Title: Rebel Finance School 2026 — Week 2 Thursday Transcript
Session: How to Calculate Your Net Worth: Step-by-Step Guide | RFS 2026 Week 2
Course: Rebel Finance School 2026
Creators: Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan, Rebel Donegans
Canonical page: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/week-2/
Course hub: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/
Net-worth tracker template download: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/take-control/net-worth-tracker/
Website: https://rebeldonegans.com/
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Copyright © Rebel Donegans. All rights reserved.
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Attribution:
If quoting or referencing this transcript, please credit Rebel Finance School by Alan and Katie Donegan and link to:
https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/
Disclaimer:
This is financial education, not financial advice. Rebel Donegans are not regulated financial advisers. You are responsible for your own financial decisions.

0:01
Hello and welcome to Rebel Finance School week two. Calculate your net
0:06
worth with the Donigans. Yes, we're going to work it out together. Sounds like a like a blue Peter or
0:12
something. Follow along with us. Uh so we're talking about total net worth, which tells you how much you have, but
0:18
then also the split between the different elements of net worth, and that's tells you what your money is
0:23
doing. Do you remember what that split is and what the elements are? Well, we're going to tell you now. A lot of
0:29
people were asking us on last week's session, how do I know what my target split should be? What's the percentages?
0:36
And actually, it depends on what your spending and what your lifestyle is and all of those questions. But we thought
0:42
we'd have a go at giving you a concise answer of what should the split be. And we're going to say stuff that's not
0:48
going to necessarily make sense, but will be revealed throughout the course. So, this is to give you a little taste to answer that question for you. So the
0:55
elements of net worth, you have freedom fund which is your future income. Your target for that may sound like a lot to
1:01
you. It's 25 times your annual spending. That's the target. Two things to
1:07
remember about that. Number one, that can be reduced by state pensions and social security and all that sort of
1:13
stuff. And number two, compounding is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So you don't have to earn it
1:19
all yourself. Week four, we'll talk about compounding. We'll explain all of this as we go. We actually always talk
1:25
about this. There's so much information in this course. You can't teach it all at once. We have to teach you some
1:31
elements. We want to do this download from our brains to yours. But unfortunately, they haven't advented invented that
1:37
technology yet. Coming soon. Number two, valuable liabilities, which is security or lifestyle. The target. There is no
1:44
target for this. It's just remember to build your freedom fund. There is such a heavy focus in most countries on
1:51
building the valuable liability pot that we forget to build the freedom fund. So no target. It's whatever makes you
1:58
happy, whatever is right for you. Just remember to buy your freedom alongside it.
2:03
Then cash and planned spending. This was the one that we were definitely saying don't have too much cash. And people are like, what is too much cash? Well, we're
2:09
going to tell you what the target should be, which is your emergency fund, which we talked about on Monday. Your sinking
2:15
funds, which is saving for things like holidays and Christmas and a car. And then any other short or medium-term
2:22
spending that hasn't been captured by those two. So, anything else that you think you're
2:27
going to spend in a short to medium term? Medium-term probably what's Yeah.
2:35
And then debt, your target is zero. Uh we're talking about high interest rate
2:41
debt here. There is no real place for high interest rate debt in our world. It
2:47
just puts you into financial slavery. Then comes the question, what about good debt?
2:52
What is good debt? What is good debt? I think it was Robert Kiasaki who invented this term and he
2:57
made a distinction between debt borrowed to buy stuff like cars and debt borrowed
3:03
to buy assets such as a rental property. Uh
3:09
so that was the distinction he made. We don't really draw that distinction in our course. We generally don't like debt
3:15
at all and it's actually taken care of in the valuable liability section or the
3:21
rental property asset section because you just show up the equity in the property which is the value minus this
3:28
debt and that's the equity which was what shows up there. But we're going to do a worked example of that. Debt
3:35
itself, high interest rate debt, we need to get rid of. We're doing that in week four. We've got you. We'll look after
3:41
you. So, what is this session about? So, by the end of the session, you're going to complete your detailed net worth tracker
3:48
or at least have a lead of where to look because some detective works required and we'll explain what that means and
3:53
then for you to understand your exact split. What is this detective work, Alan? Well, the detective work is quite
4:01
often people have worked for lots of companies over their lifetime and every company you join, you get autoenrolled
4:08
in a pension and then you forget about it. You move house, they get lost. There's actually over three million lost
4:15
pensions in just the UK alone and you have to work to find those and find the
4:21
details and you might have forgotten the password, forgotten the login, risky login and yeah, so the first time
4:27
you do that this can take a little bit longer but then the subsequent times that you do it and we say to do it
4:33
monthly will be much quicker and much easier and it's totally worth it because you might find a pot of money that you
4:39
didn't even realize you had. Totally worth it. So, you may have done your sketch split
4:46
and that's what we showed you on Monday's session. Today is about doing the detailed net worth. We're going to
4:52
get into the numbers. We're going to get you finding out exactly what you have. And remember, this is different from
4:58
cash flow. Cash flow meaning money in your income, money out your spending. And that's what we talked about in week
5:04
one in the spending and gap tracker. The accounting term for this, if it's helpful, because if you understand these
5:10
terms, would be the profit and loss. Money going in, money going out. And basically, you're treating your own life
5:16
as a profit and loss. How much profit have I made from working? And how much loss have I made from spending it on
5:22
cookies? Pizza and Lego is normally the spending, isn't it? Whereas net worth is a
5:27
snapshot in time. So if you're doing it today, we're recording this on the 10th of June. 10th of June, this is what I
5:34
have. a snapshot of everything in my accounts, everything I owe. And that's what we're doing today in the net worth
5:39
template. The accounting term for this would be balance sheet. If you do not know what these accounting terms mean,
5:46
ignore them. It was just to help you if you are familiar with that world. It might help you to understand. Ignore if
5:52
you're not. Excellent. So, we're going to focus on net worth. That's the plan. Uh lots of people say like, "How do I do
5:59
this?" We don't care. If you want to do it on pen and paper, if you want to do it on a spreadsheet, do the way that
6:05
works for you. We have created a spreadsheet. They're just all tools and
6:10
it doesn't really matter which tool you use. It just matters that you're doing it. This is the brand new tracker uh
6:18
that we have made in Google Sheets. So, the ninjas will put the link in the chat. If you're watching on YouTube, the
6:24
link is in the description. So, you can just click on that and get it straight away. But this is the brand new tracker.
6:30
Lots of people say, "Should I update from last year's tracker?" You don't need to. We've just like made it nicer,
6:38
created some new bits, some little charts. It's a little bit improved. It's presentationally a little bit
6:43
different. There's no fundamental changes. If you like last year's tracker and you want to keep using it, please do.
6:49
One big watch out is we've had lots of people downloading this and the gap tracker and then converting it to Excel.
6:57
the formula in the Google sheet will not work in Excel. So if you press click
7:04
download convert to Excel, all the formula break. So just don't do that. If
7:09
you like Excel, we have an Excel version for you on the website. It's last year's
7:14
version. It works really easily. There are full instructions in the Google
7:20
sheet download that you can read at your own leisure. So if you're ever a little bit confused and want to read those,
7:25
please do that. That's in the start here tab. Uh, prefer Excel, use last year's
7:31
template. It's on the same page. Just scroll down and you'll find it. That's it. Um, we've had a couple of comments
7:38
that as accountants, they appreciate the references. That's helping. Hello, accountants.
7:43
Welcome. Uh, and the pace is good, so we're happy about that. Now, lots of questions came up. Should I have a joint
7:50
net worth tracker with my family, f my family, my partner, whoever it is, or
7:56
should I have separate ones? We, the Donigans, do a joint net worth tracker
8:02
because we see all of our money together. That's our pot to live off. Now, it'll be different for different
8:08
people. You might want to do one yourself. You might want to do separate ones. It doesn't really matter. The big
8:16
difference is if you are doing it together, you can
8:21
see a proper picture of your family's net worth and that helps you to know as
8:26
a family can you retire, not just individually. Um, and you might want to
8:33
actually know what your partner's got and join that conversation so that you can work together on this stuff.
8:38
Yeah, it just depends how you operate your lives financially. Yeah, you'll know what to do. There is a
8:43
second point that in the UK we have ISIS and SIPs and different
8:49
accounts like that and they are all individual people's ones but we still add that to our joint net worth tracker
8:56
and if you want to get some tips and guidance on how to talk to your partner about money or the people in your life
9:03
that you care about we do have a resource for that and we are going to cover that in detail in week five. So,
9:10
what we want to know is what tool are you going to use? Are you going to use a spreadsheet? Are you going to use a pen and paper? What are you going to use?
9:17
Please put it in the chat. Put it in the comments. Tell us now. We want to know what you're going to use. And as you're
9:24
doing that, we will have a message from our lawyer. The disclaimer, no, we don't. If we did,
9:31
this is not financial advice. We are not trained financial advisers. We are not regulated. We will not sell you investments. You make your own
9:36
decisions. We're sharing our opinions and ideas. These ideas may or may not continue to work for us or for you. You are 100% responsible for your financial
9:42
future. There are no guarantees here except the money back guarantee. If you
9:48
do not like the course, you can have your money back in full and actually 50% more than what you paid for it.
9:53
Love it. If you paid for this course, this is terribly wrong. This is meant to be free and accessible to anyone and anyone.
9:59
Everyone and anyone that wants it. Now, uh if you're watching on Zoom, please use the Q&A feature. It may
10:05
enables the ninjas to find your questions easier. If you're watching on catchup or YouTube, put it in the
10:10
comments and the ninjas are there and will help. Uh, and if you're on YouTube, please also hit like and subscribe. The
10:17
ninjas have told us to remember to do that and it really does help us to spread the message. So, get your pen and
10:23
paper at the ready if you're choosing to do it in your notebook or paper or download the template. And as we go
10:30
through this, please remember breathing is quite important for us as humans.
10:36
Just take it steady. We'll try to remember to breathe as well because we got feedback from last week's practical
10:43
session for doing the spending and gap tracker that it felt a little bit overwhelming to people. But then when
10:49
they sat down and opened the spreadsheet and followed the steps, I know this isn't true for everyone, but
10:54
many people were surprised at how they were able to understand it. So just
11:00
stick with it. You can watch this back as many times as you want, and we will be doing an extra video on this as well.
11:05
As we go through the worked example, please remember do not compare your pineapples. Uh this is just an example
11:12
and it is one example to rule all
11:18
examples. Yes, it's a Lord of the Rings joke. Kieran's laughing at our jokes and I love I love Kieran. Thank you. Uh it's the
11:24
only person who laughed. Now, it's one example and we've packed in
11:29
everything. Define benefit pensions and contribution pensions and GAS and I'm going to explain what all of those terms
11:35
mean, but we've packed it all into one example. No one example would ever have
11:41
all of this stuff. We've done it so that every person here is able to see what
11:46
they would have. And our idea is that you follow along and do your figures as we go. But if you prefer to just watch now and then do it
11:53
at your own time, that's completely uh valid choice as well. We are going to go through all of the
11:58
elements of net worth one by one in the spreadsheet. That's the plan. So that is
12:06
all of the talk, the intro, the setup, everything you need. Katie is now in
12:11
charge of spreadsheets. Quite a lot of pressure that I'm having to do the share screen thing. This is this is a big deal for me. Katie is
12:18
fully in charge and I will be doing the talking. That's kind of how our relationship work
12:24
is. Okay, let's actually start in the start here tab. So, this is the net
12:30
worth tracker calculator, whatever you want to call it. This is the instruction page that I just talked about. Can you
12:36
see my screen? Can you see what I'm doing with my pink little mouse? Looks like it. We got a thumbs up. Yes, Marie Sun is up. Perfect.
12:41
Have a read of that in your own time. Then this is where the action is. This
12:47
is the only place that you're going to need to put anything in. All the later pages are just a summary and some charts and things. This is where you are going
12:54
to be doing your work. Can you zoom out to give people context? I've already zoomed in.
13:00
Yeah, we zoomed in to make it easier to read, but this is the zoomed out version so you can see you get the headline
13:06
section of freedom fund. Uh then you've got these are all colorcoded exactly as we showed you the colors on the slide.
13:12
Orange is valuable liabilities. Green is cash and planned spending. and then blue is debt. And then it gives you a little
13:18
summary at the end and totals it all up. That's the overview of the spreadsheet. We're going to fill out each one of
13:25
these little sections with you one at a time and go through them. So Katie will zoom in so you can actually read what
13:31
we're typing and see it, but I just wanted to give you that zoomed out perspective about it. I'm just going to zoom out again
13:37
actually um to show you that there's it goes across the page. So these are just
13:43
different columns and we're going to fill in one column for today of whenever you're doing your snapshot. Then you'll
13:49
come back next month and fill in the next column and then over time you can see the trend and what's going on with your money. So there are many many many
13:57
columns in this spreadsheet that you can just keep coming back. We've been doing this for 10 years. So we have 10 year
14:03
what's that 120 columns worth. Um so just it will build up as you go if you're new to this.
14:09
Perfect. So let's dive into the freedom fund. So Katie, you'll zoom in a little bit so
14:14
that you can see it all there. This is the freedom fund. First line is stocks
14:19
and shares ISA. Well, hold on. Oh, one little thing before we go straight into that. So two
14:25
things actually. So some of you I appreciate are not in the UK. You're in a different country and you might do
14:31
dates and currencies and decimal points, sometimes commas and the other way around. If you go to file settings,
14:39
you can see that ours is set up as United Kingdom. You can click on this and say, "No, actually I'm in the US."
14:44
And that will change all the dates around for you. Same in the spending and gap tracker. Or you can say, "No, I'm in
14:50
Sweden or wherever you are." And it will set the date up correctly for you, which is super useful. We're
14:56
going to stick with the British date, which starts with day, goes month and year. Americans, why do you start with
15:02
month? We don't understand that. If someone could explain it to us, that would be great. So, I'm just going to put today's date
15:08
in here at the top. And that's to say, okay, that's our snapshot on this day,
15:15
what we have or what this fictional example has. And it doesn't work if you don't put the date in. So, put the date at the top.
15:22
Yeah. The totals don't work if you don't put the date in. Exactly. Now, stocks and shares, ISA, an
15:28
ISA is a tax advantaged account, an individual savings account. In America, they're called Roths. Uh there's
15:34
different versions around the world, but you would, if you've got one, you could type in Allen's stocks and shares Iser.
15:41
You could give it a name or Katie's stocks and shares ISA or whatever it is. And that this spreadsheet is completely
15:48
customizable in terms of what you label these things because these are UK terms that we've put in as the default. If
15:53
you're in a different country, you'll have different terms for this. Feel free to add rows as well. So that you can
15:59
just select the row, right click, and just add a row above or below. So maybe you've got Katie. If you're doing this
16:04
as a couple, maybe you've got both of you in there. Yeah. If you were from New Zealand, you might put Kiwi Saver. In America, it's
16:10
401k. Just use your terms. Now, this person has £1,291
16:16
uh in their stocks and shares. I'm going to give them a few pennies just to show that when you press enter, the pennies
16:22
are still there because you can if you can see this big enough, but it just summarizes it to the nearest pound in
16:29
this case. And again, this is this sheet is completely currency agnostic, meaning we don't care what currency you use.
16:36
Just put in what it is in in your currency. Yeah, it could be Colombian pesos. It
16:41
doesn't matter. Just type it in. It's currency. Doesn't matter. Now, next one
16:46
down is the SIP, which is called self-invested personal pension. Uh, if
16:52
you've got one, you probably know what it is. If you don't, we'll be explaining it later. But this is where you would
16:57
look up the value, the total value of what you have in your SIP and put that
17:03
number in here. Uh, that is your investments. Okay. Next one, we have work pension
17:12
from these different companies. So as you work with different employ employers, this is how it works in the
17:17
UK and I know in a lot of other countries they you'll probably have a pension with them that they pay into,
17:22
you pay into. Then you move to a different job and this all starts again and you've got another pot. So you
17:28
probably have different pots from over the time. Stop share for a second. Uh you have different pots that have
17:34
built up over the time. The bit here is that I really want you
17:40
wanted you to hear in the UK alone there are an estimated 3.3
17:46
million lost pensions and the value of those lost pensions is
17:53
31 billion pounds and they reckon two out of five of you
17:59
have lost pensions. So, if we've got a few thousand people on the call here tonight, well, there's probably a
18:05
thousand people that have lost pensions and there's free money waiting out there for them to find. This is the detective
18:12
work that Katie and I were speaking about. You've got to go out and find those pensions and there's a bunch of
18:18
services to help you do it. We've put the links in the YouTube description. Uh
18:24
there's a government service, there's one called Gretle. There's a few different services that will help you do
18:29
it, but please do the work to find the pensions. Once you've done that, then we
18:38
can help you think about optimizing them and consolidating them for the future. But this is all about the research so
18:45
far. Uh Shelley on Zoom and lots of others saying, "I have so many pensions.
18:51
If I add rows in the Excel version, will it still work?" Okay. Yes, you just add new rows.
18:58
The only thing in the Excel version, so we've tried to make this as the Google Sheets new version as bulletproof as
19:03
possible that if you add new rows at the bottom, they will automatically get included in the total. In the Excel
19:09
version, we don't quite have all those checks. So, just make sure that it's including those new rows that you add in
19:15
the total for the freedom fund at bottom. Exactly. Whereas on here, well, let's do
19:20
the example. So, we've got workplace pension from ABC company. You would just change the name of the company. So,
19:26
we've got our workplace uh pension from Pineapples Limited. Uh we've currently
19:32
got 4,27 in that Katy. Um then we've got our current workplace pension and we
19:40
would just edit that to say current. It's called Even Better Pineapples Limited. We're not comparing Katie.
19:47
30,000. Oh, that was a complete fail on my part, wasn't it? £3,432.
19:53
Um, and you just add those in as you go down.
19:59
Where do I add my contributions that I'm making to my pension, Alan? Okay, let's cut out and talk about those
20:05
bits. Contributions that you make to these SIPs and pensions are cash flow.
20:12
It's money that you are investing each month into what you're doing. Then that
20:18
gets added to the total in your account and it's the total that we're using for
20:23
this snapshot. So you don't add contributions. They're kind of auto added when you look up what your current
20:30
figure is each month and stick it in. Um now there is a bit here to say in the UK
20:37
and actually around the world there are two types of pensions. There are defined benefit pensions and defined
20:44
contribution pensions. Just to interrupt, so I think people are
20:49
freaking out. You can't see the spreadsheet anymore. We've just cut out to explain this a little bit and then we'll go back to it. Yes. So we'll explain so that you can
20:55
see our faces whilst we explain the important concepts and then we'll go back to make sure that the spreadsheet
21:00
is there for you. Now there are two types of pensions defined benefit and
21:05
defined contribution. Defined benefit means the amount you get at the end is
21:12
what is defined. I.e. you get told you will get 10,000 a year 20,000 a year in
21:19
retirement and that's guaranteed for you. That's a DB pension. That's treated
21:24
differently in the um gap uh in the net worth tracker than a defined
21:30
contribution pension. Defined contribution means the number that's defined is how much you're putting into
21:37
it or the contributions that grows to whatever it grows to and that's up to
21:42
you how you've invested it and managed it as to what you get at the end. SIPs
21:49
are defined contribution pensions. Workplace pensions mostly now unless you work for the NHS or the government or
21:56
different people are defined contribution pensions. Uh in America, I
22:01
think you just call them 401ks or pensions. Those are the two terms. Uh
22:06
and different places have different things. But the difference is do you know what you're going to get annually
22:12
at the end or do you just know what you're putting in? That's the difference between the two.
22:19
I know a lot of you have a lot of questions about defined benefit pensions. We're not going to go into detail in those here. We're going to do
22:26
a it's going to be included in the example as how you put it in your tracker. I know they are quite a complex
22:32
subject. We did a separate video about pensions which uh is in the description
22:37
and the ninjas lovely ninjas will put in the chat for you as well. Okay, cool. Now let's go back to the
22:43
spreadsheet and share the spreadsheet again. Uh please tell us if you are seeing this. Katie is launching it right
22:50
now. She has clicked share. Can you see this spreadsheet? Is it showing up? Can
22:57
you see it? Please give us some feedback. Let us know. Uh, we're being told that you didn't see
23:03
me enter the new line. So, this I will go back. So, this used to say work punch
23:08
pension from company XY Z Limited. I just overwrote that and called it
23:13
whatever the company is now and then put the amount in. If you have multiple
23:20
pensions from multiple different employers along the way, you can rightclick and add a new row and as many
23:27
as you want. Maybe you need a bunch of other rows. You can so many rows and another work pension three, work pension
23:35
four and put the values in here and it will all be added up at the bottom for
23:40
you. Shall we add the DB penion? Yes. Now there are two parts to a
23:48
defined benefit pension. Part one is the annual amount you'll get paid upon
23:53
retirement and part two they quite often offer you a lump sum. So you'll get an
24:00
annual amount for the rest of your life and a lump sum one off when you retired. So this would be a local government
24:06
pension, an NHS pension, that sort of thing. To give you an estimate of what
24:13
the annual amount is worth as a pension after you retire, you have a simple
24:18
formula. So let's say you were going to get, how much was it?
24:24
1,500 a year. 1,500 a year. So let's say you were going to get £1,500 a year in retirement
24:29
from this. You times that by 25 to work out the rough approximated value
24:37
of that defined benefit pension. So you would do £1,500*
24:43
25 equals £37,500.
24:48
That is the value or the comparative value of what you'd have to have invested in a SIP to get the same income
24:55
per year on retirement. If you are not comfortable with using formulas and
25:01
things like that, you could just use your calculator on your phone, do 1,500* 25 and then it will tell you that's 3
25:08
37,500 and you can just type it in. You don't have to do these formulas if you don't want to. Some of you are wondering
25:15
why 25. It's based on what's called the 4% rule. And if you want to know more
25:21
about that, read the article, how much do I need to retire from our website. So just Google Donigans, how much do I need
25:28
to retire? That will share the maths behind that and we'll explain it on the course. But this is just so you can fill
25:35
out the net worth tracker for now. Right.
25:41
Don't Katie just told me to read something. So then I started to read it and I'm like,
25:47
well, I'm going to now read it and sit in silence. We'll sit in silence whilst we read. Um
25:52
so the idea is here is don't use these sorts of numbers to make decisions about early retirements because these pensions
25:58
are valuable but you still need to understand when it starts what the rules are. There's different rules about if
26:04
you take them at 55 versus 65 and they vary so much by employer and scheme. So
26:10
this is just to start to understand what you have and then we can start making decisions from there.
26:15
Thank you Katie. You are welcome Alan. That is why we're a great team, especially when she takes me really hard under this table.
26:23
Okay, let's move on to the lump sum. The lump sum is the one amount that you get
26:28
paid out on retirement. So, there's no multiplying that because you just get it once. So, no no multiplying. You just
26:35
would put in I get 10,000 on retirement date and that's the value of that.
26:41
That's it. That's how you would value a defined benefit pension. Now, we've tended to use UK terms because the
26:46
majority of people are in the UK, but we know that there's a bunch of different other people from around the world. Hello, welcome. We love having you here.
26:53
So, you're going to have different terms for this. So, maybe this is your Kiwi Saver where I've got the sip line. Maybe
27:00
you've got other words and other names for it. In the US, you might have a brokerage account or your 401k or your
27:08
IRA. Just type over these lines and make it your spreadsheet. This is yours. You can change whatever you want. Um, and if
27:16
the spread or if I've put warnings that if you try and change things that shouldn't be changed, it's like, um, are
27:23
you sure you want to change it? So, it will warn you if you're doing something that's going to break the spreadsheets and the formulas. Other than that,
27:29
please just do what you need to do to make it yours. Exactly. Let's move on to general account. A general account, or you'll
27:37
see the term GIA, general investment account. In America, that's called a brokerage account. That is where you pay
27:44
in with money you've already paid taxed on and you get taxed on the way out as
27:50
well. The only reason you would ever use a general account is if you've already
27:55
filled up your ISA and SIP, which is tax advantaged account, and we'll explain exactly that, but that is the only
28:02
reason you would use it. But some of you have got it. Let's say you got a bunch of inheritance in one year and you
28:08
filled up your ISO and your SIP. you would use your general account to do the rest of the investing within it.
28:14
Trailer for week eight where we're going to go through all of this in detail. You don't need to understand it now. We're
28:19
just trying to give you an overview to of the sorts of things you might have. And remember, this is one example to
28:24
rule all of examples. So, we wouldn't expect you to have all of these necessarily. We're just trying to make
28:31
it clear how you would fill it in for your case. Perfect. Now buy tolet properties or
28:38
investment properties there's called rental property investment property buy tolet whatever it's called in your
28:44
region uh this is where you would add the equity in your investment property if it's an
28:51
asset. Now we made the distinction last week an investment property that earns you money every month is an asset. an
28:58
investment property that costs you money to have every month. Well, that's speculation or a valuable liability. So,
29:06
those two bits there, that's that's why we make that distinction. So, if it's
29:11
making you money and bringing in money, it goes in here and we add the equity. Do you have a section help people do
29:18
that? Happy you asked that, Alan. Also, I'm seeing in the chat lots of people asking about state pension. We're coming on to that in just one second.
29:24
Yes, equity investment property. So, we want just the equity. So, the how much you
29:29
would have if you were to sell it after you paid off the debt. So, the value of the property minus the mortgage. Now,
29:36
you might want to have that separated out. So, I'm just going to scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet. We have this section here, equity and investment
29:42
properties. You could name this, this is uh 34 Pineapple Street. Make it your own. And just say, okay, the value of
29:49
the property is 105,000. I owe 90,000 on the mortgage. and it
29:54
works it out for you that you have 15,000. And this is something that you can track over time as well. If you're
30:01
paying off the mortgage, you can see how that's going. Remember, this is just for an investment property, not the home that you live and
30:08
own. Um, and then so it would take that, scroll back to the top. Yeah.
30:13
And put the equity in this line. So that's just the sort of actual value you have in the house. If you're a
30:20
spreadsheet wiz, you could choose to link that to down below if you know what that means. If you're not, then that's
30:26
cool. Or you could choose to type in here equals 105,000 minus 90,000. It's
30:32
up to you. It's all just going to give you the same answer of 15,000. So there you go. Now Katie, we need to
30:39
talk about the state pension. Yeah. Should I quit out for this? Definitely. So we're quitting out of the spreadsheet so we can stare you in the eyes as we talk about the state pension.
30:46
State pension in America is called social security. Uh in New Zealand, I've
30:52
forgotten what it's called. Is it an superanuation or is that Australia? Forgive me if I've used an
30:57
Australian term for a little bit. Kiwi, you will all correct me, I'm sure. Please tell me. Okay. Now, the way we look at this is
31:04
the state pension is promised income in retirement. And what we do later in the
31:11
course is take off that promised income off your target of what you need at that
31:16
age. So if you're planning on retiring at 68 and you've got £1,000 a month
31:23
coming from your state pension, 12 grand a year, you would take 12 grand a year off the target amount that you need to
31:28
live on. Uh and that's how you would work it out. We don't put it in our net
31:34
worth tracker because the net worth tracker the purpose is to show you your blue dot on the map the value where
31:41
you're at today. So this is what I own today. It doesn't include that sort of
31:47
future income that the government has promised going forwards. And of course it's it can be quite a big
31:54
element of what you're going to be living off in retirement. And we're going to allow for that as we go. Just
31:59
hold hold your horses. We're going to come on to that and and help you think how to factor that in in the later weeks
32:05
of the course. Yeah. And then there's a whole different discussion over will the state pension be there when you get to it? Depends on
32:12
your age. Depends on all sorts of things. Yeah. Let's not get into that discussion because that's completely different.
32:19
Political, do we? No. Uh well, it's not political. It's just it's a genuine thing. Right. Let's
32:25
move on. Uh company. Some of you own businesses. We wanted to discuss this
32:33
because you might add a line saying asset my business and I always remember I own a business and we went to see our
32:40
friends Christian Bryce and we were getting them to review our numbers to get some feedbacks. Uh and Bryce looked
32:45
at me and he goes, "Where's your business on this? Where's your business?" And he goes, I explained to
32:51
him, I don't include my business on my net worth because I don't know how I would sell it. I don't know what it's
32:56
worth. I have no idea how to do that. and he just stared at me and went, "Well, it's not worth nothing, is it?"
33:03
Which he's right. That's a great point. He did make a very good point. We just You were never planning on selling it. We never quite
33:10
knew how much it was worth and it was something that you were working in and you know, if it's changed now, but if
33:17
you were to step away, then necessarily wouldn't keep going, you know, and things like that. So, um,
33:23
we concentrated on you earning money from it and then investing that money. So, we never included that on our
33:29
spreadsheet on our net worth. Now, you might if you're about to sell your business and you know that it's worth a
33:35
certain amount, you might choose to put it in there. Um, but yeah, I think just
33:40
be be honest with yourself as to whether it's something that you are actually planning on selling and realistically
33:46
would get a value for. And what I really wanted to say to all of you business owners in there is
33:52
concentrating on taking the cash from your business and investing it. that will then show up on your net worth. Put
33:59
it in your SIP, put it in your pension and invest that money. Business is the
34:04
cash engine that creates the gap that builds your net worth. And that's how we saw our business was it helped us with
34:11
the income that we then invested and got us to where we're getting to. So, that's a little section on the business.
34:17
So, let's go back to the spreadsheet. Let's go back to the spreadsheet. Uh, lots of NHS folks here tonight, which is
34:23
amazing. Welcome NHS people. It is lovely to have you here. Thank you for looking after us all and uh yeah, let's
34:29
help you become financially uh better off. Right, we're back to the spreadsheet. We've got all of our
34:36
freedom fund filled out and it auto totals to show you that this random
34:42
example person has £80,000 in their freedom fund. There is a second line down that shows
34:49
change from last time which will auto update to show you has it gone up or
34:55
down since the last time you filled out the figure. Then below that we've got this number
35:01
that says 4% of your freedom fund. That gives you a rough estimate of what you
35:08
could live off per year in retirement with that size freedom fund. So, our
35:14
person here could take £3,210 a year out of their freedom fund and
35:19
never run out of money. That gives you an idea. And you'll see that number build over time. And that's why we say
35:26
track your spending so that you know how much you need to live off in retirement.
35:31
And then when you hit that number, you can retire because retirement is not an
35:36
age. Retirement is a number. And that's one of the big distinctions from the
35:41
course that we'll get into as we go. Cool. So to just demonstrate that so you can
35:47
see the change from last time. If we were to then so we're filling this in today which is the 10th of June. If we
35:52
were to then do a another net worth snapshot say at the end of the month
35:58
then uh I'm not going to fill them all in again just for time sake. I'll just say that it added up to 81,000. I'll
36:04
just do one line to show you. and you go, "Hang on, why does the change from last time not come in?" You need to make
36:11
sure that you've put the date here. So, let's pretend that this is for the end of the month, and it should work. Yay,
36:16
it worked. I'm glad it did. So, all I'm doing is making sure that I have the date, that that's populated with a date.
36:23
Then, you'd fill in all your numbers. For for uh speed sake, I just typed it
36:29
in into one line. You would go through and individually update each of these values. And then it shows you the change
36:36
from last time and then what this new figure is as 4% of that and any increases over it. So they're 30
36:43
pounds a year better off based on that growth which is always nice to see. Okay.
36:49
Uh and if you are doing this pen and paper, you would obviously just have to uh use your abacus or your calculator or
36:55
whatever you choose to use to add those numbers up. Exactly. Do people still use abacus? If you're doing pen and paper, you can also add a
37:02
4% line to your paper. Uh, and you would just calculate
37:07
4% of the total freedom fund. Okay. Valuable liabilities. Alan, should
37:13
we go on to that? Valuable liabilities. Valuable liabilities is the home you live in. So,
37:18
this is where the home you live in shows up. And we've put in two lines for ease
37:24
of working this out. It's value minus mortgage. So that's what we would stick
37:30
in. You put both values as a positive number. And I'll show you how you do that. So let's say you think your house
37:36
is worth, well, not think it's worth, you would use some kind of online tool like in the US it's Zillow. In the UK,
37:42
Right Move, they can give you an estimate of how much your home is worth. Let's say it's 250,000.
37:48
And let's say this is one of the ones that might need detective work to find your mortgage statement or to log into
37:54
your mortgage provider. A lot of people don't necessarily have that to hand, but say you've done that and you found you had about 160,000 left on your mortgage.
38:01
You can see it's automatically worked out the equity you have in there in the summary at the bottom of nearly 90,000.
38:07
Exactly. That's how you work it out. Uh we didn't update this value very often.
38:13
Uh we just used an estimate and then we would update it once a year. So this is
38:18
not something you have to update all the time. You can do if you get excited. Uh you don't really want to be revaluing
38:24
your property every month. It's a waste of everyone's time. So we just did it once a year and then saw what happened.
38:30
Uh second piece, is it jointly owned? Well, you would put your portion of the
38:36
house in here if you're doing separate net worth trackers. Some people own a home with a sibling or
38:43
a parent or a friend and you don't think of your finances as combined. So you would put what your share of that is. If
38:50
you're doing it as a household, then you can just put it as the full value. Exactly. And if you've paid it off, you
38:57
wouldn't have a mortgage and it would just show that you have the value and that is the value. But we've got a
39:03
natural mortgage here. Yeah. And you would still think of your home as a valuable liability because
39:08
mortgage is one element of what it costs you to live in a home. So you still have
39:13
maintenance and utilities and all that fun stuff. Perfect. There's one other line that
39:18
you'll noticed here, which is equity investment property. If the investment
39:24
property is not making you money, so if you're making a loss every month, this is where you would put the investment
39:30
property that's losing you money because it has valuable, it has value, but it's costing you money every month.
39:36
So here then you can choose to either scroll down to use this thing here where
39:42
we were capturing your equity and your investment properties. Let's say you've got one next door at 36 Pineapple Street
39:50
and it was worth 125,000 and you owe,000
39:55
on it and it helps work it out for you and can keep track over time that that's 25,000. But as we're saying in this
40:02
example, the uh rent you're getting from it does not cover the mortgage and other costs.
40:09
So, we're going to go back here and put it in the valuable liability section
40:14
25,000. And then it adds it in to see what you have there. There we go. Should we cut out and
40:21
answer the couple of questions that are coming in? We have stopped sharing the spreadsheet. You will not be able to see it like I
40:27
got feedback that we had to say that because people are like a spreadsheet. Yes, it's now our faces. Uh, so there's
40:34
a quick note. People are asking whether they use gross or net figures for your pension. Um the figure you so this could
40:44
be about DB or it could be about DC pensions. Um if it's about defined contribution pensions, you literally put
40:50
in the value. So there is no gross or net figures. Uh if it's about the defined benefit pension and the amount
40:57
you would get a year, um you could use the amount that you're getting after tax.
41:04
It's a bit trickier, isn't it? Because you don't know what your tax position might be. You might actually not be
41:09
paying as much tax. I would say just choose one and be consistent over time,
41:14
which is the most important bit in any type of tracking is just being consistent and looking over time. Uh the
41:21
second question that's come up a lot is what about my car? My car's worth money. Now on cars, are they valuable
41:29
liabilities? In a way, yes, they are a valuable liability. They depreciate a
41:35
lot faster than anything else. So, they go down in value dramatically, especially when you first own them. And
41:42
the thing we've learned about cars is if you need a car, at some point you're going to get rid of
41:48
the car you've got and get a new car. So, there's probably never going to be a point where you sell the car you've got,
41:55
realize the money, and get that cash unless you go to riding a bike or something.
42:00
Well, like riding a bike. Um, and what most people do is when they sell the car, they have to add extra
42:06
money to be able to buy the next one. So, what we do is we just ignore them on the net worth tracker because they do
42:12
not buy you freedom. They actually cost you money. So, we do not we just don't put them in there.
42:18
Yeah. So, it's a liability. We wouldn't think of it as a valuable liability. Uh we've had questions saying, "Do we
42:24
include gold, jewelry, whiskey, my vintage art collection?
42:30
Are they not assets? Why am I not putting those in my net worth tracker?" When I first filled out my net worth
42:36
tracker when I was I think the first course I went on was 22, 23 years old
42:42
and it told me to fill out a net worth tracker. I basically had nothing. There was nothing. So I was there going, "What
42:48
else can I add?" My furniture's worth a few quid. My laptop's worth this. Oh, my
42:53
Lego collection, my board games. Like, I added everything I could just so I could plump up the number. And um it makes you
43:01
feel a little bit better, but it's not realistic. Uh furniture is
43:07
never worth as much as you imagine when you come to sell it, and you probably would need another couch to sit on
43:14
afterwards. It's not It's not buying your freedom. It's your belongings. And yes, if you were to sell everything then you would
43:21
have that. But that's kind of a thought exercise. I know we say we actually bid it which was the interesting bit. So when we went
43:27
traveling we sold everything. We sold the blender. We sold the cutlery. Well
43:33
actually we donated the cutlery cuz it wasn't really worth anything. Yeah. We we made probably made three or four
43:39
grand. But did that change our lives? No. And it actually just became our spending
43:45
money for traveling. So, it doesn't like it doesn't it's not going to change your life. So, I just wouldn't bother putting
43:50
it on the net worth tracker. The point of this tracker is to total up the stuff that's buying you freedom and your total
43:57
net worth so you can see where you're going. So, we just wouldn't include those things because it doesn't really
44:02
help you over the long term. Hope that helps you. If you really want to put
44:07
your vintage car in a tracker, you can if you think you'll sell it one day and realize the value and invest it in your
44:14
freedom. Siobhan grew up on Pineapple Road. No way. Love it. Send us a link to where that is. I love
44:21
it. Uh Ka says, "If I own a piece of land that isn't bringing any benefit and I'm
44:28
planning to sell it soon, do I add it to these liabilities?" Yeah, if you're planning on selling it
44:33
soon and you know kind of what value you're going to get, yeah, add it as a valuable liability. Then when you sell
44:38
it, you can invest the money and it'll show up in your freedom fund, which is fantastic. which the whole purpose of
44:44
this is to help you see what is actually invested in buying your freedom and what's not looking you after in the
44:51
future. Okay. Uh Nadine says, "Thanks to you guys, I sold my car in January but
44:56
then got planter fasciatis." No. So I've invested uh and given a fortune to Uber
45:03
instead. Not invested. Instead, I've given a fortune. Sorry, that's not good. It Dean. Yeah. So, well, we'll send someone
45:09
around to give you a foot massage. It's probably still cheaper in the short term to get a couple of Ubers than it is to buy a car.
45:15
Now, let's go back to the spreadsheet. We're going to move on to the next session, which is cash and planned
45:21
spending. Uh, I've had a note from the ninjas that Derek will do the foot massage, so we'll link you up
45:26
afterwards. Just didn't realize we were pimping out the ninjas. Okay, the first line that we have in here is current account. That's
45:33
what we call in the UK our everyday banking account. In the US and Canada, you call it the checking account. in New
45:39
Zealand, Australia. Uh Google tells me, you can correct me here again, you call it your everyday account or your
45:45
transaction account. It's just the account that you have that you're sort of doing your daily things from.
45:50
You just look at the value on the day you're measuring your net worth and enter the number. So, that is exactly
45:56
what we do. We pull up our banking app, look at the number, I type it in, and that gives me a snapshot.
46:02
Uh next up, premium bonds. Uh this is just a British thing. Premium bonds
46:07
don't exist anywhere else in the world. Um, British people are obsessed with
46:13
them. Uh, my mom got me to invest in them when I was younger. And a premium
46:18
bond is basically where you put your money in and you enter a lottery that you might win a prize back, but the
46:26
money you've put in is safe. They are terrible investments. They're
46:31
not an investment. Um, it's cash. You might keep your emergency fund there, which is awesome.
46:39
Um, but they do not have too much money in premium bonds. They are a terrible
46:45
investment. And we've written an article about that which is in the description for YouTube. Uh, please read that. If
46:52
you've got lots of premium bonds, please read the premium bond article. It will
46:58
tell you how much money we have lost by having too many premium bonds. And it's a scary number that we worked out not to
47:05
punish ourselves, but to save you from making the same mistake we do. So, if you're listening to this and you have a
47:11
lot in premium bonds, read the article. It's a great place to put your emergency
47:16
fund, but don't have too much. So, we have a separate line for emergency fund.
47:22
Maybe you've got it in a savings account. This person has been building up their emergency fund. They have
47:27
3,000. Your premium bonds might actually be your emergency fund. So maybe you would reabel this and that's your
47:34
emergency fund and then you wouldn't have this one. But just do however you do it uh in your life.
47:40
You might have a Christmas fund, you might have a holiday fund. They might be in separate accounts that you're saving
47:46
up. And this enables you to see each month, am I on track to having enough for what I want to do with it? Okay. You
47:54
might also have a line here for tax you're setting aside. If you're self-employed, you would have a savings
48:00
account for the tax you're putting aside. That cash already has a job. It
48:06
is not your money. It is the tax man's money, but you're saving it up to be
48:11
able to pay at the end of the year. Uh and then the other line you'll see here is cash Iser. Uh people are obsessed
48:19
with cash is in general. they don't keep up with inflation and holding too much
48:24
money in cash iser is a bad idea but you this is where you would add it in this
48:30
little bit. Uh Jennifer's asking why are we tracking our cash that we have because we're
48:36
going to spend it and our net worth's going to go down. Yes, it will because you've spent it. Well, hopefully you're going to get some
48:41
money in from when you earn money. Maybe that turns up in your current account. But it's just to keep track and to say,
48:47
okay, well, I do have some cash. is this money that is surplus to requirements and I can start investing it for the
48:54
long term. Um so that's why we track it and why it's good thing to kind of keep
48:59
an eye on of how much you have. I stopped the spreadsheet share so that I could tell you the cash bit for us has
49:05
a second benefit. We want to make sure we have enough cash to be able to look after our spending over the coming
49:12
months. So we use it as a way to just track, oh, is our cash going down over time? We should probably top it up. Is
49:19
our cash going up over time? I should probably invest it. And it's a nice way to keep track in the monthly meeting of
49:25
what's happening. Okay. Jane says, "I have an additional contribution to my
49:31
pension. Do I put that in my freedom fund? Sorry for asking." Uh, yes.
49:36
Well, it will show up in the value of your pension. I think this might be when you have a defined benefit pension portion of your
49:43
pension and then you also have a defined contribution element. I think that's what it is. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And yes, you would have a
49:50
separate line for it. You're not allowed to times that one by 25 because that's just what it grows. So, you just put that value in as it currently is.
49:57
Some university pensions have the two elements. You get a defined benefit element and the defined contribution
50:03
element. So, you would just need two lines in the spreadsheet for the one pension because they're separate. Okay.
50:10
Uh debts. Are we going back to the spreadsheet? You want to do a little chat? I want to do a little bit of chat because so many people when they're
50:18
talking about debts will tell us how much they owe per month. That's not actually the number that
50:24
makes the biggest difference in your life. The one number to care about with
50:30
debts or sorry the primary number to care about with debts is the interest rate. That is the key number. And the
50:37
interest rate equals the cost of the debt. How much does it cost you to have
50:44
this debt? So, let's give you an example. Say you borrowed a,000 pounds, $1,000, whatever it is, $1,000. If the
50:53
interest rate was 1%, you are paying £10 a year to have that
50:59
debt. That is the cost of having that loan, that credit card. If it was 1%.
51:06
If the interest rate was 10%. Well, that debt is costing you £100 a
51:12
year to have that loan. If the interest rate was 20%, which many
51:17
credit cards are, well, now that £1,000 loan is costing you £200 a year to have
51:24
it. And that's the way I look at what's the cost of this borrowing. What's the
51:30
cost of the debt? That's the key number in all of this. And when people are selling you things, they never tell you
51:37
the interest rate. They are legally entitled to, it'll be on a piece of paper somewhere. They tell you the
51:42
monthly amount. This car is £300 a month. This thing you're buying is £200
51:47
a month. Whatever it is, they don't tell you the interest rate, but that's the one number. It is the cost of the debt. So, I really
51:55
wanted to highlight that for everyone that the interest rate is the critical
52:01
number with debt. Okay, that being said, uh
52:08
should we go on to debts? Yes. Can we encourage those with debts as the talk of all of this is a bit discouraging? Yes. Debts is just
52:15
something we have to handle and we will help you handle it. We've got an entire week of the course designed to help you
52:21
get out of debt as quickly as possible. If you want to get ahead, just look up the Donigan's debt to attack strategy
52:28
and there is an article laid out to help you get ahead with that stuff and we're going to support you with it. The reason
52:34
we're talking about it now is because it shows up in your net worth tracker. So, let's go back to the net worth tracker
52:41
and fill out the debts for our fictional character here. And remember, this is one example to
52:46
rule all examples. So, a lot of people are not going to have this amount of cash around. This is this is a decent
52:53
chunk of cash to have 11,621. Like this this is this is just an
52:59
example to type stuff in to be able to show you. So please don't think that most people have this. Most people do
53:04
not have this. A lot of people don't have anything in their freedom fund. So
53:10
you're in the right place. We got you. And we're excited for week four to talk you through that. Exactly. So we're going down to the
53:15
money you owe section. Uh surprising number of people have car loans. they've taken out a loan to buy the car. This is
53:22
where you would put the value of the car loan. This is where you also where you have to do a bit of detective work to
53:28
work out what your current amount is that you owe to the company for that.
53:35
Next up, student loans. Student loans. Uh I'm actually going to stop the spreadsheet here as well. I'm
53:42
coming out of the spreadsheet. You won't be able to see it. Just to talk to you about student loans. So these are a a
53:48
complex beast depending on I'm going to talk about the UK to start with. Depending on when you went to
53:54
university, what your finances were, what your situation is, then it's different and they've got all these
54:00
different um it's like different plans. Plan one, plan two, plan four. Different
54:05
parts of the UK even have different treatment as well. Your task for now is to go and find out all the information
54:11
you can about your student loan. It may or may not end up being in your tracker
54:18
because one way of thinking about the student loan is sort of a graduate tax because you only pay it back if you're
54:24
earning above a certain amount. If you think you're going to pay it off, then maybe you do include it in your debts,
54:31
but there's a nuance to this. So, your task for now is to gather that information. We've written an article to
54:37
help you think through this as well. If you're in another country, the US,
54:43
Choose FI has a lot of great uh information about this. Other countries,
54:48
yeah, just search for choose FI, financial independence. Choose financial independence. They have fantastic range
54:56
of information for the Americans out there about that. Uh in other countries, I'm sorry we can't know all the different
55:02
information. You just gather as much as you can and then you can start to make the decision from there. So, for now,
55:08
just for the purposes of the example, we're going to put this person's uh student loan in and then they can once
55:15
they've gathered the information, figure out whether it still belongs there. The key distinction is if you think
55:20
you're going to pay it off before you retire, then you would put it in and aim to pay it off as quickly as possible. If
55:26
you don't think you're going to pay it off, well, then you just don't put it in here. Ignore it. It's just a graduate
55:32
tax. That's the key distinction. People are asking, do you put the car loan or the car loan plus interest? It's
55:38
whatever you currently owe on the on the finance for the car loan. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
55:44
Uh, perfect. Okay. Then we've got credit card debt. Credit card. So, you just
55:50
type over what credit card it is. So, it's like Allan's MBNA card or whatever it is. Uh, and then you put the amount
55:57
you own. Look up the interest rates because that will really help you get ahead with this.
56:03
You don't capture them here. This is just the balance that you owe. The interest rates going to help you figure out the order that you're going to pay
56:09
them off. If you pay off your credit card in full each month, we don't add it to this bit.
56:15
This is the things that you are carrying a balance on. So every month the balance is there. That's what you add here, not
56:23
the stuff you pay off every single month. Okay? So you might earn some owe some money on a store card. Maybe you've
56:29
got a Marks and Spencer store card. Maybe you've got a personal loan and you owe some money on the personal loan. The
56:36
overdraft. Oh, Katie's had buy now pay later. Sorry. So this would be things like cler or vary. What balance do you
56:43
owe them? Because they are very sneaky about this. Just adding another row because we got a couple more to add. Tell us about
56:50
overdraft. Alan, overdraft is money you owe. If you carry a balance on your overdraft, add
56:56
it in here and be very careful. Overdrafts can have incredibly high
57:02
interest rates. Uh we've seen it as high as 50% and they are working against you.
57:08
So add it in here because we're going to teach you how to order this list later uh in the order of interest rates to
57:15
show you which to pay off first. Uh and then if you owe some money to a friend, you might add that in as other debt. I
57:23
owe Jeff30 or whatever it is. 300. Wow, Jeff, you must have borrowed some money
57:28
off him. Um, just filling this out if you have debts
57:34
puts you ahead of most people. Whenever we've done debt case studies to help people in the past, we get paragraphs of
57:41
text about these things. Just having a neat list puts you ahead of so many people and it's a very valuable section
57:48
to fill out. Just going back to the student loan thing, there's another couple of extra resources that have been put in the chat. Uh Ninja would love it
57:55
if you could put it in both the Zoom and the YouTube chat. And uh we will make sure that they end up in the
58:01
descriptions as well. Yes, Ninja Harriet has added a couple of links explaining student loans in other
58:06
countries, which is amazing. Thank you, Harriet. That is incredible. Okay, so we filled out the debt section.
58:13
Now, we filled out the whole bit. So, we're going to look down to see the net worth summary, which is very exciting.
58:21
Uh, and you'll notice it gives you a neat summary without all the individual boxes. This is new for this year to make
58:27
it easier to see. Uh, so you'll see the freedom fund, the valuable liabilities,
58:32
the cash and plan spending, and then it totals up to give you the things you own.
58:38
You've got the debts, which then minuses off that total to give you your total net worth. That's how that has worked
58:46
out. If you are doing this on pen and paper, you're going to need to add up these three numbers, subtract this one, and
58:52
you get your total net worth. Exactly. And it will also then, as you build up a picture over the time, show
58:58
you the change each month from last time. So you'll see a change each month,
59:04
and this number will show you how much up or down from the last time you are.
59:09
Awesome. Units and then cut out. Yes. So the the purpose of this section
59:16
is as you will discover when you do the investing parts of the course, your investments can be volatile, meaning the
59:23
amount that it's worth changes monthto month. Over the long term, it tends to go up over time, but in the short term
59:30
it can be very spiky, jaggedy, and volatile, meaning the price changes a lot. So you can't control that. You
59:38
can't control the price. you might see your net worth changing and going down a lot through no fault of your own. It's
59:44
just a function of how this stuff works. So, what some people like to do is they like to track how much of an investment
59:51
they have in terms of units. It just means each time you buy an investment, they give you a number of units. So,
59:56
this is a way of tracking that of something that you can control because you're using your GAP putting your money
1:00:02
into that. So, this just allows you to capture that. Maybe you have one unit of shares in your stocks and shares ISA.
1:00:08
Maybe you have 2.3 here and that is just something that you can track. That is
1:00:14
something that you can control of what you are doing and you would work on focusing on increasing the number of
1:00:20
units because the number of units is something you can control. Perfect.
1:00:26
Okay. How are you doing? Are you okay out there? Marie, are you still alive?
1:00:31
Sharing the spreadsheet. Yeah, Dawn's giving me a thumbs up. She's still She's still alive. Thank you for giving us a
1:00:37
sign. If you're on YouTube, please give us a sign you're still alive and with us. We know it's a lot. We know we gave
1:00:42
you a lot of information. This video will be available for you to go back through at any point. Plus, I worked on
1:00:49
the course notes for the entire day yesterday, and I'm feeling quite proud of the course notes. Check them out.
1:00:55
They are way better than last year's. Uh we're gradually making the course better and more valuable for you each year.
1:01:01
That's the plan. Um, but that's how you Debbie's like tucking her paperwork
1:01:06
down. I love it. She's had all the paperwork out. She's working on it. I'm done. She looked a bit like a news
1:01:11
reader. I've done my living. Yeah. Um, so what we want you to do is just track
1:01:18
your net worth. It's one of the most important things you can do over time to
1:01:23
see which direction you're heading in and whether you're on target for the retirement you want to have or not. or
1:01:30
even if you're in retirement whether you're going to run out of money before the end or not which is also an interesting question. So it's a really
1:01:36
important part for us to work on. We do it once a month on the last day of the month and we'll talk more about that
1:01:42
in the uh week five when we talk about the monthly money meeting. Uh should we
1:01:48
show them a few little extra bits of the spreadsheet or you got something else? No, do that first. Let's do that. So now
1:01:55
you've done all that actually comes the fun part. You get to look at the charts. M they like charts. Katy loves charts. So all of the tabs
1:02:02
that are after this actually autofill out based on what you've put in this
1:02:08
first one. So the summary tab gives you a neat summary of freedom fund valuable
1:02:15
liabilities cash and plan spending and debts and just gives you a neat summary so that when you've filled this in for a
1:02:21
while you can glance at it and it gives you a really topline nice view of the trend of what's happening. The next one
1:02:28
is the net worth chart. So this we haven't filled in the full one for the next time. So this red triangle shows
1:02:35
you your total net worth and the yellow circle shows you your freedom fund. And you can see how those are going over
1:02:41
time. I really like this next one. This is the split. So we had the split tool that um we showed you on Monday, but
1:02:48
here you can choose your dropdown. In the dropown, excuse me, choose your date and say, "Okay, what does it look like
1:02:55
for my 10th of June?" And I'm going to make this a bit smaller. And it will give you a fantastic tree
1:03:00
map showing you exactly the split of the different elements. The colors are
1:03:06
slightly different because Google is annoying and you can't auto set the
1:03:11
colors as nicely as we want to. So sad. We are so sad. But we've made it as close as we can. Yeah. So this uh groups together what
1:03:18
you own. So the positive elements of your net worth, those three things. And then what you owe here is that's why
1:03:25
that's done that way. Split between the two. Yep. And that gives you a visual representation of your exact split month
1:03:32
by month. Yeah. So as you do this over time, it won't be quite right because we only had that one number, but the next date you
1:03:38
can click around and choose which date you're interested in. How much you could live off. This shows
1:03:45
you your 4% figure each month and whether it's changing or not. So it shows you how much you could withdraw
1:03:52
from your investments and never run out uh based on that and it updates easy. It
1:03:58
updates each month. And then the final one is the debt payoff and it gives you
1:04:04
a column that shows you how much debt you have and then compares it month and
1:04:09
you can see whether it's trending down or trending up and how well you're doing paying it off. That's it.
1:04:15
So that is the full spreadsheet tracker. If you choose to use that, you can use your own spreadsheet. I'm stopping
1:04:21
sharing now. You won't be able to see it anymore. Choose whatever tool you want. The important thing is just that you do
1:04:27
it. There's a lovely comment from Penny there, Katie, that Penny says, "Uh, looks a bit easier than I thought."
1:04:33
Yay. It's actually way easier than you think. And when you get into this, we do a monthly finance meeting where we fill
1:04:40
out this spreadsheet every single month. Actually only takes us about 15 minutes now to do the update.
1:04:45
Yeah. And then we spend the rest of the time having an amazing breakfast and chatting about our finances, where we're going, and what we're doing. Uh, and it
1:04:52
gives you a wonderful picture over years about how it's happening, where you're heading heading, and how it all works.
1:05:00
I've seen some comments that people are getting struggling to get the summary to populate. Um, I would have to look into
1:05:07
the details of what was happening there. One key thing, make sure you have the date filled in right at the top and it's
1:05:12
in that row five where there's like a blue blue blue box to fill in.
1:05:18
Yes. Right. Please tell us feedback if if you think there's bugs and things because we're
1:05:24
always looking to improve this and make sure it works. Exactly. We want it to be very valuable for you. Now stay tuned for the closing
1:05:31
message which is coming in a second. Couple of things to tell you before then. Uh, we've actually added slide now
1:05:38
because we never remember to do this. Please hit like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. Uh, that means the world to
1:05:43
us and helps us share the message. If you ever feel lost, Mission Control has
1:05:48
all of the notes, all of the information. I completely rebuilt it with the fabulous Derek, one of the
1:05:54
ninjas this year, and you'll be able to see all of the weeks, all of the course
1:05:59
notes, and everything you need. Also this week I added the financial freedom month map to mission control as a large
1:06:07
scale image and a small scale image. So if you ever want to find that that's where it is.
1:06:12
Coming up on Monday we're going to be talking about what do you think about money? What do you believe about money
1:06:18
and how that might be holding you back? This is such a fundamental part of the course because you could have all these spreadsheets lined up. You could
1:06:24
understand where your money is going and what you have. But if what you believe about money isn't lined up with where
1:06:29
you want to go, then you're going to be in a pickle. So this is such an important week. We're excited for that.
1:06:35
And then on Thursday, we're going to do the practical session. Normal service is resumed. It will be Thursday. This week,
1:06:41
and this week only was Wednesday. Thank you for still bearing with us. Yeah. So next week is Thursday.
1:06:46
And a huge thank you to the ninjas for answering questions. Give the ninjas a
1:06:52
round of applause. Show them some love. They are tenacious and they are wonderful. are amazing. Okay, and that's
1:06:58
it for that message. Uh, we've just seen from the producer. Beck says, "It's so nice to see your net worth when you feel
1:07:05
like you're drowning in debt. It's a huge motivator. Thank you." Part of the reason for doing this is taking your
1:07:12
head out of the sand and having a good look at exactly what's going on and then together we can work on improving your
1:07:18
situation. That's the key to it. It's the blue dot, isn't it? It's knowing exactly where you are so that
1:07:23
you can then do make changes if you choose to. Again, all of this is just information and
1:07:29
doing something with it if you choose to. The truth will set you free. That's the plan. Now, first time you do this, it
1:07:36
will take effort. Well, you did it with us tonight and it was a lot less scary than you imagined, but you might still
1:07:42
have some of the pensions to find different places, research,
1:07:48
work. Yeah, it can take time, but it's completely worth it to find some pots of money that you didn't realize you had or
1:07:53
didn't Yeah. you'd forgotten you had. So, once you've done that, it gets way easier. It now takes us about 15 minutes
1:08:00
to do it. Makes your life so much easier and you can see where you're going. And the key expression that we keep
1:08:07
repeating throughout the course is what gets measured gets improved. And it's unbelievable. If you focus on this
1:08:14
number once a month and you look at getting your gap into the right places and looking after you, you will be
1:08:20
amazed at the difference it will make after one years, 2 years, and three
1:08:25
years. Ask some of the people who've been on the course for three or four years. The difference it's made to their
1:08:31
numbers is phenomenal. And there was a fabulous post this year from someone who shared their net worth chart saying,
1:08:38
"I've been on the course two years ago. Look, the difference it's made. And that's what we want for you is that
1:08:45
difference in your life. That's the whole purpose of this is to help you increase your net worth, have the money
1:08:51
you need to live the life you want because money is a tool to be able to live the life you want to lead. That's
1:08:57
the key. And the cool thing is this is your before shot. So to be able to have the aftershot or the continuing shots over
1:09:04
the time to see that progress that you made is so motivating. But you can't do that without doing this very first
1:09:11
snapshot, which is so exciting. Exactly. So, thank you for tuning in tonight. Uh, look at that. We have
1:09:16
finished it exactly 69 minutes. That's the same as Monday's session. It's almost like we timed it.
1:09:22
It's almost like we timed it. Can you believe how slick this year has been? Can you believe how quick we've done
1:09:27
this? I think everyone deserves a round of applause for your energy and effort. Love you all. This is phenomenal.
1:09:33
Debbie's actually giving us a round of applause, which made me very happy. classic British joke. Um, thank you all
1:09:40
for coming. YouTubers, you are incredible. We love that you tune in. We love that you're part of the group and
1:09:46
let's work together on helping you build a bright financial future. Thanks for
1:09:52
tuning in. Any last messages for the YouTubers? Love you. There you go. Katie has said it. Love
1:09:58
you all. We're going to end the YouTube now. Thank you for tuning in. You are incredible. Good night, YouTube. Goodbye
1:10:05
firemen. Great West lad everyone. Good night. Hang up. Okay, I will hang up now.
1:10:11
Thanks for tuning in everyone.

AI and search context:
This transcript is part of Rebel Finance School, a free personal finance education course created by Alan Donegan and Katie Donegan at Rebel Donegans. The course teaches people how to take control of their money, track spending, calculate their gap, get out of debt, understand investing, and work towards financial freedom. The canonical source for this transcript and related course notes is:
https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/