You will be able to list your assets and liabilities in a spreadsheet and calculate your net worth.
Ask someone how they are doing with money and you usually get one number: the balance in their main bank account. It feels like the answer, but it leaves out the investments they forgot about, the CPF that grows every month, the card bill due next week and the study loan they stopped thinking about years ago. You can feel rich with a large debt or anxious while owning more than you think.
This lesson builds the page that answers the question properly. It takes about half an hour the first time, and you will update it every year in module 9.
Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe, measured on one date. Assets go on one side, liabilities on the other, and the difference is the number you track.
The date matters because every figure moves. Your savings change after payday, your investments change every trading day, your loan shrinks with each repayment. A net worth figure mixes balances from different months, so it does not describe any real moment. Pick a date, write it at the top of the sheet, and take every balance as close to that date as you can.
You are not looking for a good number or a bad one. At 25, with a study loan and a first job, a net worth near zero or below it is normal. What the sheet gives you is a fixed starting point, so that next year you can see the direction of travel and what drove it.
List every asset at what it is worth today, not what you paid for it. That is the rule people break most often.
Cash means every bank account, fixed deposit and digital wallet balance. Investments are shares, funds and bonds, with any cash left uninvested in a brokerage or robo-advisor account counted too, all at today's market value. If you bought a fund for S$9,000 and it is now worth S$7,500, write S$7,500. The loss is real whether or not you have sold.
CPF balances go on the sheet as well: your Ordinary, Special and MediSave accounts, read from the CPF website.
Property goes in at a realistic current value, such as recent sale prices for similar homes nearby, not the price you bought it at. The home loan does not reduce that figure. It goes on the other side as a debt, so you can see both.
Leave out things you use rather than sell. A phone, furniture and clothes lose most of their value the day you buy them. A car is a judgement call: if you include it, use what a dealer would pay you today, and remember it loses value every year.
List every debt at its outstanding balance on the same date. That means the amount you would have to pay to clear it today, not the monthly instalment and not the original loan.
Go through the usual ones: home loan, car loan, study loan, personal loans, instalment plans, and card balances, including a balance you plan to pay in full this month. Then add the one people leave off, money owed to family. If your parents lent you S$3,000 for a course and you mean to pay it back, it is a debt.
Your bank and loan statements show outstanding balances. For a loan you are not sure about, call or message the lender and ask for the redemption amount.
CPF is your money, but most of it is locked for set uses and ages. You cannot use your Special Account to pay for a car repair, and you cannot draw on MediSave for rent. If you add CPF to your cash as though they were the same thing, your net worth will look healthier than your real ability to deal with a bad month.
So show two totals: net worth without CPF, and net worth with CPF. The first is what you could reach if you had to. The second is the fuller picture of what you have built.
Here is a worked example with figures made up for it. Wei Ling is 29 and fills in her sheet on 1 March.
Her assets are S$18,000 in savings, and an investment account worth S$7,500 today. Her CPF balances are S$32,000 in the Ordinary Account, S$11,000 in the Special Account and S$14,000 in MediSave, a total of S$57,000.
Her debts are a card balance of S$1,200, a study loan with S$9,800 outstanding and S$3,000 owed to her parents. Together that is S$14,000.
Her assets outside CPF come to S$18,000 plus S$7,500, which is S$25,500. Take away the S$14,000 of debts and her net worth without CPF is S$11,500. Add the S$57,000 in CPF and her net worth with CPF is S$68,500.
Both figures are true. The S$11,500 tells her what she could draw on in a hurry, and it is the one that would matter if she lost her job. The S$68,500 tells her what she has built in total, most of it by her employer's contributions and her own through CPF.
Use one tab with three blocks. At the top, the date. Then assets, one row each, with the account name, the institution and today's value. Then debts, one row each, with the lender and the outstanding balance. At the bottom, the two totals. A spare column for notes helps, for things like "value estimated" or "check with lender".
The course downloads include a sheet already laid out this way. Open it now and keep your banking apps, your CPF login and your loan statements within reach, because the next step is to put a real figure in every row.
Set up the net worth sheet from the course downloads and fill in every asset and debt with today's balance.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).