In 2015, Hannah (our founding CFP® professional) wrote a blog with a simple but provocative idea: your net worth statement might not be doing you any good. You can read the original here: Why Your Net Worth Statement Isn’t Doing You Any Good.
Eleven years later, the research has caught up to what she was writing about back then. Your net worth statement tells you what you have, but it doesn’t tell you if your money is making you happy.
This isn’t about abandoning financial discipline or ignoring the numbers. It’s about recognizing what the numbers can and can’t tell you and adding the one line most people have never thought to include.
What’s “Net Worth”?
A net worth statement is a personal balance sheet that gives you a snapshot of your financial health at a specific point in time. It is calculated by adding up everything you own (assets) and subtracting everything you owe (liabilities).
The 2025 Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey found that the net worth Americans feel they need to be “financially comfortable” has risen to $839,000, up from $778,000 just a year prior. The threshold for feeling “wealthy” now sits at $2.5 million. Both numbers keep moving which means the finish line keeps moving too.
When you look at your net worth statement alone, it’s easy to enter a game of “Never Enough.” There’s always a higher number to reach, and yet when the same survey asked Americans what it actually means to be wealthy, they placed nearly equal value on happiness as on the amount of money they have. Survey respondents were more likely to define wealth in terms of physical and mental health, relationship quality, and free time than in terms of net worth or material possessions. The money matters, but what it enables matters more.
What Net Worth Can’t Tell You
Net worth tells you what you have, what you owe, and how those two figures compare. That’s genuinely useful information, but it doesn’t tell you:
- Whether your money is aligned with your actual values
- Whether you’ve spent it on things that brought lasting meaning or just temporary satisfaction
- Whether the people and experiences you care about are showing up in your financial decisions
- Whether you’ll look back and feel like your money was well used
A high net worth doesn’t automatically mean you’re happy with what your money has afforded you. That’s why we’re focused on making sure your money aligns with your values and your wishes for your life.
Where Is Your Money Taking You?
In 2015, Hannah started inviting clients to add a new line to their net worth statement: “Where My Money Took Me.” Not as a replacement for the numbers, but as a complement to them.
We encourage you to reflect on what your money actually did for you in the last year. Maybe it was a trip to meet a new niece, a new home that became a gathering place for people you love, an anniversary dinner, or a once-in-a-lifetime experience that happened because the plan made room for it.
If the only thing you’re measuring is the number, you’re only measuring half of your financial life. The other half — the experiences, the relationships, the moments the money made possible — deserves to be part of the picture too.
Putting New Financial Measures into Practice
A few questions worth sitting with as a complement to reviewing your net worth:
- What did my money make possible this year? Not just what you saved, but what you funded, experienced, gave, or built.
- Does my spending reflect what I say matters to me? Most people find a gap here when they take a deeper look, so don’t be worried if you find something out of alignment.
- What do I want my money to make possible in the next year? A specific answer to this question is more useful than a vague savings target.
- When I look back at this period of my life, what will I want to have spent money on? This is the long-view question that most financial plans never ask.
A financial plan built around these questions looks different from one built purely around a number. It has room for experiences, for relationships, for the things that are only possible in this season of life.
Balancing Money & Happiness
Net worth is a useful metric; it tells you whether you’re building the financial foundation that makes everything else possible. You can’t fund the life you want without the numbers. The point isn’t to ignore them but to stop letting them be the only measure.
According to Empower’s Financial Happiness research, 73% of Americans believe that a solid financial plan, not a specific net worth number, is what would actually bring them financial happiness. The plan is the thing. The number is a byproduct of a plan well executed.
When you work with a financial planner, you’re tracking beyond just assets and liabilities. You’re also building a strategy that turns the number into something: security, travel, generosity, time, legacy. The number in service of a life.
We’ll leave you with this action item: At the end of the year, when you pull up your net worth statement, add a line that includes the experiences, people, and moments your money made possible. They deserve to be part of the financial picture.
And if you want to build a financial plan that accounts for both the number and the life behind it, we at Guiding Wealth would love to help. Reach out to start a conversation.