One of the cornerstone documents you should have in The Family Legacy Drawer is your Personal Net Worth Statement.  Simply put, your personal net worth statement is an organized list of your assets and liabilities. Assets are things that you own like bank accounts, investments, retirement accounts, cars, real estate, household furnishings, jewelry, etc. Liabilities are defined as things you owe to third parties like mortgages, student loans, auto loans, credit cards, etc.  When you take the difference between assets and liabilities, you arrive at your Net Worth.

A listing of all these accounts with the balance or current estimated value along with the location and account number is vital to record in your legacy drawer. At one glance of this statement, you and your family have a snapshot of your financial life.   Your family will appreciate this great tool when the time comes to settle your estate.  Having this information on one sheet will save your family countless hours of hunting and digging for financial documents.   Additionally, they will have confidence that all financial accounts have been accounted for.

You may already have your financial accounts linked with a software program like Quicken or Mint which can generate a net worth statement for you. If not, I have created a template of a personal net worth statement that you can fill in and customize with your own financial information. If you would like this template, please click here to download. Here’s a preview:

If you have never taken the time to create your own personal net worth statement, I encourage you to do so. Preparing this kind of statement has many benefits.  One of them is just for you and it will help your current financial situation.  When you list and review your financial accounts, you may find that you want to make some changes like simplify, consolidate, or even diversify your holdings.

Several years ago when my husband and I first created a personal net worth statement, we came to the realization that we had a lot of small bank and investment accounts that needed to be consolidated to be productive. We also came face to face with the total amount of debt we had. It was a wake-up call to get intentional about getting out of debt and it motivated us to do that very thing!

I hope you take this task to heart for all the reasons I have listed above.  Be sure to review and update at least annually, or more often there are significant changes to your financial accounts.