A good reason for attempting to make the jump from ANW to NW is that making an inventory of all of your assets can be valuable for insurance purposes as well. If you go room to room (to closet) cataloging everything you own, including serial numbers and estimated market value, you can plug that right into your net worth calculation. Should the unthinkable happen and you have to file an insurance claim, you’ll wish you had that inventory and it’s much harder to remember everything after the fact.

In the end, net worth is an estimate, not an exact value. The reason is obvious enough. You are estimating what you could sell your assets for. I choose to estimate the value of some of the junk I have around the house at $0. If I get more for it, assuming I sell it, that’s a bonus. I’ll value the cash at face value in that case.

Well, after two long days, we made it back into town safely. We covered 2900+ miles in 12 days, with the bulk of the driving packed into the first and last two days. We’re beat, but we had a great time and are glad to be back home. With that said…

A guess? Maybe 5% to 10% of retail if they’re used, more if they’re not.

However, figuring your true, complete, literal net worth is not a useful exercise since it doesn’t really tell you anything that really helps you meet any of your goals.

I like to figure my net worth — but I’m only going to make the grossest estimate of the value of my “stuff”. I’ll be more accurate on house and cars since they are “big ticket” and do have real resale value.

What you really want to focus on is your “investable worth”: the assets you own that can make you money. That’s the value that best tells you when you can retire or have otherwise met your financial goals.

If we had to sell all our clothes right now, it would probably end up in a garage sale fetching a dollar per item. I think ‘designer’ clothes would end up in the same bin as the regular clothes. After you buy them new, do used brand name clothes really have more value over other clothing?

“If liquidating your IRA now would incur a 35% income-tax rate plus 10% penalty, then the accurate net worth of your IRA now is about half of what your account statements say.��my 6/9 article.

Thank you.

As for valuing the clothes, couldn’t you just do like a 2-4 year depreciation on the value from the date bought? That would reflect the reduction in value from year to year to eventually 0, in which case you’d give them to the salvation army or good will anyway.