Do you know where you are personally?

[Account Closed]

How many of you are aware of your personal balance sheet? While, I don't worry about pennies, I do track my balance sheet.

A personal balance sheet is slightly different than a business balance sheet.

Major Elements

Assets - Liabilities = Net Worth

It can be easy to think of investing as just the assets we buy, there is much more to it than that. Assets are great, but if your debt is to high it really doesn't matter.

Bottom line, I want to know that my net worth is growing and that I'm counting real assets and fully recognizing any debts that I have.

[Account Closed]

Jon,

Part of the reason I like real estate is that I have so much more of the control. My wife and I both had far more in stock in years past and watched almost 200K disappear. While that might happen temporarily with a real estate investment it makes little difference because on my plate it is a long term hold and the property is income producing.

I have followed many financial advisers over the years. I had plans of being a financial adviser at one time. I'm interested in how they invest their own money than how much they make. Many of them have very modest success in their investments at best. The few that do well or even very well diversify out of the stock market. There are so many alternative investments out there that generally only accredited investors see. I will probably begin putting money into some of these over time, but I having so much fun in RE that I just haven't done it.

My wife still has some money in funds, but it makes up less than 1% of our assets. I tend to ignore that investment because I considered lost. I suspect that if I had the time, energy and interest, I could make money in stocks, but I have know desire to invest any of that.