A personal balance sheet that holds up.

What goes on a personal balance sheet

Assets first. Cash in checking and savings, CDs, taxable brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, the house, any rental property, vehicles, an ownership stake in a business, and money owed to you by someone who will pay it. A life insurance policy with cash value belongs here too, at its cash surrender value rather than its death benefit.

Liabilities are everything you owe, including the ones that never send a monthly statement: mortgage and HELOC balances, auto loans, student loans, credit card balances, personal and margin loans, any business debt you personally signed for, and taxes owed but not yet paid. A field-by-field walkthrough lives in list of assets and liabilities.

One naming point trips people up. A net worth statement and a personal financial statement describe the same arithmetic, and a bank's PFS form is a net worth statement with extra schedules bolted on. Where the two documents part ways covers which one a given request wants.

How to value each line

Cash and deposit accounts go on at the statement balance. Brokerage accounts go on at the most recent market close. Retirement accounts go on at the vested balance, which is a pre-tax number: a traditional IRA or 401(k) carries an embedded tax bill that the balance does not show, so $400,000 in a traditional 401(k) is not $400,000 of spendable money. What a net worth statement is walks through the standard conventions line by line.

Real estate is the line people inflate. Use a conservative market estimate built from recent comparable sales on your street, or an automated estimate as a cross-check, and never the price you paid unless you bought last month. Vehicles go on at private-party value, which sits below dealer retail. Collectibles, jewelry, and art are worth what a buyer will pay, so value them low or leave them off. A defined benefit pension usually stays off the statement entirely unless the plan quotes you a lump-sum cash value.

A worked example

Take a married couple, both 41, in a house worth about $520,000.

Assets: $18,000 in checking and savings, $9,000 in a high-yield savings account, $214,000 across two 401(k)s, $46,000 in a taxable brokerage account, $520,000 for the house, and $31,000 for two paid-off cars at private-party value. Total assets: $838,000.

Liabilities: $341,000 left on the mortgage, $22,000 in student loans, and $6,400 on credit cards. Total liabilities: $369,400.

Net worth: $468,600. That sits above the $155,600 median for families headed by someone aged 35 to 44 in the Federal Reserve's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, and most of the gap is house equity plus a dozen years of 401(k) contributions, which is how it usually works. More formats, including the version a bank asks for, are in net worth statement examples, and the net worth calculator does the arithmetic if you would rather not. Percentiles for each age group are on our sister site's net worth by age page.

How often to update it, and what moves the number

Monthly is the right cadence for tracking. Often enough to catch a trend, and a fixed date each month keeps the habit going. For a loan application, lenders generally want a statement dated within 30 to 90 days, and an SBA package sets its own window, so rebuild the statement before you apply rather than after a request lands. How often to update a personal financial statement covers the deadlines different lenders set.

Three lines do most of the moving. Home value drifts silently and you only confirm it when you refinance or sell. Market swings in brokerage and retirement accounts can move the total by tens of thousands in a quarter without you touching anything. Mortgage principal grinds the liability side down every month, and it is the only one of the three you control.

How you compare: median net worth by age

The Federal Reserve's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, published October 9, 2026, put median family net worth at $215,900. By age of the family's reference person, the medians were $33,000 for under 35, $155,600 for 35 to 44, $253,700 for 45 to 54, $411,900 for 55 to 64, $431,300 for 65 to 74, and $504,900 for 75 and older.

Use the median for comparison. The 2025 mean across all families was $1,241,500, nearly six times the median, because a small number of very large balance sheets pull the average up.

Once you have your own number, the open question is where to keep the statement. A spreadsheet is free and fully under your control right up until the month you forget to update it. Software keeps balances current and exports a lender-ready PDF. The tradeoff between the two takes 5 minutes to read before you commit either way.