible, all describing the same household on the same day. The gap between the first and the last is $160,000, which is larger than most of the individual line items. When a survey reports a median net worth, it means the first definition; when a planner asks what you have, they usually mean something closer to the third.
Frequently asked questions
Does home equity count in net worth?
Yes, under the standard definition — net worth is assets minus liabilities, and a house is an asset with a mortgage attached. The Federal Reserve counts it that way in the Survey of Consumer Finances, and so does this calculator. There's no serious argument that it's excluded.
The real argument is about whether the total is useful once it's in. Home equity generates no income, costs property tax and maintenance to hold, and converts to cash only by selling, refinancing or borrowing against it — and if you sell your only home, you have to live somewhere. On the defaults it's $140,000 of a $303,000 net worth: 46% of the number, and 0% of what you could spend this year. The common practice is to track both total and liquid net worth rather than pick a side.
What is the average net worth in America?
The Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances — the most recent completed one, published in October 2023 — put median US household net worth at $192,900 and the mean at about $1.06 million. That gap is the whole story: the average is more than five times the median because a small number of very wealthy households drag it upward.
Use the median. The mean answers 'how much wealth is there, divided by households', which describes nobody. The 2019-to-2022 jump in median net worth was 37% after inflation, the largest since the survey began in 1989 — driven substantially by house prices, which is worth remembering when comparing your number to it. And the SCF is triennial, so the 2022 figures are already several years stale.
Should I include my 401(k) in my net worth?
Yes — it's money you own, and leaving it out understates your position, often badly. It's the largest asset many households have after the house.
But discount it mentally if it's traditional rather than Roth. A traditional 401(k) or IRA is pre-tax: every dollar owes ordinary income tax on withdrawal, so the $90,000 default is worth roughly $70,200 at a 22% rate. A Roth balance of $90,000 is worth $90,000 — qualified withdrawals are untaxed. Two households with identical net worth on paper can differ by tens of thousands in spendable money purely on account type, and no net worth calculator, including this one, can see it. Add early withdrawal before 59½ and there's a 10% penalty on top.
What is a good net worth for my age?
This page won't score you, and the benchmarks circulating are shakier than they look. The Fed's 2022 SCF reports median net worth rising from about $39,000 for households under 35 to a peak in the 60s and 70s — but medians conflate wildly different circumstances, and the averages quoted alongside them are distorted by the very wealthy.
Two structural problems with age benchmarks. They're dominated by homeownership: a 40-year-old who bought in 2015 and one who rents can differ by $200,000 with identical incomes and savings rates, mostly through timing. And they ignore geography and income — a median that mixes Manhattan with rural Ohio describes neither. The comparison with signal is against your own number a year ago, measured the same way.
Should I include my car in my net worth?
Yes, at what it would actually sell for today — private-party or trade-in value, not what you paid. It's in the 'other assets' field here, and any loan against it belongs in liabilities.
The caveat is that a car is a depreciating asset, so this line falls every year on its own. That makes it different in kind from the rest of the asset column: a new car can lose roughly 20% of its value in the first year, so including it means your net worth drops each year unless something else offsets it. Some people exclude vehicles for that reason and to keep the number focused on wealth that can grow. Either convention works — measuring it the same way each time is what matters.
What a net worth snapshot can't show you
Simple arithmetic on numbers you supply. Its blind spots are all in the inputs, not the equation.
- Every dollar is treated as equal — $1 of cash, $1 of traditional 401(k) and $1 of home equity all add $1 here. They're worth roughly $1.00, $0.78 and 'nothing until you move' respectively. The total silently blends money you can spend with money you can't.
- No tax on anything — The $90,000 retirement balance owes income tax on withdrawal if it's traditional; the $60,000 taxable account owes capital gains on whatever it has appreciated. Neither is netted out. A net worth figure is always a pre-tax number.
- Asset values are guesses — Cash and debt balances are facts. Your home's value is an estimate until someone buys it, and selling costs 5-6% in agent fees plus closing costs — so $400,000 of listed value is nearer $376,000 realised. 'Other assets' is the line most prone to wishful thinking.
- It's one moment, not a trend — A single reading tells you almost nothing. Net worth is only informative as a series — the same categories, valued the same way, measured quarterly or annually. A number that jumped because your neighbour's house sold high isn't progress.
- No income, no expenses, no runway — Net worth doesn't know whether you earn $40,000 or $400,000, or whether the $15,000 of cash covers one month or twelve. A high net worth with no liquidity is a well-documented way to be unable to pay a bill.
- ·Net worth = assets − liabilities
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.