Do you know your Net Worth

How well do you know your Net Worth

  • What's a Net Worth???

    Votes: 10 9.7%

  • I know mine give or take 50k

    Votes: 29 28.2%

  • I know mine give or take 10k

    Votes: 17 16.5%

  • I know a ballpark

    Votes: 24 23.3%

  • I know or have it written (nearly or exactly) to the penny.

    Votes: 23 22.3%
  • Total voters
    103
Jaybird180

Jaybird180

Final Approach
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
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Display name:
Jaybird180
I just updated my financial records trying to answer a few questions and run scenarios for future planning. It got me to thinking....
 
Jeez Henning, gimme a minute to post the Poll, will ya!
 
Henning said:
Your net worth is about 50lbs of clean meat.
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You assume clean. I plan to leave 50lbs of menudo-grade cutlets. :D

I used to have a spreadsheet that tracked this stuff roughly. Then I got into aviation and it became sad. Haven't updated it in years. I'd be afraid to now.
 
Laugh it up, but I credit financial software for being able to fly around in an airplane.

I started using Quicken back in the eighties when it was Quicken 1. I had two accounts. One checking, and one savings. We must have over thirty accounts now with investments, 401 rollovers, and assets all accounted for.

"You can't manage what you can't measure." -- unkown

quicken.jpg
 
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My accountant says one thing, my wife says something completely different. It's confusing.
 
schmookeeg said:
...Then I got into aviation and it became sad...
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just ordered a set of fine-wires for the 'kota...cheap as far as aviation stuff goes...but nearly an AMU...:sad:
 
txflyer said:
I started using Quicken back in the eighties
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Me too, and I just upgraded to 2014 because they forced me to.

It's their biggest PoS bug-filled program yet. 2011 was bad, 2014 is unbearably bad.

It's time to find something else.

Anyone have suggestions?
 
I don't need to upgrade Quicken ever. Still use the 2008 version happily.

This works because I don't use it for banks, just broker / mutual fund accounts. I enter transactions manually into Quicken, and I get quotes into it using a csv file downloaded from Yahoo finance (which I clean up in excel to delete all but two columns, and then imported into quicken as a file).

This defeats Intuit's scam of requiring that you pay periodically to update from one miserably slow unimproved version of Quicken to another. It also avoids Quicken's quote server, which was dreadfully unreliable when I used to use it.
 
If you're not sure, I recommend getting a divorce, I can assure you your spouse's attorney can give you a figure, real quick!:D:rofl: No, I am not getting a divorce.;)
 
I'm only worth something if I kick the bucket and my wife cashes in my insurance policies.
 
My net worth is tied up in my two retirement plans I'll start collecting in a few years. I have to assume a present value for the annuities to get my net worth. The longer I expect to live the higher my net worth.
 
timwinters said:
Amazing how that works!

You better sleep with one eye open! :goofy:
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I have enough just to pay off the mortgage and have some left over. She would still have to work. It's not worth the hassle for her to off me......yet.
 
1. Not nearly enough.
2. Worth more dead than alive.

If I ever actually retire or something stops the income stream, I'm only minutes away from death. So sayeth the Mrs. :rofl:
 
Geico266 said:
Before or after the economy collapsed? :lol:
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If you 'stayed in' then you should be better than before. Unless you were seriously under water with your house..
 
Anything other than the "ballpark" answer means you don't have enough to worry about counting. Use that time to go fly.....
 
So much for the premise that all pilots are wealthy.
 
JoseCuervo said:
Anything other than the "ballpark" answer means you don't have enough to worry about counting. Use that time to go fly.....
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I have an Excel spreadsheet that I created with automatic stock updates, interest calculations, etc. It literally takes 10 seconds to update, shows the deltas, running totals, etc. It also allows forecasting and "what if" scenarios. Excel is an amazing tool that almost everyone has. No need to ballpark if you'll take a little time and make one.
 
Alexb2000 said:
I have an Excel spreadsheet that I created with automatic stock updates, interest calculations, etc. It literally takes 10 seconds to update, shows the deltas, running totals, etc. It also allows forecasting and "what if" scenarios. Excel is an amazing tool that almost everyone has. No need to ballpark if you'll take a little time and make one.
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Lots of assets out there that don't have a computer feed on the value.

Real estate, cow/calf pairs, collectibles, certain/many ag commodities, etc.... And, there can be lots of wealth tied up in those items.

I am pretty sure that the average rancher right now doesn't know much closer to a "ballpark", and with the way cattle prices are right now, he is printing money faster than he can spend it.
 
I always thought the Drucker quote was "What gets measured, gets managed."

The issue I have with measuring net worth is I own illiquid investments in small businesses that while easy to put a range of value on, are so illiquid and risky that I wouldn't want to count on or spend today's value. I do know to the penny all liquid assets and debts as should everyone.

I like this forum because I'm still early in my pilot skill set and so I learn a lot from the experienced aviators here. Since I know a sh*t ton about creating wealth, let me share the most important lesson: Saving is a habit and the earlier you start, the wealthier you will be. If all you can afford is $20/a month, do it. Create the habit.

Also, what ruins most people when it comes to saving is that the human mind has a hard time thinking long term and understanding compounding. The analogy I like to use is a 5:00 PM Friday afternoon flight from JFK to ORD. You know it's going to take you two hours to get to the airport because of traffic, plus 1.5 hours to get through security, so you leave at 1:30 PM. Then you sit on the plane for an hour waiting for a slot to push. Then you taxi to the runway for an hour. So now it's 5.5 hours since you left and you've gone about 7 miles. Then you slowly rumble down the runway and step climb up to cruise altitude. An hour and a half later you've gone 750 miles and are at your destination. That's the way saving works. It's not until most people have lost patience that the numbers start to really add up. The sooner you start the higher and longer you will fly.
 
JoseCuervo said:
Lots of assets out there that don't have a computer feed on the value.

Real estate, cow/calf pairs, collectibles, certain/many ag commodities, etc.... And, there can be lots of wealth tied up in those items.

I am pretty sure that the average rancher right now doesn't know much closer to a "ballpark", and with the way cattle prices are right now, he is printing money faster than he can spend it.
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When I was farming and ranching I had an accountant. So as much as GAAP is accurate we had a new worth that considered cow/calf pairs, tractors, trucks, whatever. I also checked commodity prices everyday. I don't know how you run any business without a pretty firm grasp of the numbers.
 
Alexb2000 said:
When I was farming and ranching I had an accountant. So as much as GAAP is accurate we had a new worth that considered cow/calf pairs, tractors, trucks, whatever. I also checked commodity prices everyday. I don't know how you run any business without a pretty firm grasp of the numbers.
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What number you going to assign to a field of sugar beets in July?

Until you know yield and sugar content, you only have a ballpark.

What number you going to assign to fresh pack potatoes in July? Be a first on the market, you are rich, be a week late, price declines.

What value you going to assign to 2000 acres of deeded grazing land, today? What about tomorrow ?

What price you putting on 8 tractors? Book value, estate sale value next Feb? Retail value at the local John Deere dealer?

If you are in updating the Excel spreadsheet on assets you ain't selling, you are wasting time that could be spent flying.



Ballpark is really all you need if your assets are significant.
 
I am going to be worth $5000.oo a week for life. I know that because I got a letter telling me so....
 
JoseCuervo said:
Anything other than the "ballpark" answer means you don't have enough to worry about counting. Use that time to go fly.....
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That's not what the poll says. I just explained this to my coworker who also misread the poll.

Those choices mean you know the number but the accuracy has a variance of about $50,000. This probably means that you have large fluctuations in your net worth and/or it's been a long time since you've updated your data. Same for $10k but it's been less time and/or volatility in your data. Knowing with a high degree of accuracy means that you actively track your Net Worth and likely have it recorded electronically and can readily access it and have done so recently.
 
It's all meaningless, a trick of the imagination you were lead to believe. What is your net worth is better answered in the form of "What can you produce, repair, or provide society in return for your keep?", not, "How much money & stuff have you accumulated?"

What do you know? What can yo do? What have you experienced? What can you teach? What can you give? These are the real measures of human net worth.
 
No such thing as net worth. The fluctuations in the market make that number for some a realtime moving target. Consider Bill Gates net worth is plus or minus a billion bucks in a given week in the markets.
 
Until a few years ago my net worth could fluctuate as much as $50K in a month. Then my wife's father, who thought health insurance was a scam, got sick and it wiped us out. Today I'm worth nowhere near $50K. But as Henning says, I feel pretty good every day about my contributions to others. I'm having a great time with my wife. Love every minute with the kids. Enjoy ruffling feathers in SZ. What more could a guy want?
 
Watched a Citation X doing touch and goes today....

Now that's wealthy.
 
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