How can I see my net worth over time?

Your net worth over time is drawn by the Net worth report in Money by Zaweba. Open the Reports page with Ctrl+R, choose Net worth and set any date range you like, and Money builds the line from the balances of all your accounts, including loans and mortgages and investments you value by hand. A shorter net worth trend also sits on the Home dashboard, so you see the direction every time you open the file.

What goes into the figure

Net worth here is simply the total of every account's balance on each date. Current accounts, savings and cash add to it. Credit cards and loan or mortgage accounts, which carry what you owe, count against it. Investment accounts add whatever value you've given them.

An account's balance on a date is worked out from its opening balance plus every transaction up to that date, and it counts as nothing before the account's opening date. That means the line starts at zero before any account opened, then steps up as each one begins. The figures are checked in the app's own tests against the sum of account balances on 13 different dates, so the line and your registers always agree.

Setting it up so the line means something

The report can only show what's in the file, so the first job is to add every account that matters, not only the ones you spend from. Use New account on the File menu for each savings account, card, loan, mortgage and investment. Give each an opening balance and an opening date. If you want the history to start at a particular point, say the first of January, use that date and the balance on that day for every account.

For investments, pensions or a property, Money doesn't fetch prices. Instead, open the investment account and use Update value whenever you have a new valuation, such as an annual statement. Money records the rise or fall as of that date, and the net worth line moves with it. The sample file shows this well: its house is held as a manually valued investment account, so net worth isn't just the mortgage.

Reading the report

Choose a date range that suits the question. A year shows seasonal patterns, such as a dip after Christmas or a rise when an annual bonus lands. Several years show the slower story of a mortgage shrinking and savings building. Each report has a chart and a table, so you can read exact figures as well as the shape.

If the line jumps oddly, it's usually one of three things: an account that was added with the wrong opening date, a statement that hasn't been imported yet, or an investment that hasn't been updated in a long while. Fix the account or the import, and the report redraws from the corrected balances.

The Home dashboard trend

Press Ctrl+H from anywhere to return to the Home page. Alongside account balances, bills due, this month's budget and where the money went, it shows a net worth trend. It's a summary rather than a full report, but it's enough to notice whether things are moving the right way without opening anything else.

Keeping a copy

To keep a record outside the app, export the Net worth report. CSV gives you plain numbers that open cleanly in a spreadsheet; PDF gives an A4 page with the chart and table, which you can print or file. Exporting once a year makes a tidy record to look back on.

The report is a picture of your own figures, nothing more. How you use it is up to you, but a line you can see is easier to keep an eye on than a total you have to add up by hand.