THE GLOSSARY · BALANCE SHEET
Net worth
What you own minus what you owe. The one figure that sums up a financial position in a single number — provided you count both sides.
By the Yoseri News desk · · 1 min read
Net worth — the sum of your assets minus the sum of your debts. A single number, positive or negative, that says where you stand.
An example: $12,480 in accounts, $35,840 in investments, $280,000 in property and $14,200 of vehicle make $342,520 of assets. Less $227,441 of debt, net worth comes to $115,079.
Two mistakes distort it every time. The first: counting only one side of a financed asset. A car belongs on the asset side and its loan on the liability side — forgetting that inflates or hollows out the total artificially.
The second: adding in what cannot be resold. Furniture, appliances, clothes — an asset whose value is uncertain, or that cannot be mobilised, inflates the figure without changing anything you can actually use.
In Yoseri, this figure lives on the Accounts and net worth page: assets minus debts, the month’s change, and every asset with the date of its estimate.
Yoseri News is an educational publication. Nothing in this article is investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell, or tax advice. Yoseri is registered as neither an adviser nor a dealer with any market authority.