What To Do With Your Net Worth Report

I’m happy to say, that as of Monday, YNAB has reports!

Today I’ll dig into the Net Worth report. What does it mean? How can you use it? What will it do for you?

Click on the Reports tab, click on the Net Worth report and check it out.

Net Worth Does Not Equal Self-Worth

Net Worth is simply a picture of your assets and your liabilities—the difference is your net worth.

Should you measure yourself by your net worth? Absolutely not! But is it a good thing to measure? Absolutely!

Net worth is a great overall scorecard to give you a snapshot of how you are doing. It is not everything. You cannot infer much more from it than where you are right now.

Could you have a big catastrophic emergency that tanks your net worth? Yes. But it won’t mean that you failed at budgeting. One of the reasons your net worth will climb is because you are saving, putting money aside for your True Expenses. But you have a plan to use that money in the future.

Your Net Worth Is A Moving Target

So, don’t punish yourself when your net worth goes down because if you paid cash for an awesome vacation. That is a good thing. That is another measure of your success.

Now if your net worth went down because you impulsively charged a bunch on a card because you had a stressful week at work—no judgment—but that might not feel the same.

You are the best judge of your own situation, well, some are better than others, but you get the idea. Your net worth will likely go down every Christmas. Either you borrow to make it go down, or you spend cash that you’ve been saving for all year, and it will go down. But that second option is way better.

One thing we’ve noticed is that people will share their net worth reports. They’ll scrub the numbers a little bit and they’ll post it and celebrate their progress. It’s so fun to see and if you have an exciting progress story and net worth report, share it with us!

Tell us what you did and how you did it!

Your Budget Is Still Your Best Report

I will tell you that the Net Worth report is not the best report in YNAB. The best report is your budget itself. It will tell you, at any given moment, what you want your money to do and how that interplay is happening.

But of course, seeing that trend line climbing is good stuff. I’m so happy we’ve finally got it out there. Now that reports are out, I’m waiting with baited breath, on the edge of my seat, to find out what we’ll even talk about on our Facebook page! 🙂

If you can’t wait until next week for more whiteboard wisdom, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you have a question or an idea you’d like us to address in a future Whiteboard Wednesday episode—we’d love to hear from you: email@youneedabudget.com.