Net worth

Is the house you live in part of your net worth?

Yes for the balance sheet. No for the retirement projection. Those are different questions, and treating them as one is how people end up planning a retirement they cannot fund.

Nirmal Amin 20 August 2026

The balance-sheet answer: yes

Net worth is what you own minus what you owe. A house is something you own and a mortgage is something you owe, so both belong. Leaving the house out while keeping the mortgage in produces a number that is simply wrong.

The retirement answer: no

A financial independence projection asks a narrower question: how much do you have that could fund your spending? The home you live in cannot, for a simple reason — selling it means buying or renting somewhere else, and the money mostly goes straight back out.

You cannot spend the roof. A retirement projection that counts a 400,000 house as investable capital will tell you that you are close to financial independence when you are not, and it will be confidently wrong for years.

This is why our FIRE calculator excludes it entirely, and why our net worth calculator shows the two figures separately.

The genuine exceptions

You intend to downsize. If you will move somewhere cheaper, the difference is real investable capital. Count that difference, not the whole value, and be conservative: moving costs money and people downsize less than they plan to.

You will move somewhere much cheaper. Selling in an expensive city and moving to a cheaper region or country genuinely releases capital. Same rule — the difference, not the value.

Property you do not live in. A rental produces income and can be sold without rehousing you. That is investable, and it belongs in the projection like any other asset.

Why it feels wrong

For a lot of people the house is most of their wealth, and being told it does not count toward retirement is unwelcome. It is worth separating two claims: the house is not worthless, it is not spendable while you live in it.

It does real financial work — it removes rent from your retirement spending, which lowers your FIRE number substantially. That is a large benefit, and it shows up in the projection as a smaller target rather than a bigger portfolio. Which is the more honest place for it.

Common questions

Should I include home equity or the full property value?

In net worth, include the full value as an asset and the outstanding mortgage as a liability. The equity is the difference, and listing both is more useful because it shows the leverage rather than hiding it.

Does paying off my mortgage early help my FIRE date?

It does, but through the spending side rather than the portfolio side: no mortgage payment means lower annual spending, which lowers the target you need. Whether it beats investing the same money depends on your mortgage rate against your expected return, and the certainty of the guaranteed return has real value.

How should I value my house?

Conservatively, and rarely. Use a realistic sale price rather than the most optimistic listing nearby, and update it once a year at most. Frequent revaluation of an illiquid asset adds noise to a series that is meant to show a trend.

Where this comes from

Two figures, one app

TLDR Money keeps your net worth and your financial independence projection in the same place, with the residence counted in the first and excluded from the second — so you are never accidentally reading one as the other.

Not out yet. TLDR Money International is in build for the United States and the United Kingdom first, on iPhone and Android. The calculators are free and need no account.

Published 20 August 2026.