It is very normal for anyone on the fire path to feel anxies about their net worth. After all if you are planning for retiring on a limited investment portfolio every little movement in the market can cause emotional changes for you. These are the ways that I use to track my net worth without adding to my anxiety
- Track the value of your primary residence but just add a fixed value for it
- Both mint and Personal Capital allow you to add the value of your home. Both also allow it to be dynamically calculated using Zillow’s algorithm. Do not hook up a zillow number to your home value. It moves too much anyways and is not accurate. Besides, your home value is highly leveraged and you can be up to 4X leveraged. A small movement is amplified by multiple folds and can cause storms in your net worth. If you are not selling your home any time soon just add your house’s fair value to your net worth.
- Do not check your net worth more than once a day
- Focus on making and saving money than tracking money
- Do not over optimize anything. Markets are volatile and there is nothing you can do to know whether you should invest in index A vs index B. If you are investing in a large index fund you are doing the right thing
Hope these help. They have helped me tremendously and I don’t really have a money anxiety anymore. Instead I just focus on my family and work.
Mark my money 