What am I actually worth?

What everything you own comes to once everything you owe is taken off, how much of what you own is already claimed, and why paying off and saving move the figure identically. It is one day's photograph — the direction appears only when the two figures are taken again, and and it names nothing for you: what belongs on each side is your own call.

You own 250,000 and owe 90,000, which leaves 160,000, so 36% of what you own is owed, at what things would sell for today.

A subtraction, and the argument is entirely about what goes into it. What you own is cash, savings, investments and what a property or a car would fetch today. What you owe is the balance outstanding right now on loans, cards, instalment plans and anything else that has to be repaid — not the total that will have been paid by the end, which is a larger figure and a different question.

The second figure on the card is what you owe as a share of what you own. It passes 100 where the debt is the larger of the two, which is the same fact as a negative net worth said the other way round, and it is the figure that moves most visibly as either side changes.

A negative net worth draws honestly rather than stopping at zero. Clamping it would tell a household whose mortgage is larger than the house that they are level, and that is the one thing this figure exists not to do. It is a common position — it is what a mortgage in its early years, or a student loan, or a car bought on credit looks like on this page — and the picture inverts to say what is covered by what is owned and what is beyond it.

With nothing owned there is no share to give. The denominator is what you own, and zero is not a denominator; the card prints nothing there rather than a zero, which would read as none of it being owed under a figure that is entirely debt.

net worth = what you own − what you owe

The share is what you owe divided by what you own, written as a percentage, and it passes 100 where the debt is the larger figure.

A worked example

Own 250,000 and owe 90,000, and the net worth is 160,000, with 36% of everything owned already claimed. Paying 10,000 off the debt and putting 10,000 more into savings move that figure by exactly the same amount, which is the least obvious thing this calculator says.

What it assumes

• What you own is entered at what it would sell for today rather than what it cost. A car and a property are where that gap is widest, and a property valued at an asking price rather than a sale price is the most common way this figure is overstated.
• What you owe is the balance outstanding today, not the total that will have been paid by the end. The interest still to come is a real cost and it is a different figure, which the debt payoff calculator gives.
• A pension, an end-of-service award or anything else that cannot be drawn yet is a judgement call. Counting it makes the figure larger and makes it less about money that could be reached this month.