Mom's Got Money

CHAPTER 2How to Determine Your Household Net Worth

My husband and I sat at our dining room table after dinner one night staring at two very different spreadsheets we created. The table was a long, old conference table that we bought at an antiques auction. It was big enough to fit several people around it, but there were no dinner plates on it or guests around it that night. Instead, it was filled with stacks of papers that we pored over as we tried to make a huge decision together—the first big one since we walked down the aisle earlier that year.

This was well before we had kids, before we owned our own house, and before I started my business. In other words, we had our entire future ahead of us, and it rested on the decision we made that night.

Each spreadsheet represented a different life path. The documents were full of numbers, calculations, and financial projections trying to predict where we would be financially in 20 years depending on which option we chose.

Spreadsheet A showed what our financial life would look like in 20 years if my husband stayed at his job. We factored in retirement contributions and him getting a modest raise each year. We also calculated in our desire to one day buy a house, have children, and guessed at how much money I'd bring in with my job over time.

We tried to be as conservative as possible when calculating these numbers, low‐balling wherever possible. When we were finished, it seemed like if we were responsible with our money and kept ...