Is My Home Part of My Net Worth? How to Count a House and a Mortgage

Yes. Your home is an asset, your mortgage is a debt, and they go on the page as two separate lines.

What catches people is not whether to count the house. It is what number to write next to it. For most homeowners the home is the largest single line they have, so a generous guess moves everything.

Here are five ways to put a value on it, what each is good for, and why it is worth knowing your number both with the house and without it.

Every line in its place, including the biggest one. Example data.

The short version

• List the home at what it would sell for, and the mortgage at the balance still owed.

• Never net them off in your head. Two lines, always.

• Use a cautious value. A hopeful one flatters the whole picture.

• Work out your net worth with the home and without it. They answer different questions.

Five ways to value your home

Method	What it is	Watch for
Recent nearby sales	What similar homes near you sold for in the last few months	The best one on the street is not yours
Tax assessment	The value your county uses for property tax	It often lags the market, in either direction
Online estimate	An automated figure from a property site	Treat it as a range, not a number
An agent's opinion	A local agent's view of a likely sale price	It may lean optimistic if they would like the listing
Appraisal	A paid, formal valuation	The most reliable, and rarely needed just for this

For a quarterly net worth figure, recent nearby sales with a cautious eye is enough. You are not selling the house. You are trying not to fool yourself.

How much the choice of number matters

Take a household that owns $121,700 outside the home and owes $20,000 outside the mortgage, with $198,000 left on the mortgage.

Home valued at	Total owned	Total owed	Net worth
$290,000, cautious	$411,700	$218,000	$193,700
$310,000, middle	$431,700	$218,000	$213,700
$340,000, hopeful	$461,700	$218,000	$243,700

Same household, same day, and a $50,000 spread that comes entirely from one guess. Nothing she did changed. This is why the method matters more than the decimal places.

Pick one way of valuing the home and use the same way every time. A consistent cautious number shows you real change. A number that moves with your mood shows you nothing.

The mortgage side

Write down the balance still owed today, from your latest statement. Not the original loan, and not the monthly payment.

Anything else secured on the home goes on the debt side too.

• A second mortgage

• A home equity loan

• The amount drawn on a home equity line of credit

• Any property tax you owe and have not paid

The difference between the value and everything owed against it is your equity. On the middle line above, that is $310,000 minus $198,000, or $112,000.

What you own and what you owe, added up for you. Example data.

Why to know the number without the house

Because you cannot spend a kitchen.

Home equity is real wealth, and it is also the hardest kind to use. You can reach it by selling, which costs money and means living somewhere else, or by borrowing against it, which is a new debt.

So it helps to keep two figures. Your net worth including the home tells you what you have built. Your net worth without it tells you what you could draw on in a difficult year or live on in retirement without moving.

View	Owns	Owes	Net
With the home	$431,700	$218,000	$213,700
Without the home or the mortgage	$121,700	$20,000	$101,700

Neither is the true one. If your plan for later life depends on staying in the house, the second figure is the one doing the work.

If you rent

Then this line is empty, and that is not a failing. A renter has no home equity and no mortgage, and often has more in accounts she can reach. Count what you have, and compare yourself with your own number last quarter.

If you own a rental or a second home

Each property gets its own pair of lines: a cautious value, and the balance owed against it. Keep them separate from your main home so you can see what each one is doing.

Three mistakes with the home line

1. Using what you paid. The purchase price is history. What it would sell for now is the figure.

2. Using the best sale on the street. Use the typical one, and lean low.

3. Changing method between quarters. If the home rose $20,000 because you switched from the tax assessment to an online estimate, nothing happened.

Put yours in one place, free

This is the job the Net Worth Tracker does. La Soglia, the free membership of the Money Mastery System, holds your home, your mortgage and everything else you own and owe in one place, personal and business together, with no bank connection and no card. Enter the two lines once, update them each quarter, and the change is there to see.

If you are new to the idea, start with our post on what counts toward net worth. If retirement is the question behind it, the nest egg needed in every state assumes a paid-off home and shows what that changes.

Bring it to the Collective

Not sure what value to use for your home? Ask in the discussion feed. The Money Mastery Collective is open on the free membership.

Questions we hear

Do I include my house in my net worth?

Yes. List the home as an asset at a cautious sale value and the mortgage as a separate debt.

What value should I use for my home?

What it would realistically sell for today, leaning low. Recent sales of similar homes nearby are a sensible guide.

Is home equity the same as net worth?

No. Equity is the home's value minus what is owed against it. Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe.

Should I calculate net worth without my home?

It is worth knowing both. The figure without the home shows what you could use without selling or borrowing against the house.

References

The treatment of a primary residence as an asset and a mortgage as a debt follows the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. The household figures are our own worked example.

Start free with La Soglia

La Soglia is the free membership of the Money Mastery System. It gives you the Net Worth Tracker, where everything you own and everything you owe sits in one place, and the Money Mastery Collective. There is no card to enter and no bank connection.

Start free with La Soglia

Keep in touch

Donna shares a short version of posts like this one on Instagram and LinkedIn. Follow along there, or find everything in one place on our links page.

A note on what this is

This article is educational. The Money Mastery System is an educational tool, not financial software, and nothing here is legal, tax, investment or financial advice. The figures are illustrations, and how to value a property depends on its market and your own situation. For guidance on your own circumstances, please speak with a qualified professional who knows them.

21 Smart Ways to Cut Business Expenses Without Hurting Your Business

Cutting expenses has a bad reputation, and it is easy to see why. It sounds like shrinking, sacrificing, and white-knuckling your way through a smaller business. But that is not what smart cost-cutting actually is. Done well, trimming expenses is not about doing less, it is about spending with intention, so that every dollar left in your business is one that genuinely earns its place. The money you free up does not disappear, it becomes your pay, your cushion, or fuel to grow. That is why the goal here is not the biggest cuts, but the smartest ones.

Below are 21 ways to cut business expenses without hurting your business, grouped so you can move through them easily. You do not need to do all 21. Even acting on a handful can free up real money this month. As you read, keep a simple list of the ones that apply to you, and if you'd like a clean place to capture them, the free Money Mastery Net Worth Tracker gives you a simple spending review to work alongside this list.

Subscriptions and Recurring Costs

1. Audit every recurring charge. Pull the last three months of statements and list every subscription and recurring fee. Seeing them all in one place is often a shock, and the first cut is usually obvious.

2. Cancel the tools you forgot you had. Almost every business has at least one subscription still charging for something no longer used. Cancel these first, they are pure savings with zero downside.

3. Downgrade plans you have outgrown or over-bought. Many tools have a cheaper tier that covers everything you actually use. Check whether you are paying for premium features you never touch.

4. Consolidate overlapping tools. If two apps do nearly the same job, keep the better one and drop the other. Overlap is a quiet, common source of waste.

5. Switch annual instead of monthly for keepers. For the tools you know you will keep, the annual price is often meaningfully cheaper. Only do this for the ones you are certain about.

6. Ask for a loyalty or retention rate. Many providers offer a discount if you mention leaving. A five-minute message can lower a bill you would have paid at full price for years.

Suppliers, Services, and Fees

7. Renegotiate with current suppliers. Long-standing clients have leverage. Simply asking a supplier for better terms works more often than most owners expect.

8. Get a fresh quote from a competitor. Even if you stay put, a competing quote gives you real numbers to negotiate with, and sometimes reveals you have been overpaying for years.

9. Review your payment processing fees. Card and payment fees quietly eat into every sale. Compare rates, because a lower percentage compounds across everything you sell.

10. Bundle services where it genuinely saves. Sometimes combining services with one provider lowers the total, but only bundle when the math actually works, not for convenience alone.

11. Question every "just in case" expense. Costs kept out of vague fear rather than real use are prime candidates for cutting. If you cannot name the last time it helped, question it.

How You Work

12. Reclaim your own time as a cost. Time spent on low-value tasks is an expense too. Ask whether an hour of your work is better spent earning than doing something you could drop or simplify.

13. Batch tasks to cut waste. Doing similar tasks together reduces the hidden cost of constant switching, which frees your time for work that actually earns.

14. Automate the predictable. Automating routine transfers and invoices saves both time and the cost of things slipping through the cracks, like late fees.

15. Delay non-urgent purchases by 30 days. A simple waiting rule kills most impulse business spending. If you still need it in a month, buy it. Often you will not.

Bigger-Picture Money Moves

16. Separate needs from desires in your spending. Fund what the business truly requires first, and treat the rest as optional. This one ordering habit prevents a surprising amount of waste.

17. Set a monthly spending cap by category. A simple ceiling on discretionary costs keeps creep in check without you having to police every purchase.

18. Track expenses weekly, not yearly. Costs that are watched shrink on their own, because attention changes behavior. A quick weekly glance is one of the cheapest savings tools there is.

19. Cut the cost of getting paid late. Chasing overdue invoices costs you time and cash flow. Clearer terms and prompt friendly reminders reduce that hidden expense.

20. Review your cuts every quarter. Expenses creep back. A quarterly re-check keeps the savings you worked for from quietly refilling.

21. Redirect every saving on purpose. This is the most important one. The moment you cut a cost, assign that freed-up money a job, your pay, your cushion, or growth, so it does not simply get spent elsewhere.

Ways to Cut Business Expenses Without Hurting Your Business: A Real Example

Let me show you how a few of these add up.

Say you work through this list on a Saturday morning. You find two forgotten subscriptions at $30 and $45 a month, so you cancel both (numbers 1 and 2), saving $75. You downgrade a tool you over-bought from its $60 plan to a $25 plan that does everything you need (number 3), saving $35. You message your main supplier and get a modest better rate that saves $40 a month (number 7). And you switch a payment processor to one with lower fees, saving roughly $30 a month on your typical volume (number 9).

Add it up: $75 plus $35 plus $40 plus $30 is $180 a month, or $2,160 a year, and you did not shrink your business by a single client. Now the crucial final move, number 21: instead of letting that $180 melt into general spending, you redirect it on purpose, maybe $100 to your owner pay and $80 to your growth reserve. You did not just cut costs. You gave yourself a raise and funded your growth, out of money that was leaking away unnoticed.

That is the whole philosophy in one example, and it is exactly the kind of intentional spending the Money Mastery community is built around. If you would like a second set of eyes on where your money is leaking, you can schedule a call with a coach who has 20 years of business coaching experience to spot the cuts that matter most for your business.

(Image 2 placement: this is the PRODUCT SHOT. Insert here. Use AI image prompt #2 below, which features the full Money Mastery System. Note: swap in your real Money Mastery System brand mockup if you have one, so the image accurately reflects the actual product.)

To make sure your new savings actually show up in your bottom line, the free Money Mastery net worth tool lets you see the full picture as your freed-up money starts working for you.

Cutting expenses the smart way is not about a smaller business. It is about a stronger one, where every dollar has a purpose and the money you save becomes the money that pays you and grows you. Work through even a handful of these, redirect what you free up, and you will feel the difference this month. And if you want help deciding where to focus first, the upcoming Money Clarity Assessment can show you where your spending has the most room to improve.

---

About Donna Roggio

Donna Roggio is the founder of the Money Mastery system and has spent 20 years helping women build real financial clarity and confidence in their businesses. She created Money Mastery to give women a supportive community and a simple, learnable way to understand their money, without shame, jargon, or overwhelm. Donna believes every woman can learn to run her numbers with confidence, and she is here to help you do exactly that.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I cut business expenses without hurting my business?

Focus on smart cuts rather than deep ones: cancel unused subscriptions, downgrade over-bought plans, renegotiate with suppliers, lower payment fees, and separate true needs from optional desires. Then redirect what you save toward your pay, cushion, or growth.

What business expenses should I cut first?

Start with forgotten and unused subscriptions and recurring charges, since these are pure savings with no downside. From there, downgrade plans you have outgrown and renegotiate your biggest recurring bills.

How often should I review my business expenses?

Glance at expenses weekly to keep them in check, and do a fuller review each quarter, since costs tend to creep back over time. Watched expenses naturally shrink because attention changes spending behavior.

What should I do with the money I save from cutting costs?

Redirect every saving on purpose the moment you make the cut, assigning it a specific job such as your owner pay, your cushion, or growth. The free Money Mastery Net Worth Tracker helps you put those savings to work.

You Don't Need a Finance Degree: The Money Skills Every Business Owner Needs to Grow

There is a quiet belief that holds a lot of capable women back, and it goes like this: "I'm just not a numbers person, so I'll never really be good with the money side of my business." I want to gently take that belief apart, because it is not true, and it is costing you. The women whose businesses are growing at nearly twice the national rate, as recent data on women-owned businesses shows, are not math prodigies. They simply built a few practical money skills, one at a time, the same way they learned everything else that once felt hard.

Here is the reassuring part. The money skills every business owner needs are not the same as accounting, and they are not a finance degree. Accounting is a language for recording the past. What you actually need is a small set of living skills for making good decisions in the present. They are entirely learnable, they build on each other, and none of them require you to enjoy spreadsheets. Let me show you the ones that matter most and how to build each.

Step 1: The Skill of Reading Your Own Numbers

The first skill is simply being able to look at your own numbers and understand what they are telling you, without fear and without needing anyone to translate. Not producing perfect reports, just reading your reality: what came in, what went out, what you kept, what you are owed.

You build this skill through exposure, not study. Look at your core numbers a little bit, often, rather than a lot, rarely. Familiarity does the teaching. The first month your numbers may feel like a foreign language, by the third they feel like a face you recognize, and by the sixth you glance at them and instantly know whether things are on track. This skill is the foundation for every other one, because you cannot make a good decision about a number you are afraid to look at.

Step 2: The Skill of Pricing With Confidence

Many women undercharge not because they do not know their worth, but because they lack a skill: the ability to connect a price to what it actually costs them to deliver, plus a real profit. Pricing feels emotional and scary until it becomes a calculation you trust.

Build this skill by learning your true cost to deliver, your time, your materials, your overhead, and then deliberately adding profit on top rather than hoping it is in there somewhere. Once you can see the real math behind a price, raising it stops feeling like an act of nerve and starts feeling like a correction. Confident pricing is not a personality trait. It is a skill built on knowing your numbers, which is why it comes second.

Step 3: The Skill of Separating Timing From Trouble

This is the skill that prevents most money panic, and almost no one is taught it. It is the ability to tell the difference between a timing problem, money is simply arriving later than it is leaving this week, and a real problem, the business genuinely is not making enough. They feel identical in the moment, and confusing them leads to bad decisions.

You build this skill by always looking at money on the way alongside money going out, never in isolation. A thin account with three invoices about to land is a timing situation you can manage calmly. A thin account with nothing coming and rising costs is a real signal to act. Learning to tell them apart in seconds turns a huge share of money anxiety into a simple, answerable question, and calm decisions follow.

Step 4: The Skill of Deciding With Money, Not Emotion

The highest skill is using your numbers to make decisions, should I hire, should I buy this, can I afford to take that slower month, so that your choices are grounded in reality rather than fear or wishful thinking. This is where money skills translate directly into growth.

Build it by running small decisions through your actual numbers before you make them, even quick back-of-the-envelope ones. Over time you develop judgment: a felt sense, backed by real figures, of what your business can and cannot support. This is the skill that experienced owners seem to have naturally, and it is really just the accumulated result of practicing the first three skills until decisions become clear.

The Money Skills Every Business Owner Needs, in Real Life

Let me show these skills working together in an ordinary situation.

Imagine you are considering hiring a part-time contractor for $600 a month to take work off your plate. Without money skills, this is a purely emotional decision, you either feel too scared to commit or too eager and leap without checking. With the skills, it becomes clear.

First you read your numbers and see your business has been netting around $2,000 profit a month. Then you separate timing from trouble and confirm that profit is real and steady, not just a good stretch propped up by invoices that happen to have landed. Next you use pricing: you realize that if the contractor frees up eight of your hours a week, and you use even half of those to take on one more client, the new work more than covers the $600. Finally you decide with the numbers, not the fear: the hire is affordable and likely to grow your income, so you move forward with confidence instead of crossing your fingers. Same decision either way, but one is a gamble and the other is a grounded choice, and the only difference is a handful of learnable skills.

Building these skills is far easier and far more enjoyable in good company, which is exactly what the Money Mastery program and Net Worth Tracker are designed for, practical money skills taught simply, in a supportive community, at a pace that respects your real life. You can download the free Money Mastery Net Worth Tracker here and start building your first skill this week.

To put your new skills to work on your real picture, the free Money Mastery net worth tool gives you one clear view to practice reading, and the upcoming Money Clarity Assessment will help you see which skill to build first.

You were never bad with numbers. You were simply never taught the specific, practical money skills that running a business calls for. Learn them one at a time, and the confidence you have wanted around your money stops being a wish and becomes a thing you actually own.

If you would like guidance as you build these skills, you can schedule a call with a coach who has 20 years of business coaching experience and get a starting point tailored to you.

---

About Donna Roggio

Donna Roggio is the founder of the Money Mastery system and has spent 20 years helping women build real financial clarity and confidence in their businesses. She created Money Mastery to give women a supportive community and a simple, learnable way to understand their money, without shame, jargon, or overwhelm. Donna believes every woman can learn to run her numbers with confidence, and she is here to help you do exactly that.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a finance degree to manage my business money?

No. The money skills every business owner needs are practical decision-making skills, not accounting or a degree. They are entirely learnable through steady, low-pressure practice, even if numbers have never been your strength.

What money skills matter most for a small business owner?

Four stand out: reading your own numbers, pricing with confidence, telling timing problems apart from real problems, and making decisions with your numbers instead of your emotions. Each builds on the one before it.

How do I get better at business finances if I'm not a numbers person?

Build one skill at a time through frequent, small exposure rather than occasional deep study. Familiarity does most of the teaching, and a supportive community makes it far easier and more enjoyable.

Where can I learn practical money skills for my business?

The Money Mastery program teaches these skills simply and in community. You can start with the free Money Mastery Net Worth Tracker and build from there.