Best Tools for Tracking Net Worth in 2026 (Free and Paid Options Compared)

By DadAlt Investments | Category: Personal Finance | Last Updated: March 2026

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Net worth is the one number that tells the complete story of your financial life — and most Americans never calculate it. A budget tells you what happened last month; net worth tells you whether the last decade of financial decisions is actually building wealth. It is the sum of everything you own minus everything you owe: retirement accounts, brokerage, home equity, savings, and vehicles on the asset side; mortgage balance, student loans, car loans, and credit card debt on the liability side. According to the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances — the most recent comprehensive data available — the median net worth of all U.S. households was $192,700, while the average was $1.06 million (skewed dramatically upward by ultra-high-net-worth households).¹ Knowing where you stand relative to these benchmarks requires actually calculating your number — and the tools available in 2026 make this easier, faster, and more insightful than at any point in history. This guide covers the four best net worth tracking tools for U.S. families, what to include and exclude in your calculation, what net worth milestones to aim for at each life stage, and honest answers to the most common questions about tracking this number.

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Why Net Worth Tracking Matters More Than Budget Tracking

Budget vs. Net Worth: Two Different Questions

A budget answers the question: Where did my money go this month? It manages the flow of cash in and out of your household over a 30-day window. It is tactical, reactive, and essential.

Net worth answers a completely different question: Am I actually building wealth? It measures the accumulation of financial progress across years and decades. It is strategic, proactive, and the single most honest indicator of long-term financial health.

You can have an immaculate budget and still be building no wealth — if your income is consumed by lifestyle inflation, high debt service, and inadequate savings. Conversely, a household that consistently invests, pays down debt, and avoids lifestyle inflation will see its net worth grow even in months where the budget felt chaotic.

Why Monthly Net Worth Tracking Changes Behavior

Behavioral finance research consistently shows that what gets measured gets managed. Households that track their net worth regularly make systematically better financial decisions than those who don't — because the number creates accountability that no other metric does. When you see your net worth on a dashboard, you experience the cumulative impact of every financial decision: the car loan you didn't need, the retirement contribution you did make, the credit card balance you're carrying, the best platforms for index funds that has quietly compounded for five years.

Monthly tracking also insulates against short-term market noise. When the S&P 500 drops 10%, your investment accounts look alarming in isolation. But your full net worth — which includes home equity, savings, and debt paydown — tells a more stable story. The long-term trend line is what matters, not this month's volatility.

The Research on Wealth Accumulation and Self-Knowledge

Empower's data on its 38 million users consistently shows that investors who actively track their full financial picture — not just their investment accounts — make more purposeful decisions about asset allocation, debt management, and retirement contributions. The act of seeing net worth as a single, integrated number rather than a collection of disconnected accounts is itself a behavioral intervention. "What gets measured gets managed" is not a motivational poster; it is an empirically observed pattern in personal finance.

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Quick Comparison Table

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#1 Empower (Formerly Personal Capital) — Best Free Net Worth Tracker

Cost: Free for all dashboard tools Platforms: Web, iOS, Android

Why It's the Top Free Tool

Rob Berger, a former securities attorney and personal finance writer who has tested every major net worth tool on the market, is direct about his assessment: "Empower is without question the best net worth tracker available today. Previously called Personal Capital, it's still free and no other tool offers more features."²

Empower acquired Personal Capital in 2020 and has maintained and expanded the free financial dashboard ever since. The business model is straightforward: the dashboard is free; Empower makes money by offering paid wealth management services to users with $100,000+ in investable assets. The free tools — including everything described below — are genuinely excellent and have no meaningful functional limitations for tracking purposes.

What It Does for Net Worth Tracking

Complete account aggregation: Connect bank accounts, credit cards, investment and open a brokerage accounts, retirement accounts (401k, IRA, Roth IRA), mortgages, other loans, and real estate via Zillow integration — all in one synchronized dashboard. Empower uses AES-256 encryption and read-only access, meaning it can view balances but cannot initiate transactions on your behalf.²

Real-time net worth dashboard: Your total net worth is calculated automatically and updated every time accounts sync. The dashboard shows a running net worth chart over time — the most motivating feature for long-term tracking.

Investment Fee Analyzer: One of Empower's most uniquely valuable features. It calculates the weighted average expense ratio across all linked investment accounts and projects how much those fees will cost in real dollars over 10–20 years. A 1.0% fee difference on a $250,000 portfolio over 20 years can cost tens of thousands of dollars — the fee analyzer makes this visible and actionable.

Retirement Planner: Projects your current savings trajectory toward your target retirement date and income. Shows whether you're on track based on current balances, contribution rates, and expected returns. Run scenarios: what if you save more? What if you retire earlier?

Investment Checkup: Analyzes your current portfolio allocation versus an age-appropriate recommended allocation. Identifies over-concentration, sector risk, and asset class gaps.

Spending and cash flow tracking: Automatically categorizes transactions from all linked accounts into income and spending categories — simpler than YNAB or Monarch but sufficient for high-level cash flow awareness.

The One Honest Limitation

Using Empower's free tools will trigger outreach from their paid wealth management team, particularly once your investable assets exceed $100,000. This is how the product is designed — the free tools are a top-of-funnel for their advisory business. The outreach can be persistent. You can opt out of communications, but be prepared for occasional contact.

Empower is the right choice if: You want the most powerful free net worth and investment tracking tool available, you have meaningful investment assets that benefit from the fee analyzer and retirement planner, and you don't need integrated zero-based budgeting.

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#2 Monarch Money — Best for Comprehensive Household Tracking

Cost: $14.99/month or $99.99/year | Free 7-day trial Platforms: Web, iOS, Android

Why It Earns the Second Spot

Monarch Money was built by a founder who previously worked on Mint, and its design philosophy reflects a determination to build what Mint should have been: a complete household financial dashboard without ads, without data selling, and with genuine collaborative access for partners.³ After Mint shut down in 2024, Monarch became the most-recommended alternative for former Mint users — and for good reason.

What It Does for Net Worth Tracking

Complete account aggregation with exceptional reliability: Monarch uses three separate account aggregation providers — reducing the connectivity failures that plagued Mint and many competitors. Bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, investment accounts (including brokerage and retirement), real estate via Zillow, vehicle values via VIN lookup, and cryptocurrency via compare Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini all connect and sync automatically.²

Net worth dashboard with historical trend: A clean, visual net worth graph that shows your total wealth trajectory over time. Assets and liabilities are broken out clearly, and the running chart is motivating — particularly if you update it monthly and watch the trend line.

Collaborative household access: Unlike Empower, which has limited true collaborative features, Monarch is explicitly built for joint household management. Both partners have full access — not a read-only view — to the same real-time financial picture. All transactions, accounts, and net worth data are shared.³

Investment tracking: Monarch automatically syncs investment account balances and provides portfolio performance analysis and asset allocation view — though less analytically deep than Empower's dedicated investment tools.

Budgeting integration: Monarch combines net worth tracking with full-featured budgeting — spending categories, transaction management, recurring bill detection, and spending goals. For families who want net worth tracking and daily budget management in a single platform, this integration is genuinely valuable.

Goals tracking: Define specific financial goals (pay off a car loan, reach $50K in savings, fully fund the Roth IRA) and track progress visually within the same dashboard as your net worth.

The Honest Tradeoffs

Monarch costs $14.99/month — there is no free tier beyond the 7-day trial. For investment-focused users who primarily want a net worth and Best Crypto Portfolio Trackers, Empower provides comparable or superior investment analytics at zero cost. Monarch earns its price through the combination of budgeting, net worth tracking, collaborative access, and superior user interface design — not through investment analysis depth alone.

Monarch is the right choice if: You are managing finances jointly with a partner, you want both budgeting and net worth tracking in one polished platform, and the $99.99/year subscription is within your budget.

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#3 YNAB — Best for Active Budgeters Who Also Want Net Worth Visibility

Cost: $14.99/month or $109/year | Free 34-day trial (longest of any major tool) Platforms: Web, iOS, Android

What YNAB Does for Net Worth

YNAB's primary purpose is zero-based budgeting — assigning every dollar of income a specific job before the month begins. Its net worth visibility is secondary to that core mission, but it exists and is genuinely useful for YNAB users who want the full picture:

• Net Worth Report: Available within the YNAB reports section; shows total assets minus total liabilities over time as you update account balances
• Debt tracking: YNAB is particularly strong at tracking loan balances and debt payoff progress — showing how your liabilities are decreasing month over month
• Loan payoff simulator: Models the impact of extra principal payments on mortgage or student loan payoff timelines

The Important Limitation

YNAB is not designed as a wealth tracking tool. It can track your account balances and liabilities, but it does not automatically sync investment account holdings, does not provide investment performance analysis, and does not integrate with Zillow for real estate valuation. Investment accounts added to YNAB are "tracking accounts" that require manual balance updates.⁴

For a user primarily focused on net worth as a wealth measure — particularly one with significant investment assets — YNAB's net worth functionality is limited relative to Empower or Monarch.

YNAB is the right choice if: You are already deeply committed to YNAB's zero-based budgeting methodology and want net worth context integrated into your existing workflow — not as a reason to start tracking net worth from scratch.

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#4 Manual Spreadsheet — Best for Privacy-Conscious Investors

Cost: Free Platforms: Google Sheets (any device, shareable), Microsoft Excel (desktop/cloud) Privacy: Complete — no account linking, no third-party data access

Why a Spreadsheet Is Still Legitimate

Despite the sophistication of app-based tools, a manually maintained net worth spreadsheet has genuine advantages that no app can replicate:

• Total privacy: No financial account credentials are ever linked to any third party. No aggregation service holds your data. No company can suffer a data breach on your behalf.
• Complete control: You define exactly what goes into your net worth calculation, how categories are organized, and how historical data is displayed.
• Zero connectivity risk: Apps occasionally lose connections to financial institutions, fail to sync, or categorize transactions incorrectly. A spreadsheet has no connectivity dependencies.
• Fully customizable: Want to track business equity, alternative investments, How to Buy Physical Gold Online Safely holdings, or a complex real estate portfolio? A spreadsheet handles anything, with no platform limitations.

How to Build a Simple Net Worth Spreadsheet

Structure:

Suggested approach: Update on the same date each month — the first of the month works well. Pull balances manually from each institution. It takes 10–20 minutes once you have the spreadsheet structured. Record the monthly net worth total in a historical tab so you can track the trend over time.

Tiller Money ($79/year): For those who want a spreadsheet with automatic bank account syncing (no manual data entry), Tiller automatically feeds transactions and balances from linked accounts into a Google Sheet or Excel workbook. A middle path between full app convenience and spreadsheet control.²

YNAB is the right choice if: You are uncomfortable linking financial accounts to any third party, you have complex or non-standard assets (business equity, alternative investments, physical precious metals), or you simply prefer total control over your financial data.

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What to Include in Your Net Worth Calculation

Getting the calculation right matters. Including the wrong things inflates the number artificially; excluding the right things understates your true wealth position.

Include These Assets

• ✅ All retirement accounts: 401(k), 403(b), Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP-IRA, SIMPLE IRA — at current balance
• ✅ Taxable brokerage accounts and investment accounts — at current market value
• ✅ High-yield savings accounts, checking accounts, money market accounts
• ✅ HSA (Health Savings Account) — especially if invested
• ✅ Home equity: current market value (use Zillow or recent comps) minus your outstanding mortgage balance
• ✅ Investment property equity (same approach: market value minus remaining loan)
• ✅ Vehicle equity: Kelley Blue Book value minus any outstanding auto loan balance
• ✅ Cryptocurrency: at current market value (note the volatility)
• ✅ Physical gold and silver: at current spot price per ounce × quantity owned
• ✅ Business equity: if you own a business, use a conservative valuation (typically 1–3x SDE for small businesses); do not use speculative values

Exclude These Items

• ❌ Clothing, furniture, electronics, personal property — these have negligible resale value and including them produces a misleading number
• ❌ Collectibles (unless they have documented, liquid market value — most do not)
• ❌ Leased vehicles (you don't own them; a lease is a liability, not an asset)
• ❌ Cash value of term life insurance (term policies have no cash value; only whole life has cash value, and that should be included if applicable)

Include These Liabilities

• ❌ Mortgage balance (subtract from home value to get equity)
• ❌ Home equity loan or HELOC balance
• ❌ Student loan balances (federal and private)
• ❌ Car loan balances
• ❌ Credit card balances (current statement balance, not just what you'll pay this month)
• ❌ Personal loan balances
• ❌ Medical debt
• ❌ Any other outstanding obligation you are legally responsible to repay

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Setting Net Worth Milestones Worth Celebrating

Net worth is a long game measured in years. The milestones below are not arbitrary — each represents a meaningful inflection point in the compounding and financial security journey.

$10,000 Net Worth: Proof of Concept

The first $10,000 in positive net worth is harder to reach than most subsequent $10,000 increments — because it requires simultaneously building assets and managing or paying down liabilities, often while income is at its career lows. Reaching $10,000 means the habit is working. The financial identity shift from "negative or zero net worth" to "positive net worth" is psychologically significant and builds the momentum for everything that follows.

$100,000 Net Worth: The Compounding Inflection Point

The first $100,000 is widely cited as the hardest wealth milestone to reach — and the most consequential. At $100,000 invested with a 7% average annual return, market returns add approximately $7,000/year to your wealth automatically. That automatic growth begins to meaningfully accelerate your net worth trajectory beyond what contributions alone can achieve. Charlie Munger famously remarked that reaching $100,000 was the hardest part of his wealth-building journey — because after that, compounding does an increasingly large share of the work.

$250,000 Net Worth: First Genuine Financial Security

At $250,000 in net worth, a family has meaningful financial security: a robust emergency fund, significant retirement assets, reduced or eliminated consumer debt, and the psychological stability that comes from knowing that a single unexpected event — a job loss, a medical crisis, a major car repair — will not derail years of financial progress. This is the level at which financial anxiety typically drops meaningfully.

$1,000,000 Net Worth: Retirement Viability

The 4% safe withdrawal rate — the most widely cited guideline for sustainable retirement income — means that $1,000,000 in liquid invested assets generates approximately $40,000/year in retirement income. Combined with Social Security, a $1M net worth represents genuine retirement viability for most U.S. households. It is not a number that requires extraordinary income — it is the result of consistent saving and investing over 20–30 years, starting from any reasonable income level.

Important context: These are invested net worth milestones — home equity and illiquid assets matter for net worth but do not generate retirement income at the 4% rate. A household with $800K in a paid-off home and $200K in investments does not have the same retirement readiness as one with $1M in a diversified investment portfolio.

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FAQ

Should I Include My Home Equity in My Net Worth Calculation?

Yes — home equity is a genuine asset and should be included in your net worth calculation. Net worth equals all assets minus all liabilities, and home equity (market value minus mortgage balance) is a real, substantive financial asset.

However, for retirement planning purposes, keep home equity conceptually separate from your investable net worth. Home equity does not generate income unless you sell, downsize, or take on a reverse mortgage. A family with $300,000 in home equity and $100,000 in retirement accounts is not in the same financial position as a family with $400,000 in retirement accounts. Track both in your total net worth, but plan your retirement income around liquid, investable assets — not the equity in a home you plan to live in.

What Is a Good Net Worth for a 35-Year-Old in the U.S.?

According to the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances — the most recent comprehensive data available — here are the benchmarks for the 35–44 age group:⁵

• Median net worth: $135,600 (half of households in this age group have less than this)
• Average net worth: $549,600 (skewed significantly upward by high-wealth households)

The median is the more useful benchmark for most people — it represents the middle of the actual distribution rather than a number pulled upward by the top 1%.

Using compare Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab's income-based benchmark: a 35-year-old should have approximately 1× their annual salary saved (in retirement accounts and liquid investments). At a $90,000 salary, that's $90,000 in invested assets — a target that is more actionable than comparing against an average skewed by multi-millionaires.

The Federal Reserve's next Survey of Consumer Finances (for 2025 data) will be released in late 2026 — and will likely show higher median net worths given the 2023–2025 bull market in equities and continued home equity appreciation.

How Often Should I Calculate and Update My Net Worth?

Monthly is the optimal cadence for most families. Monthly updates:

• Are frequent enough to identify trends and catch problems early
• Are infrequent enough to prevent obsessive checking during market volatility
• Align with most billing and account statement cycles

A specific, recurring date works best — the first of the month, or the first Sunday of each month. Consistency of timing matters more than precision of timing.

Annual deep reviews (January or after tax season in April) are a good cadence for a comprehensive review: comparing this year's net worth to last year's, checking that beneficiary designations are current, reviewing asset allocation, and updating financial goals.

Avoid: Checking net worth daily during market downturns. The value of monthly tracking is the long-term trend, not the daily or weekly noise. Markets move down; net worth built over decades does not evaporate in a correction.

Is It Safe to Connect All My Financial Accounts to Empower?

The security concern about account-linking apps is legitimate and worth understanding clearly. The short answer for reputable platforms: yes, it is safe for the specific purpose of balance reading. The longer answer:

How account linking works: Empower, Monarch, and similar tools connect to your financial accounts via aggregation services (Plaid, Yodlee, Finicity) that use read-only access. These services can view your account balances and transaction history — they cannot initiate transfers, move money, or make changes to your accounts. There is no mechanism by which a data breach at Empower could result in money being moved out of your accounts.²

What to look for when evaluating security:

• AES-256 encryption for data at rest and in transit (Empower uses this)
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) — enable this on any financial platform you use
• Read-only data access (standard for all reputable aggregators)
• SIPC or FDIC coverage if applicable
• SOC 2 compliance certification (standard for enterprise-level financial data security)

If you remain uncomfortable with account linking: The manual spreadsheet approach described above is a fully legitimate and private alternative. Your financial security and peace of mind are worth more than the convenience of automated syncing.

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Related Guides

• Best Budgeting Apps for Families — manage the monthly spending that drives net worth growth
• How Much Should You Have Invested by Age? — benchmarks for the investment portion of your net worth
• Best High-Yield Savings Accounts — maximize the cash component of your net worth
• How to Build a Family Financial Plan — net worth tracking is Step 1 of this complete guide
• How to Start Investing If You're Behind — what to do if your net worth reveals you're behind on investing

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Sources and References

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. Tool features, pricing, and availability are subject to change; verify current details directly with each provider before subscribing. Account linking to third-party apps involves privacy and security considerations that readers should evaluate independently. DadAlt Investments may earn affiliate commissions from some links in this article at no cost to you.

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Recommended Reading

• Best Apps Dads Can Use to Manage Investments
• Best Budgeting Apps for Families in 2026
• How Much Should You Have Invested by Age 30, 40, and 50?

Footnotes

1. NerdWallet / Federal Reserve. "Average and Median Net Worth by Age in the U.S." January 2026. https://www.nerdwallet.com/finance/learn/average-net-worth-by-age — Median U.S. net worth $192,700; average $1.06 million (2022 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances); note that the 2025 SCF will be released in late 2026. ↩

2. Rob Berger. "8 Best Net Worth Calculators in 2026." March 2026. https://robberger.com/net-worth-calculators/ — "Empower is without question the best net worth tracker available today"; AES-256 encryption; account aggregation capabilities; fee analyzer and retirement planner features; Monarch Money used for 2+ years; Tiller Money $79/year for spreadsheet auto-sync. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Think Save Retire / Monarch Money. "Monarch Money Review 2026." February 2026. https://thinksaveretire.com/monarch-money-review/ — Three aggregation providers reducing connectivity failures; Zillow integration for real estate; vehicle VIN tracking; Coinbase crypto sync; collaborative household access for couples; $14.99/month or $99.99/year. ↩ ↩²

4. YNAB. "YNAB vs. Monarch." November 2025. https://www.ynab.com/blog/ynab-vs-monarch — YNAB net worth report within budgeting framework; investment accounts as manual tracking accounts; debt payoff simulator; YNAB as zero-based budgeting tool vs. Monarch as wealth tracking dashboard; 34-day free trial. ↩

5. CNBC Select / Federal Reserve. "The Average Net Worth for Americans 35 to 44." November 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-by-age-35-to-44/ — Average net worth ages 35–44: $549,600; median: $135,600 (Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2023 report); median net worth all Americans: $192,900; Fidelity 1× salary benchmark by age 30, 3× by 40. ↩