What Are You Worth? #257

been closed for years, your Long John Silver's. Uh No, not that one. On the other side of the street. We have a lot of closed down faster restaurants nearby, But I'm talking about the one that says on one side of the sign that says what's your and then on the other side it says sole Purpose. So it's always kind of intrigued me. It's it's kind of you know, it's it's a provocative sign for me. It always kind

of get you thinking a little bit. And so, you know, that was our goal for this episode, what's Your Worth? But we're specifically talking about your net worth. We're not gonna necessarily dive into all the things that we need to keep in mind when we are judging the quality, you know, of our life, our happiness. But yeah, we're we're talking about net worth. And I'm actually surprised that we haven't talked about this sooner before on the show. Yeah,

me too. It's such an integral number to personal finance. It is, it is, and and obviously your net worth is important, but it's also not, of course, the most important thing. If it were, that would mean Jeff Bezos war is it's two times more important than me. And we know that's Hansu maybe maybe one or two billion. I'll give him that. He's only worth like five times more than you, exactly exactly the human capital. I don't know what that means, but right, But yeah, so we're

gonna talk about net worth today. What net worth means, How you can calculate your own net worth, where it falls short, all those kind of things. Net Worth is the discussion we're gonna be having on the show today. Let's do it. But before we get to that, Matt not yet frugal or cheap and or the opposite of that, and maybe it's neither. Uh. The other day, if I did not get ripped off, but we kind of um. Birthday cards or buying a card in a store for

someone is, oh, you ripped yourself off. I ripped myself off. I didn't plan ahead. And granted, I have kids, so I don't need to buy cards or anyone. I could just have them make it out of construction paper. But I kind of felt the need for some reason this year from my mom's birthday to get a for real card. Usually I go to Trader Joe's because there are one dollar cards and they're really nice, but I get some

three butch chuck while you're at it. Yeah, maybe, and I just didn't have time to head to Trader Joe's this time, so I went to I went to Target, and I got a four dollar birthday card. I was looking at the cards. Some of them are nine and ten dollars for a birthday card, like music playing and like fuzzy stuff on the front. It's kind of crazy. It's out of control with a lot of money. But yeah, so did I rip myself off? Am I should I

have been more frugal or cheap? Or is it okay every once in a while to last minute buy a four dollar birthday card for someone you love. I don't think need to beat yourself up over it. Four dollars in the grand scheme of things, is that a big deal? Like, No, if that was us, if we were in that situation, that's just an expense that goes into our our giving category, which that's our category of our budget every month that we set aside for birthdays and money that we spend

on other people. But could you have spent those three dollars, those three additional dollars elsewhere, you know, if you since you didn't make it a traitor Joe's yeah, I guess, so you could have bought a bottle of wine. But I totally hear what you're saying. You know, I'm assuming you didn't plan ahead, you know not. And that's actually the most frustrating part for me when I spend money

because I didn't plan ahead. And of course, you know, I thought about my mom's birthday, thought about what I wanted to give her. I love her very much, and it was one of those things though where the vessel I just I don't know why I felt the need to deliver it that way want to, and typically I'm kind of anti that, Like I am the guy who will make something out of construction paper myself pre kids like I will do that. I don't care, Emily, where's

the construction paper? I told the markers, I totally used to do that. I don't care. Man, Yeah, I don't know. Just was one of those things that I I ended up doing, and I kind of beat myself up a little bit. I think it's totally fine to switch things up, you know, like that's something you've done in the past, but you know, it kind of makes it when you do by quote

unquote fancy card, makes it a little more special. And on top of that, you're spending it on somebody else, And so I tend to feel a little more freedom when it comes to spending money on other people. You're being a little more altruistic. You're giving that away to somebody else. You know, it doesn't necessarily need to be the very best deal, because the fact is, like you are paying for something. You're paying for a tar J card, and I'm guessing those cards might be a little bit

faancier than than the cards that a traitor Joe's. So even though it may not be something like that you normally would have done, I think it's I think it's totally fine, okay, all right, good, good to know. I'm glad you're not kicking me aside from my post as the co host of this No, no no, no, you're not on my list now for for people who have done poor things for their Okay, that's good to know. All right. Well, let's Matt mentioned the beer that we're gonna have on

this episode. This one's called You Who Enter Here, and this is an Imperial stout by an awesome brewery right down the street from us called Orpheous Brewing. So specifically, man, this beer is a very special stat This isn't any ordinary stout. But we're not going to get into all that now. Well, we'll share our tasting notes and our thoughts about this beer at the end of the episode. That's right, all right, Matt, Let's get onto the subject

at hand we're talking about. We'll talk about net worth exactly. So the big question of the day is what are you worth? And what is your net worth? And net worth is a really important measurement of your financial health, but you might not have any idea what yours is your monthly budget? Well, we've talked about that a lot.

It's a great snapshot and it actually massively influences your net worth because the more you grow the gap between your monthly income and your expenses, the more you'll have additional money to grow that net worth through saving and investing. So I think of budgeting as an amongst the trees you while net worth is taking that helicopter ride up to get a view of the entire forest. And both perspectives are super helpful for anyone who's striving to get

their finances in order and build wealth. But knowing your net worth and knowing how to figure it out and then how that factors into how you feel about your financial progress is something really important to look at. That's right, man, Essentially, net worth like it's a marker of how well you're doing specifically financially. You know, like there are going to be ups and downs, right depending on how long you've

been investing. Your net worth might have taken a really big hit in March back when the markets declined, but if you held on tight like you've likely seen it rebound and even surpass maybe where it was before the pandemic. But the thing is, when it comes to making smart moves with our money, one of the biggest problems is that it can just be really difficult to measure or judge how well we're doing financially. You know, we talk

about a lot of different numbers on the show. Personal finance can be really confusing, man, And because of this, we oftentimes will look outward to things that signal that we are doing well, you know. And so I'm talking about the things that we buy our home cars, like cell phones, and just like the things that we have

delivered to our front doors. These things are terrible indicators as to how we're doing financially, but they're often the things that, you know, they catch your eye, and it's how we Unfortunately, you know, we'll compare ourselves to others as well, and we all know how others how they can have an impact on our perception of how we're doing. Yeah, and that perception informs so much of how we feel

about our progress. And another I think in effective way for us to measure how we're doing is by one other specific number. We consider our salary or our last paycheck as being the marker of how well we're doing financially. If we make a good income, if that paycheck is big every two weeks, then we feel good about where we are in in regards to our standing with money. But we're talking about net worth and that is a much more important factor than just your salary or your income.

It's a much better barometer of how you're doing. And I think if you if you do well, if you make a decent salary, it can be attractive to two people like software engineers, doctors, or lawyers maybe to consider their income as one of the major representatives of how they're doing financially. But it doesn't matter how big your income is if you're spending it all every month, and if you're only looking at income and you're not looking at your expenses, then you're only seeing a part of

the equation. And so compared to buying that others can see, our salary is a bit more private, but unfortunately it's still a measure we tend to hang our hat on, and we think that net worth gives you a kind of a more balanced approach to seeing how you're actually doing when it comes to your money. Yeah, both of these things, right, your salary and what it is you

spend your money on. Both of these things are relative, and so because of that, they are their poor measures of how well we actually are doing financially, so obviously, yeah, this is where net worth comes in handy and why it's so important. It's just a great snapshot to to quickly visualize how our overall finances are doing, you know. Unlike relying on salary, which only focuses on your income, or just relying on buying stuff right, which only focuses

on some of our expenses. Net worth looks at the entire picture and is able to give you cold, hard numbers that that tell you like it is, part of net worth strength lies in the fact that it's consistent. Uh, it's unbiased, you know, it doesn't fluctuate with our emotions. We're human and and so that's why it's good for us to let data to allow that the proper numbers to inform how we're actually doing when it comes to

our personal finances. And then on top of that too, it can also be great when it comes to to goal setting. Since you know your net worth, it is so easily measured. So yeah, just after the break will cover how to track it and how to grow it. And of course Matt and I we believe that your net worth is important. We've been talking about why it's an important gauge. But it also has its shortcomings and we'll discuss those things too. Right after this all, Joe,

we'll back from the break. We're talking about net worth and why it's such an important thing, and it is, like you said, it's very important for us to detract our net worth. It's a very helpful number. But the thing is, it's not perfect, you know. It does fall short depending on what's going on in the market. Uh, your net worth, it can have big ups and downs.

So for example, I'm thinking, if you bought a home in two thousand and six and you still own it today for close to a decade, owning that home likely didn't not improve your net worth as the value plummeted and slowly then begin to to rise in the coming years, and so from one year to the next, depending on

on how your money is allocated. Net Worth isn't the best benchmark of how you are actually doing, you know, especially considering all the other areas of our lives that are arguably even more important than you know, how much we're worth. Yeah, your net worth isn't the end all be all. It doesn't dictate your level of happiness, right. Sometimes the people with the highest net worths are actually the unhappiest among us, and vice versa can be true.

People with very little net worth can find so much value in the most important things in life, which are typically people and how you spend your time. And you don't need a high net worth in order to enjoy those finer and cheaper things in life, right, like spending time with your friends, going on a family hike, the occasional fine craft beer, while that one bottle, like all those things, that one bottle might be kind of expensive,

but it's not ridiculously expensive. And even a lot of people a very little means can afford a nice beer from time to time. So while we're talking about the importance of net worth as a measuring stick in this episode, remember the other important non financial measuring sticks to the title of this episode is what are you worth? And the answer, in part at least, is that you're not

worth what your net worth is. And while it is a good barometer, that doesn't directly inform the value of your life and and how much fun and joy you can have. Yeah, there are lots of other aspects of life, right I'm thinking of like quality relationships. I'm thinking of the ability to to kind of manage our own time if you have like time, freedom and like meaningful work, Like, there are so many different ways that we need to keep in mind. All those things lead to more balance

and happiness in our lives. So we're saying that because we want to make sure that we couch this episode a little bit and you know, the things that are a little more important. But that being said, let's kind of move forward now with you know, money, Like, that's what we talk about on the show. We've been talking about net worth, why it's important, why it's not overly important, but let's get a little more practical with it. Let's

talk about how you can determine your net worth. A lot of folks out there probably wondering how you can figure the darn thing out. And the simple formula is you take your assets owned minus your debts owed. Your debts are your liabilities owed. So on the asset side, you know, you'll take ato account your your savings, different investments you have, the value of your home or maybe a business you own, basically anything that has significant value.

And then on the debt side, you want to include car notes, mortgage balances, student loans, credit cards, basically anytime you have payments, especially ones that are recurring payments. These are all examples of liabilities. All right, question for a friend, then, Matt, does their beanie baby collection count in their net worth? Like?

Is that something that's valuable enough to count? That's actually a good question because I think it would depend on how valuable that odd thing that they have is, you know, because I mean the short answer what you're looking for is no, like that doesn't really count. Like these are small, insignificant things that we own. Maybe your collection is that's the thing, Like, there might be somebody who owns something like that's really really valuable in the thousands of dollars.

And so if you own something that is worth I would say over five or ten dollars, I think that's when I at least would start including that when I'm calculating my net worth. Yeah, if you can hop on eBay and tell your meanie babies for five grand tomorrow, then count them in your network. That's an asset exactly. But I mean that being said, so the way we're talking about determining your net worth here like is by

doing it by hand. And while that is actually a pretty simple formula, it's not the easiest way, so they're actually better, faster ways to do it, and so that's what we're gonna talk about next. Yeah, totally. I love kind of having some help in that regard, and it just makes me think of why I had to learn certain kinds of math when there were calculators that I

could use. And the same thing holds is that, like, you don't necessarily have to figure out how to continually update your net worth by hand when you can use some sort of software that's gonna help you do that.

On the rag and Matt, I've been using Mint for a long time now, and while it doesn't have any of the features that a service like wine app has, which is specifically trying to help people budget, Mint is great for we're tracking what you have spent, and it helps you keep up with your overall assets and liabilities and and so in that regard, it helps you stay

up to speed on your net worth. If you look on the left hand side when you log into Mint, if you have a Mint account, you can get a real handy snapshot of your net worth on all of your pertinent accounts as you plug into log in information for your bank accounts for your investment accounts and you list what sort of car you own and properties you own. It will keep an updated tab of exactly where you're at when it comes to your net worth, and I like being able to see that snapshot on the RAG

when I log in. It's one of my favorite things about using Mint for sure. Nice man, you know, actually meant was the first time I saw my net worth? You know, like back in the day, I had entered in all my accounts, kind of linked up my accounts, and that was the first time I kind of was aware of the fact that, like, oh yeah, I guess net worth is something that is good to start tracking.

But recently I've been using Personal Capital, you know, so like Mint, you can see an up to date figure of your net worth without having to do a bunch of math by hand, but Personal Capital leans a little more into the investing side of things that Mint does. One of the things I love about Personal Capital is that it's got this thing called a you Index, which is essentially how your net worth is performing over time.

They're able to combine all of your investment holdings into a single number, and then you can track that along uh and compare it with other indexes like the SMP five hundred and so you essentially can see how your you know you index, like how you are doing compared to the overall market are depending on whichever index you want to follow. So, man, I found that to be really stinking cool. And a lot of folks have not

heard of personal capital before. I actually just wrote a review up on our website there at how too many dot com and we'll make sure that we linked to it in our show notes for this episode. So much better than like a stone tablet and a chisel, like keeping your net worth Like that not the way to do it. I prefer Papyrus. Do you know your love for ancient Egyptian history is coming out right now? Well?

I do like history and crappy typefaces, all right. Well, so now that we know, maybe the designer side of me coming up. Yeah, I mean you know about Pappy, about Papa IRUs, I mean, is that is that actually a type font? Yeah? I didn't know that. It's it's like this, yeah, dude, I know, like times, Doon, Roman and aerial, that's all I know. Sorry. And Helvetica here A lot of designers like that one, right, Yeah, Hevetica is a great one. But Papyrus is like this one

that's known. It's kind of got this cult following of people because so many individuals use it to like when they're making like their own business card or they're making their own sign or something like that. A lot of graphic designers like to make fun of it, because a lot of non designers love to use it because it looks fun, it looks interesting. Uh, and so it gets a bad rat because of that. All right, Yeah, if the late person is using it and the professionals not,

I can understand that. All right, Well, let's talk about to Matt. Obviously, if you're using one of those services to help you track your net worth, that's gonna be really nice. It's gonna come in handy. But evaluating what you're seeing then is really important. It would be ideal, of course, to see your net worth grow every single month,

but market shift and you will see fluctuation. And so as long as you're consistently saving more of your income and investing it wisely while at the same time avoiding unhelpful debt, that number will grow. It's just not going to be like consistently up into the right trajectory, right and I think for those of us who are maybe a little more anal retentive when it comes to following our net worth and tracking it, we might get bummed with the market has a temper centrop in a month

and we're like, man, my net worst down. That's not cool. Um. But yeah, like we said, net worth is a helpful measuring stick, but it's not perfect. And so yeah, when those markets do shift and when our net worth takes a hit, that shouldn't be a hit to our confidence or make us feel like we're not doing it right. That's just kind of part of how things go as

we're building wealth for the future, that's right, man. And the thing is too, I mean over the course of years right over, Like when you zoom out, you do want to see your net worth going up over time if you are seeing it kind of instead of going up into the right, if you're seeing it going down into the right, like, that's that's a bad sign cause for concern exactly. But I mean, I think a lot of our listeners too might be wondering, like when it comes to a specific numbers, like what should I be

not necessarily getting for what's normal right now? You know, like where should I be in United We came across some stats, uh, and it showed that the median net worth for somebody who is under thirty five is eleven thousand dollars. And so if you have calculated your net worth and you're like, I'm only sitting at like two grand, that's okay. There's not this massive chasm between you and

what the median person has and what. We wanted to share that because it can be helpful to see where you know your peers were other stack up, yeah, Matt. And it's interesting too, because net worth is so much about numbers. It's literally this hard number of assets minus debts. But at the same time, there's a certain sense to which your net worth is not a direct reflection of a number. And let me give this example of kind

of what I mean by that. For instance, if you went back to school to get an m b A and that cost fifty dollars, and you're now in fifty dollars of student loan debt because you went back to get that NBA, well, that will negatively affect your net

worth for a number of years. But the goal of getting that n b A is that you will have increased earnings after graduation for years and years to come, and that your ability to earn just a much better income over decades is going to far outwaigh the student loan debt you took on in order to get that advanced degree. But on the other end of the spectrum, right, let's say you bought a new Tesla and that is essentially going to be a drag on your net worth

because you'll never see a return on that investment. A car depreciates over time consistently, and is it going to pay back in any meaningful way. So when we're talking about maybe debts that we take on that will affect our net worth, let's think about whether that debt has the ability to positively affect our net worth in the future. And if it does, then there's a conversation that we need to have and it's something we need to think through.

And if it doesn't, I think it should make us pause even more before we consider taking on that debt. And I'm not saying that nobody should buy a new car, but you might want to make sure your net worth is in a good position before you do. Yeah, that's right, man. It's important for us to consider the quality or the different types of debt that we're settling ourselves with when

we are calculating our at worth. And one of the coolest things too about net worth, man, is you know, you don't necessarily have to to make a massive income in order to really build up your net worth over time. Growing that number requires spending less than you bring in and saving and investing that difference. Like, that's it. The larger we can grow that gap, the faster that we can accelerate our net worth goals. But you don't have to make six figures in order to have a meaningful

net worth every year. You know, I read a story about someone who worked a normal job as a secretary or a jenitor for like five or six decades and then dies with you know, five seven, eight million dollars in investments. You know, we'll link to a couple of those stories in our show notes, but like those are just so stink and inspiring, and it really illustrates the fact that you don't have to be a software engineer or a lawyer like you mentioned earlier, Joel, in order

to to have and to grow a massive net worth. Yeah, I agree, man, I love reading stuff like that, and and the goal is not necessarily to die at the right old age of with eight million dollars in investments. Right, It's not that your net worth should be hoarded and

shouldn't be used in retirement. But at the same time, when you read those stories in your Man, secretaries and janitors, people that had a really low income, we're able to build up a meaningful net worth through their investing lifetime. And it's like, man, if they can do it, so can we all of us out there? All right, Matt, we got more to get to, including the difference between liquid net worth and overall net worth and what if you've got a negative net worth. We'll tackle some of

those questions right after this break. All right, Joel, we're back from the break, and we're talking about net worth man, and we're gonna talk about how to grow your net worth. But before we talk about that, we're gonna touch on liquid net worth. I'll be honest, every time I hear liquid net worth, it kind of makes me think of like liquid gold, which makes me think of like an alexer. Oh, it makes me think of LVDA cheese. Oh my gosh, so gross. IM gonna say it makes me think of

have you ever seen Sweeney Todd. No, I haven't the kids sings like this song is like Bye parell Lea's miracle e licks. Sir, But is this cure all that you hear? Like hawks in like these olden times, I can't hear liquid net worth and not think of liquid gold elixirs. Get ready for Matt spinoff podcast where all he does is sing, I'm just gonna say the only two lines from every musical. I know it'll be a compact format podcast. I think I think people are gonna

be into it. Yeah, all right, So let's talk about liquid net worth. And when you look at the the median American net worth Matt you mentioned, if it's under thirty five, it's eleven thousand dollars. The overall age adjusted

American average net worth is a hundred thousand dollars. But most of that net worth is tied up in home equity, so it's not typically easily accessed, especially if someone has been in a home, let's say for fifteen twenty years, and they've built up a meaningful amount of home equity as they paid down the mortgage as their home has

risen in value. That's great, but you don't necessarily have easy access to those funds, and so liquid net worth can be a better measure of your ability to react to financial shocks and financial opportunities than just knowing your overall net worth. You don't really have it at hand for when needs actually arise. So I think that leads to to kind of a subpoint that diversified net worth

is a really important thing for people to shoot for. Two, If they're putting all their eggs in one basket and it's all about their homes appreciation and they're not saving, and they're not investing, and they're not trying to grow their net worth in other ways, well we would suggest taking kind of a more of a multi pronged approach to growing your net worth and not just banking on your home's value increasing. Yeah, which isn't a bad thing, right, it's not a bad thing that we've seen in the

value of our homes increase. But a lot of times it's difficult to access that money, you know. I mean, how difficult is it right now to get a helock? Uh, It's impossible, you know. And even then then you have to pay to access your net worth, get to pay interest to the bank in order to get some of that money back in your life. So it's net worth on paper, which is great, but it's not net worth in your pocket exactly. Yeah, and so a lot of folks too might be asking the question, like, what if

my net worth is negative? Right? And so, for example, let let's say someone is young, like maybe under twenty five years old. If they are like, there's a good chance that that person has a negative net worth. But if you are that young and you know, maybe you have a decently positive net worth, and kudos to you

for for being so on the ball. But for everyone else, you know, the main reason your net worth will typically be negative at this point is because the student loans and or maybe the lack of years of investing under your belt. That's one example. Another example might be, uh, maybe you are older, right, and maybe you haven't prioritized investing, and on top of that, maybe you've been too willing

to take on debt. In that case, maybe doing that calculation and seeing that ugly net worth number can be just the motivation you need to to finally make some changes. Yeah, we don't want to be like the ostrich, put our head in the sand not know the number, because I think when we do that, sometimes we maybe think we're doing better than we are, or maybe vice versa, sometimes we think we're doing worse than we actually are, and so having the facts in front of us can help

us make a more informed, better decision. And Matt, I agree. I love what you said about negative net worth. A lot of younger people strapped with student loans are going to do the calculation and they're going to realize that their net worth is negative, and then just getting to zero net worth is going to be a huge triumph. And it's actually even just more of a reason to get on the ball with with tracking it and attempting to grow that net worth and then setting new milestones

for you to be able to achieve. And I think net worth milestones, while like we said, can fluctuate, it can be helpful to kind of have those in the back of your mind as you think about what it looks like to make progress with your own personal finances. Yeah. Absolutely, man, you definitely don't want to discount climbing out of debt, like I mean, basically that's what you're saying. You're saying that like a lot of a lot of young folks are gonna spend a lot of time getting from negative

just to get up to zero. Uh. And you don't want to discount those gains made, you know, like getting on a debt's an awesome goal in and of itself. So, next, dude, let's talk about ways for individuals to grow their net worth. First of all, it's gonna be slow and steady. You know, it's it's a marathon, not a sprint, growing growing your net worth. It's not like a get rich scheme. But

it's a process of building wealth slowly. Uh. And so there are just honestly millions of different ways to increase your net worth, from something as small as, you know, maybe spending a little less on take out, to to something larger, you know, something as big as maybe a new job with a massive bonus. But then taking those different financial wins and then you know, telling that money what to do is crucial to growing your net worth.

And what we're talking about here essentially is budgeting. You need to be able to take the money that you have and put it to work for you. We've done episodes before on budgeting. Episodes fifty one, episodes one seventy six. Both of those were kind of different takes on budgeting, but for the vast majority of us, budgeting is such an important practice for us to implement into our lives

in order to to grow that net worth number. Yeah, if you're not budgeting, there's a there's a good likelihood you're not pursuing a higher net worth as as well as you could be. And in the end, Matt, we come back to this. It's two fundamentals to determine that networth number, decreasing debts that you owe and increasing the assets that you own. For most folks, this means investing more in the stock market, specifically in retirement accounts that

you have access to. If your employer offers a four oh one K with a match starting there, or you work or the government and you have a TSP offered to you, that's in all likelihood where you're gonna want to start investing. And if you don't have access to those, opening up your own i RA, a in low cost widely diversified index fund that is going to move that level of assets that you own, which over time is gonna have a massive effect on at least at one

half of your net worth. Yeah, and practically speaking, you can open your own retirement account on platforms that we mentioned all the time, like Vanguard, Fidelity, even M one and ally have great options as well. And so, Joe, you talked about increasing your assets owned, when it comes to, you know, decreasing your debts owed, we're talking about paying down debt, high interest rate credit card debt like that needs to be gone as soon as possible. That's a

no brainer. But then any debt that you have that's maybe less than six percent, that's gonna be a more nuanced conversation, right, And so, for example, you don't want to give up a company four one K match and then the compounding returns that you would receive from the market in order to pay off maybe a sub three percent mortgage. And so in this is that kind of depends on your individual circumstances and what your interest rates are. Yeah, most of us, when we're building our net worth, we're

not focused solely on one or the other. We're almost doing both at the same time. Like every month, I'm paying off on my mortgage and the mortgages for my rental properties, but I'm also putting money into my four oh one k in my IRA, and so at the same time, I'm decreasing my debts and I'm increasing my assets, and so my net worth is starting to see a swing. And after you're doing that same process over a number of years, you start to see a real shift and

what your net worth looks like. The great thing about building your net worth is that at a certain point in time, it starts to swing so hard and keep going up so quickly that it feels like the money that you've already put into those assets is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Exactly. Essentially, that's nirvana, right Like when you are able to have your money working for you harder than you are working for your money.

That's basically when you become financially independent. Yeah, exactly, and that's when you're like, man, I'm so glad I paid attention to my net worth all those years, exactly. It's know. Hopefully this conversation has helped people think about their net worth, the importance of tracking it, and also the ability to know how important it is in your financial life. It's of a lot of importance, but it's also not of

ultimate importance. Basically, when it comes down to it, you don't equal your net worth, and in particular, if you're a younger listener who recently got out of college and you're trying to get your money game together, and your net worths in the negative. That doesn't reflect poorly on you. And even if you're older and you've got a negative net worth, that doesn't mean you're less of a person.

It's a number that can be really helpful for seeing your personal finances in a quick snapshot, and it does a decent job of helping to reflect your personal financial progress over the years. But if your net worth isn't where you want it to be right now, don't let that get you down. There are all sorts of ways to attack that goal in the future while giving yourselves some grace right now recognizing that you aren't exactly where you want to be, but you can get there in

the future. Yeah, I think we should all be tracking and keeping it with our net worth, But you know, at the same time, this is one of those instances where it's important to maintain something Allan's right at the same time, like, we should avoid obsessing over that number because there's more to life than just a dollar amounts.

So if you have a mental or personal capital account, maybe check that net worth monthly, you know, just to check in or maybe even just once a quarter if you know you are prone to maybe looking at that number a little too much as you're precious. You know, it's an important number to know, but make sure you

know you do keep it in perspective. At the same time, hopefully, through consistent habits of saving and investing, we're all steadily increasing that net worth towards the status of becoming financially independent one day. Yeah, that's the goal man, financial independence. I think nirvana. That's that's when you and I are aiming four. That's what we want our listeners to be aiming for. We we do think that if you handle money well over a long period of time, you can

achieve financial independence. And like we said earlier, Janitor secretaries, they've been able to do it over the years on small amounts of pay. It doesn't take earning six figures in order to get there. All right, Matt, Let's get back to the beer that we had on the show today. This one's called Ye Who Enter Here by Orpheus Brewing. It's an Imperial stout aged in whiskey barrels with chili peppers, coffee and vanilla beans. Which means this thing is packed

with like massive amounts of flavors. So what are your thoughts on this beer? Dude? Dude, this is such a good beer. Uh, Like you mentioned all the different ingredients there, and so I will first state that this beer isn't too heavy in body. I think sometimes when you read a label like that and you see all the different flavors that are packed in there, you expect it to

maybe almost be like soupy. But I feel like this one has found a perfect balance and being you know, heavy enough to where it can contain all those flavors, but then not too heavy to where you don't want to finish this beer. First though, I want to point out the fact that the chili peppers, man, it has a perfect amount of heat you know in the throat for sure, And most people are probably listening are like heat in a beer. What are you talking about, dude?

That chili pepper spice is so good? Chili peppers in a stout, Man, it's like a match made in heaven in my opinion, and they basically perfected it in this beer. It's so good. Yeah, And I feel like to be with his beer when you take it and you swirl it a little bit. The head of the beer, like the tiny little bubbles. It almost has kind of like a like a red chili pepper kind of color to it. Totally kind of accentuates the fact that there's a little

bit of heat in this beer. But obviously you can taste those coffee notes, like those deep, earthy, uh stout like notes. But then it's got that vanilla as well to kind of brighten it up and kind of shine some light on this beer and give a little little bit of sweetness. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think the sweetest suit comes from the fact that's Asian whiskey barrels. That always adds a nice sweet note to it that I'm always looking for. But yeah, man, what were your

additional thoughts on this beer? I mean, dude, I love stouts with chili peppers that are aged in barrels for two years. I mean yeah, this was basically a perfect representation of the style and it's one of my favorite styles, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not to mention on the label, one of one of my favorite Atlanta artists got to draw the label for this one. His name's our Land and his art is incredible and so I mean it's like a trifecta of like a local beer, an incredible beer,

and then awesome art on the label. So yeah, you and I we actually both have some are Land artwork up on her home. But he's a in particular in this part of town, the parts that we live in. There is a lot of his artwork around town. You know, he's kind of like a street artist, but it's like this mix between it's he's kind of like a folk street artist. Maybe it's herben Folk or something maybe like what I've probably classified as urban forbin folk, Yeah, exactly,

And so we see a lot of his stuff around town. Uh, and it's also great to see his artwork on the label as well. So man, I'm glad you and I got to share this one. For folks who happen to be in the Atlanta area, definitely look or fee us up if you haven't already. Yeah, they're basically located in Piedmont Park, right off the belt line. It's a great place, very central in Atlanta. Yeah for sure. All right, Matt,

that's gonna do it for this episode. For anybody who wants show notes for this episode, including a link to some of the places where you can accurately track your net worth. Check out our show notes on our website at how to money dot com, and we would be incredibly thankful, if you haven't already, if you left us a review over at Apple Podcasts or honestly, wherever it is that you listen to podcast those reviews, honestly, they

help us keep going and growing at the same time. Man, all right, that's gonna be it for this episode, Joel. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.