How I Track My Net Worth

People sometimes ask how I keep tabs on my finances down to the dollar every month. The answer is unglamorous: one big spreadsheet, a monthly routine, and the discipline to reconcile every penny. Here is exactly how it works.

The balance sheet

Everything lives in a single Google Sheet — my personal balance sheet and income statement. Once a month, after the month ends, I update every row with the closing values:

• Investment portfolio — every account, every position. That is currently 14 accounts and 102 positions, tracked in a companion portfolio sheet.
• Home — I use the current Zillow Zestimate. It is an estimate, not an appraisal, but it is consistent month to month, and consistency is what matters.
• Gold — marked at the current spot price.
• Cash — bank balances, entered by hand.
• 529 plans and other small accounts — all of them, even the $86 ones.
• Liabilities — my credit cards, which are on autopay for the full statement balance, plus anything else I owe.

Two headline numbers come out of this: total net worth and liquid net worth (everything except the house — the money I could actually get my hands on). I watch both.

The reconciliation

The part most people skip is the part that matters most: every dollar of change has to be explained. If my net worth rose $50,000 in a month, I want to know how much was market gains, how much was new money I invested, how much was dividends, and how much leaked out as spending.

So the sheet has a reconciliation block. Each month I roll it forward: start with the change in net worth, subtract net investment flows (buys minus sells, minus dividends received), and what is left is the true investment return. Then I compare that return against the S&P 500 for the month. If I cannot explain the change, the books are not closed.

This is also why I keep a meticulous cost-basis log — every buy and sell I have made since 2014, with the broker, the price, and the date. It feeds the portfolio sheet, the tax return, and the monthly reconciliation. Tedious to maintain, invaluable when you need it.

The routine

The whole thing runs on a monthly cadence:

1. The 1st of the month — close the books. Update the portfolio, enter the bank figures, log the month's transactions.
2. The 2nd of the month — write it up. A net worth update and a portfolio update go on this blog, with a performance review in the style of a fund manager's letter.

Doing it on a schedule is the entire trick. A net worth you check once a year is trivia. A net worth you reconcile every month is a feedback loop — you start noticing which months your spending drifts, which positions are actually earning their keep, and whether you are beating the market or just riding it.

If you want to start

You do not need my spreadsheet. You need three things:

1. List everything you own and owe, in one place. Miss nothing, however small.
2. Update it on a fixed schedule. Monthly works. Yearly does not.
3. Reconcile the change. New money in, market gains, spending out — every dollar accounted for.

Do that for a year and you will understand your finances better than 95% of people. Do it for a decade and you will wonder how you ever managed money without it.