Do You Know How Much You're Worth? (Many Personal Finance Bloggers Do)

I found this piece at Ask Men and thought it was "interesting" to say the least. It starts out with the following introduction about net worth:

When was the last time you actually sat down and calculated your net worth? Net worth? You're probably asking yourself, "What is this quirky man talking about? I rent my own bachelor pad; I own a luxurious convertible BMW and a sporty SUV. I think I'm doing pretty darn well. Why would I need to calculate my net worth?"

But what I really like is the all-too-true picture of how many Americans judge wealth:

A close friend of mine left her fiancé of two years to date a successful businessman. It must have been his silver Ferrari, penthouse (smack in the middle of downtown), Armani suits, dinners at the most expensive restaurants, and so on that impressed her.

After four months of courtship, she finally uttered a resounding, "Yes!" to his marriage proposal. Anyhow, to make a long story short, she always trusted that her "successful" husband was financially set -- based on his assets, of course. But unfortunately for her, she never bothered to factor in his debts by calculating his net worth.

A year after their very expensive marriage, her husband declared bankruptcy. Apparently, her lovely husband didn't own any of the assets. In fact, he was in such debt (negative net worth) that he had some loan sharks threatening to take away a few of his wife's once favorite bodily parts. Needless to say, the marriage didn't last too long.

Yikes! But, as I said, this is how many Americans judge wealth -- by flashy material possessions that are often financed with a high income and/or debt. Remember, it's not what you make, it's what you spend. (See here too.) You can make all the money in the world, but if you spend all the money in the world plus $100,000, you're still down $100,000. It's net worth that matters, not income or "spending ability".

To that end, many personal finance bloggers post their net worths to keep track of them. I often round them up and share them on this blog. In the past, I had posted them as I found them, but this led to a lot of wasted posts. So in the future, I'll be collecting them and then publishing them all at once. (Note to bloggers: if you want your net worth included, be sure it's done and posted by the 7th of each month. And email me if you want to be sure. Otherwise, you'll miss the post. Which, if that's what you want, you can just wait until I post, then post your net worth.)

So here are the net worth's of personal finance bloggers that I've collected for this month (in the order that I discovered them):

• MMB - $172k
• NYC Money - $674k
• Savvy Saver - $102k
• My Money Blog - $84k
• Consumerism Commentary - $34k
• PF for the New Age - $53k
• PF Blog - $262k

Comments

[Flexo]

So far the women are clobbering the men... interesting. ;>

[Ryan Williams]

Ouch... that's a painful lesson to learn for that woman. Perhaps we (NetworthIQ) should partner with a dating site ;-).

[lilisn kibukamusoke]

please how does one calculate share values?

[Courtney Gidts]

I've managed to save up roughly $64304 in my bank account, but I'm not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?

[FMF]

Courtney --

If I knew that, I'd be a bazillionaire! You've hit on the key question, and I'm sorry to say that no one knows the answer to it.

FMF

[FMF]

Lilisn --

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean how do you calculate net worth?

FMF

[Geomatryx]

In fact I started blogging my NW based on the same group of people above.
Never thought of sharing my financial info to public before.
Here is my blog http://geomatryx.blogspot.com/