At the beginning of a new year we often find ourselves thinking about how we are going to improve our lives over the coming year. Whether it be improvements in health, finance, education, or something else.

If we want to improve our financial situation, we first need to know what our financial position is to begin with. An easy way to do this is to calculate your net worth.

Write down a list of all your major assets and their market values (These are things like: your house, car, boat, bach, bank accounts, term deposits, retirement savings funds, shares etc).

Next, make a list of all your liabilities and their market values (Such as: your mortgages, loans, overdrafts, credit card debts, hire purchase etc).

Hopefully the total value of the assets exceeds the total value of the liabilities. If not, then you definitely need to improve that over the coming year! Talk to us and we will help.

It is important to re-visit this calculation at the beginning of each year to see how well you are doing.

Written by Allison Henderson