If your money sits in one country, net worth is arithmetic: add what you own, subtract what you owe. If it does not, the arithmetic is the easy part and the hard part is deciding which number is real.
A euro savings account, a pension in your home country, a flat you still owe money on, and a salary arriving in a third currency do not add up without a decision about what unit to add them in. Spendly makes that decision explicit and then keeps it consistent.
Everything counted in the currency you think in
Each account holds its own currency. Your net worth is expressed in the one base currency you chose, converted at daily rates.
- Assets: cash, savings, investments, property and anything else you could realistically sell
- Liabilities: card balances, loans, a mortgage, money owed to family
- Net worth: the difference, in your base currency, with each underlying holding still recorded in its own
So a brokerage account in dollars, an ETF in euros and a flat valued in dirhams appear as one figure without you maintaining a conversion column anywhere.
The number moves when you have not done anything
When part of what you hold is in another currency, your net worth changes as the exchange rate changes, with no saving or spending involved. It is the part single-currency trackers get wrong by omission.
That movement is real: your purchasing power genuinely moved. But it is a different event from saving, and reading the two as one number leads people to the wrong conclusion about their own behaviour.
A month where you saved well and the currency went against you is a good month with bad weather. A month where you saved nothing and the currency rescued the total is not a good month. Keep the two separate and the trend line starts telling you something you can act on.
Your trend line beats any benchmark
It is natural to wonder how your number compares to other people’s. It is the least useful question you can ask of it.
Net worth is a trajectory, not a snapshot. Someone at 20,000 with a strong savings rate and no consumer debt is in a better position than someone at 80,000 with growing card balances, and no comparison table will tell you that. Age-banded averages are a particularly poor fit here anyway: they are published per country, in one currency, for people whose whole financial life sits in that country.
Watch your own line instead. Is it moving in the right direction? Is the pace picking up? Did this month’s change come from what you saved or from what the rate did? Those are answerable, and they are about you.
Track net worth over time, not just today
A single net worth figure tells you where you are. The sequence tells you where you are heading, and only one of those is actionable.
Spendly records a monthly snapshot and keeps the history, so you can see the direction and the pace rather than one number that felt good on the day you looked. What you get:
- A current figure on the dashboard, in your base currency
- A month-over-month history so you can track net worth over time rather than re-deriving it each quarter
- A breakdown of assets against liabilities
- Per-currency detail underneath the total, so you can see where the exposure actually sits
Six months of snapshots answers questions a single figure cannot: whether the trend survived a bad quarter, whether the pace is improving, and how much of the movement was you rather than the exchange rate.
Valuing the things a price feed cannot quote
Property, pensions and private holdings have no live price, and pretending otherwise is how a net worth figure becomes fiction.
Investment tracking works on dated valuations: you record what something is worth on a date, and Spendly keeps the history. For a flat or a pension, once or twice a year is enough, and a conservative figure is better than an optimistic one. For listed holdings, update when you would look anyway.
The rule that matters: value it in the currency it is actually denominated in. A property in Lisbon is a euro asset even if you think in sterling. Recording it as a converted sterling number bakes in a rate and hides the exposure.
What to leave out
Anything you could not sell. If it is not realistically convertible into money, it is not an asset, whatever it cost.
Anything counted twice. If a savings account is also your emergency fund and also sits behind a savings goal, count it once.
Nothing you owe. Informal loans from family are liabilities. So is a balance you are choosing not to think about.
And one thing worth remembering rather than excluding: home equity counts, and you cannot spend it. A net worth that is mostly a property is a different financial position from the same figure in cash, and the total alone will not tell you which one you are in.
Where it connects
Net worth moves for two reasons you control: assets grow, or liabilities shrink. Savings goals and debt payoff are the two levers, and both show up on the same line.
Multi-currency support is what makes the figure honest when your money crosses a border. For the reasoning behind base currency choice and why conversion timing matters, read managing personal finances in multiple currencies.
Common questions
How is net worth calculated across currencies?
Each account holds its own currency and the total is expressed in the single base currency you chose, converted at daily rates. The underlying holdings stay recorded in their own currency, so you can still see where the exposure actually sits underneath the total.
Why does my net worth change when I have not spent anything?
Because part of what you hold is in another currency and the exchange rate moved. It is real, since your purchasing power genuinely changed, but it is a different event from saving. Reading them as one number leads to the wrong conclusion about your own behaviour.
How should I value a property or a pension?
On a dated valuation, once or twice a year, using a conservative figure. Value it in the currency it is denominated in: a property in Lisbon is a euro asset even if you think in sterling. Recording it as a converted number bakes in a rate and hides the exposure.