Guide I · 5 min read
If you live with a partner, your individual net worth is the wrong figure. The right one is the household total — both of you, plus anything shared, minus every debt either of you carries.
Household net worth is straightforward arithmetic. Add up the market value of everything you and your partner own. Subtract every debt either of you owes. The result is your household net worth.
Assets means cash, ISAs, GIAs, pensions (yes, including the one with the old employer you forgot about), property at today's value, vehicles, crypto, business equity. Debts means mortgage, student loans, credit cards, car finance, the bit of your overdraft you've been ignoring.
The formula
Take a couple in their late thirties, both working, one kid, a flat outside London. Here's what their figure looks like.
Late-thirties household
Notice what the figure includes that a normal budget app would miss: pensions and the equity in the house. Those two together are almost always the biggest part of a household's wealth, and they're invisible in your current account.
Once two people share rent, a mortgage, a fridge, a child or a holiday budget, "my net worth" is a fiction. One partner's pension contributions affect the other partner's retirement. One partner's debt affects what the household can buy. A mortgage in one name still consumes joint income.
Tracking only your own number turns money into a competition. Tracking the household number turns it into a project you're both working on.
The ONS Wealth and Assets Survey publishes the real numbers — read it if you want precise percentiles by age band. Don't anchor too hard on averages: the distribution is brutal, and most people compare themselves to people richer than them anyway. The point of tracking is not to beat an average. It's to see your own line going up.
Both of you. Open each account, write down the balance. Pensions are the one people skip — don't skip them. Find every old workplace pension.
Mortgage statement, credit card statements, student loan account. Use today's outstanding balance, not the original.
Joint account, the house, the mortgage. Everything else stays attributed to whoever owns it. You don't need to merge accounts to share a figure.
Last Sunday of the month, 20 minutes, the same date every month. Put it in both calendars. The cadence matters more than the spreadsheet.
Read the next guide: how to actually run the monthly check-in with your partner. Or if you just want your number right now, the calculator takes about two minutes.