Your Money or Your Life: Step 1 - How Much Money I've Ever Earned and What Do I Have to Show For It?

The first step in the book Your Money or Your Lifeasks you to calculate all the money you've ever earned in your lifetime & then to figure out your current net worth. The authors call this "making peace with your past."

Luckily for me, I had recently gotten a social security slip in the mail, which brilliantly showed my income for my entire working life.

1) The Total $ Earned In My Life From Working

1998 : $965
1999: $5,020
2000: $14,425
2001: $1,501
2002: $3,232
2003: $13,705
2004: $19,063
2005: $13,655
2006: $21, 493
2007: $32, 911
(Projected for 2008: $42,000)
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$126,970

That's $126, 970 earned between 1999-2007, and doesn't include my income in 2008.


2) What Do I Have to Show For It?


This step asks you to take a look at all your assets and all your liabilities, to see where all that money you've earned in your life has left you.

The details of listing all my assets and liabilities would be boring, so I will give you the end result - the numbers!

Liquid Assets: $12, 666 (including my IRA, which isn't exactly liquid at my age)
Fixed Assets: $9,120 (all my belongings, musical instruments, car - but not my condo)
Liabilities: $21,000 (my student loan + my car + some bills)


$21,786 (Total Assets)
- $21,0000 (Total Liabilities)
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+ $786 net worth.

Taking into account some room for error, my net worth is essentially balanced out at zero once you combine my assets and liabilities.

This sounds odd, but I will accept ZERO as a decent place to start with at age 27. It's better than a negative net worth, right?