Net Worth Calculator

It tells you what your income will have to come from once the paychecks stop. Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe. During a career, a good salary can hide a thin balance sheet; in retirement the balance sheet, together with Social Security and any pension, is the whole story.

The number does three jobs from your late fifties on. It is the pool your withdrawals come from, so it sets how much you can spend. It is the starting point for your estate plan, so it decides what your children, grandchildren and charities eventually receive and whether estate tax is a question at all. And it is a yearly check on whether spending, markets and gifts are moving the way you intended.

A single headline figure cannot do all three jobs, because a dollar in a traditional IRA, a dollar of home equity and a dollar in a savings account are not worth the same to you. This page shows how to build the full balance sheet, then how to split it into the figures that actually drive retirement decisions: investable assets, home equity, income streams you cannot sell, and the tax embedded in pre-tax accounts.

Add up every asset at today's value and subtract every debt at today's balance:

Assets for most households near or in retirement:

• Cash: checking, savings, money market funds, CDs and Treasury bills. This is also your spending reserve; see the cash reserve calculator.
• Taxable investments: brokerage accounts, individual stocks and bonds, funds, and savings bonds.
• Retirement accounts: traditional and Roth IRAs, 401(k), 403(b) and 457 balances, inherited IRAs and HSAs. Enter the full balance here and deal with tax separately (below).
• Real estate: your home at a conservative market value, plus any rental property, vacation home or land.
• Other: business interests, the cash surrender value of permanent life insurance, deferred annuities at their surrender value, vehicles, and collectibles you would actually sell.

Liabilities are usually short at this stage:

• Mortgage: the payoff balance, not the original loan.
• Home equity line or reverse mortgage: the balance drawn, including accrued interest.
• Education loans: Parent PLUS loans, or private loans you co-signed for a child or grandchild.
• Margin loans, auto loans, and card balances you carry past the statement date.
• Taxes owed: a large Roth conversion or capital gain this year creates a tax bill that is already a liability.

Of that $3.5 million, about $2.7 million is investable: cash, brokerage and retirement accounts. The house contributes $783,000 of equity after the mortgage, but it only pays for groceries if Linda and Tom sell it or borrow against it. That split is why the calculator shows investable assets and home equity on their own lines. If borrowing against the house is a possibility after 62, our reverse mortgage calculator estimates what your home equity could lend.

Leave them out of the headline figure and value them on a separate line. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, the source of the age benchmarks below, does not count Social Security or defined-benefit pensions in net worth, so including them would make any comparison meaningless (Federal Reserve, 2023). They also cannot be sold, borrowed against or left to heirs, apart from survivor benefits.

Ignoring them entirely is the larger mistake. Tom's pension pays $2,200 a month. Valued as 18 years of payments discounted at 5% a year, it is worth about $313,000 today. A household with $2 million and a large pension can safely spend more than a household with $2.5 million and none, because the pension covers a slice of spending that the portfolio never has to.

The practical approach: list each guaranteed income stream (Social Security for each spouse, pensions, annuity payments) with its monthly amount, its inflation adjustment if any, and what continues to a surviving spouse. Then subtract that income from your spending. The gap is what your investable assets must fund. If you are still deciding between a pension lump sum and monthly payments, the present value is the number to compare with the lump sum; see pension lump sum vs. annuity.

It is your net worth minus the income tax that will be owed when pre-tax money comes out. Every dollar in a traditional IRA or 401(k) is taxed as ordinary income when withdrawn, by you or by your heirs. A Roth dollar generally is not, and a taxable brokerage dollar is taxed only on its unrealized gain, which the step-up in basis at death may erase.

For Linda and Tom, assume their traditional IRA withdrawals will be taxed at an average of 24% counting federal and state tax. The embedded tax on $1,450,000 is about $348,000, so their after-tax net worth is closer to $3.18 million than $3.53 million. Two neighbors with identical statement totals can differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars on this measure alone.

The after-tax view shapes several decisions:

• Roth conversions. Converting in low-income years before required minimum distributions begin, at age 73, or 75 if born in 1960 or later, can lower the average rate on the whole pre-tax balance. See Roth conversions before RMDs.
• Withdrawal order. Which account you draw from first changes both lifetime tax and the value you leave behind. See retirement withdrawal order.
• Who inherits what. Pre-tax accounts are worth more to a charity, which pays no income tax, or to an heir in a low bracket. Most non-spouse heirs must empty an inherited IRA within ten years; see the inherited IRA 10-year rule.

Median net worth peaks at about $410,000 for households headed by someone 65 to 74, and the mean reaches about $1.79 million (Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022). The survey runs every three years and is the most reliable source of household wealth data in the United States.

Source: Federal Reserve, Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022, Table 2. Values in 2022 dollars.

The mean is more than four times the median in every age group from 55 up, because a small number of very wealthy households pull the average up. For many readers of this site, neither figure is the relevant peer group. Across all ages, the median household in the top 10% by net worth holds about $3.8 million, and the median household between the 75th and 90th percentiles holds about $1.04 million (same source).

Treat these figures as context, not a target. A couple with $1.5 million and two pensions may be better placed than a couple with $3 million and none. The questions that matter are in the next section.

It is enough if your investable assets can cover the gap between your spending and your guaranteed income for as long as either spouse might live. Rules of thumb built on salary, such as the Millionaire Next Door formula of age times income divided by ten, stop working once there is no salary, so use a spending-based test instead:

1. Annual spending. Include income tax, Medicare premiums, travel, gifts to family and an allowance for home repairs.
2. Minus guaranteed income. Social Security for both spouses, pensions and annuity payments.
3. Divide the gap by investable assets. This is your withdrawal rate.

Suppose Linda and Tom spend $150,000 a year including taxes, and Social Security plus Tom's pension bring in $86,000. The $64,000 gap is about 2.4% of their $2.7 million in investable assets. That leaves room for a long retirement, a market decline, long-term care costs and meaningful gifts. A withdrawal rate near 4% is the traditional guide for a 30-year retirement; well above 5% calls for a closer look at spending or timing.

The Retirement Withdrawal Calculator tests the gap against different returns and time horizons, and how much you need to retire walks through the reasoning in more depth.

For federal estate tax, only above a high threshold: estates of people who die in 2026 have a basic exclusion amount of $15,000,000 per person (IRS, 2026). A surviving spouse can generally add the unused portion of the first spouse's exclusion through a portability election. Some states levy their own estate or inheritance tax at much lower thresholds, so check your state separately.

Below the federal threshold, net worth still drives the estate plan. Your executor will need the same inventory you build here: each account, its owner, its beneficiary designation and how it passes. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by beneficiary form, not by will, so a balance sheet that lists beneficiaries next to each account catches mistakes before they matter. The Estate Planning Worksheet is built for that, and estate planning basics covers the documents.

If you plan to give during your lifetime, a known net worth lets you decide how much you can give without touching the money your own plan needs. See gifting to children and grandchildren.

Once a year, on December 31, with the same method each time. Each year's required minimum distribution is calculated from the prior December 31 balance, so year-end statements do double duty (IRS).

• Record four figures: total net worth, investable assets, home equity and after-tax net worth.
• Note what moved them: withdrawals, market returns, gifts, large purchases. A decline caused by a $100,000 contribution to a grandchild's 529 plan is a decision, not a problem.
• Compare the change with your withdrawal rate. Falling faster than you spend over several years is the signal to revisit the plan.
• Keep it where a spouse or executor can find it. A dated list of accounts and contacts is one of the most useful things you can leave.

Median net worth is lower for households 75 and older, about $336,000, than for those 65 to 74, about $410,000 (Federal Reserve, 2022). That is what spending in retirement looks like. The goal is not a rising number every year; it is a decline that matches the plan you chose. For a longer treatment, read the net worth tracking guide.