What If Your Net Worth Is Bigger Than Your Bank Account?

A summer experiment in building the assets that matter

After my mom died this spring, I made a decision about how I wanted to approach the summer.

Hustling through grief wasn’t on my list. Neither was ignoring it like I did after several other big stressful transitions I’ve experienced in my life. Avoidance, I’ve learned, is not an effective strategy for processing hard emotions required for moving forward.

Looking at my calendar for June, July, and August, I also knew I wasn’t going to turn those months into another optimization project or measure their success primarily by how much money I made, how much business I generated, how many people liked what I posted online, or how many things I crossed off a list.

Instead, I began generating a mental list of things I wanted to do: rest, read, write, eat what and when I wanted, move my body in ways I hadn’t in years, spend time alone, spend time with friends and family.

Think.

In short: I wanted to make deposits into as many accounts as possible, not just the financial ones.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of net worth. What does it mean and more importantly, how do I define what mine is?

It’s easy to look at your financial balance sheets. But what about the balance sheet for living like you fcking mean it?

That, I decided, was a top priority as I began my transition out of full time caregiver into the newest version of myself.

In American culture, obsessed with money as much as we are, we usually use net worth to describe the financial side to life: cash, investments, businesses, real estate, intellectual property, royalties.

All important.

I’m as interested in building financial wealth as the next person. I want my money to grow. I want to become a better steward of what I have and create considerably more of it.

But the older I get, the less interested I am in pretending that financial assets constitute the entire balance sheet of a human life.

I have other accounts that deserve as much attention as my financial accounts.

So do you.

There’s the relational account.

Trust. Reputation. Family. Deep friendships. The people you can call when your life falls apart. The people who call you when theirs does.

There’s the health account.

Strength. Energy. Mobility. Sleep. The ability to walk through the woods, climb a hill, carry your groceries, wake up rested, regulate yourself when life gets hard.

There’s the creative account.

Skills accumulated over decades. Books written. Songs composed. Ideas explored. Things made that did not exist before you made them. Taste developed slowly through paying attention.

There’s the identity account.

Integrity. Courage. Confidence. Self-respect. Keeping promises to yourself. Becoming someone you trust.

And there’s the spiritual account.

Meaning. Peace. Wonder. Alignment. Love.

Once I started thinking this way, I realized something:

Every day I am making deposits or withdrawals.

A long walk can be a deposit.

So can writing something that matters to me.

Calling someone I love, getting enough sleep, learning how to manage money better — deposits.

Sitting outside doing absolutely nothing except listening to the loons while watching the light change across the lake can be a deposit.

Saying no can be a deposit.

So can saying yes.

And sometimes an activity makes deposits into several accounts at once.

Did I mention listening to the loons?

That changes the math.

It also changes the question.

Instead of constantly asking, What did I accomplish today?

I can ask:

What accounts did I increase the balance in today?

That is the question I decided to carry with me this summer.

My mother died May 1 after years in which caregiving occupied an enormous amount of my life. I arrived at the other side of that experience grieving her, certainly, but also needing to discover what my own life looks like now.

I did not need another productivity system telling me to squeeze more output from myself.

I needed to rebuild capital in all the accounts listed above so I could have a simple guide to use for staying accountable to myself.

Not necessarily all of them every day. Certainly not perfectly (as if anyone is perfect at any of this). And not according to some elaborate tracking system that turns living into another job.

Just with a little more intention than I’ve given in other seasons of my life.

I recently joked that I have KPIs (key performance indicators) for my summer.

But I kind of do.

Am I getting stronger?

Am I creating?

Am I taking care of important relationships?

Am I learning to become a better steward of money?

Am I keeping promises to myself?

Am I experiencing peace, wonder, meaning and love?

Am I becoming more alive?

So far, I’m happy to report that I’m hitting the KPIs I set for myself.

And I intend to continue.

There will be seasons for acceleration. Seasons for building businesses and generating revenue and shipping ambitious projects into the world.

I’m not rejecting hustle forever.

I’m rejecting the idea that hustle (and a financial balance sheet) are the only evidence that a life is moving forward.

Some of the most valuable assets we will ever possess cannot be entered into a spreadsheet.

And they compound anyway.

A stronger body compounds.

Trust compounds.

Skill compounds.

Reputation compounds.

Self-respect compounds.

Creativity compounds.

Love compounds.

Which leads me to thinking that maybe net worth was always a much bigger idea than it was sold to us.

Maybe one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves at the end of a day isn’t whether we were productive.

It’s whether, on the balance sheet of living like we fcking mean it, we made ourselves richer.