How to Track Your Net Worth Automatically

Your bank app shows your checking balance. Your 401(k) site shows your retirement savings. Your mortgage servicer shows what you owe. None of them shows the one number that ties it all together: your net worth.

Tracking net worth used to mean a spreadsheet and an afternoon of logging into websites. Now apps can pull most of it in automatically. This guide explains how that works, how to handle the assets no app can see, and how often checking the number is actually useful.

What net worth is, and why track it

Net worth is simple math:

Net worth = everything you own (assets) - everything you owe (liabilities)

Assets include cash, investments, retirement accounts, your home’s value and your car. Liabilities include your mortgage, car loan, student loans, credit card balances and any other debt.

Your budget tells you where this month’s money went. Your net worth tells you whether all those months are adding up. Paying down a loan, contributing to a retirement account or watching investments grow all show up here, even when your checking account looks the same.

For context, the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, released in October 2026, put the median US family’s net worth at $215,900, a 2% real increase from 2022. Medians vary widely by age, so the most useful comparison is with your own number from last year.

How automatic tracking works

Net worth apps use account aggregation. You connect each financial institution once, and the app reads balances on a schedule, often daily. Behind the scenes, many apps use data aggregators that link to banks through secure APIs or, for some institutions, through your login credentials. Our explainer on open banking covers how those connections work and how to revoke them.

Accounts that usually link automatically:

• Checking and savings accounts
• Brokerage and robo-advisor accounts
• 401(k), 403(b) and IRA accounts
• Credit cards
• Mortgages, auto loans and many student loans
• Health savings accounts

Empower’s free dashboard, for example, says it can connect retirement plans, investments, mortgages, loans, bank accounts and credit cards, and that you can only link accounts you already access online.

Tool options compared

If you also budget, an all-in-one app saves you from maintaining 2 tools; see how to build a budget with an app. If you prefer a spreadsheet, our zero-based budget in Google Sheets template approach can be extended with a net worth tab.

Adding assets no app can see

Some of your biggest assets will not link. Add them as manual entries and update them on a schedule.

Your home

Options for estimating value:

• Online estimates from real estate sites, which use automated valuation models. They are convenient but can be off, especially for unusual homes or areas with few recent sales.
• Recent comparable sales in your neighborhood.
• Your purchase price, held flat, if you want the most conservative number.
• A professional appraisal, usually only worth paying for when refinancing or selling.

Some apps can pull an automated home estimate for you. Whichever method you choose, be consistent and lean conservative. Remember that selling costs and taxes mean you would not walk away with the full estimate. Enter the mortgage as a linked liability so equity updates automatically.

Your car

Use a pricing guide such as Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds and pick the private-party or trade-in value, not the dealer retail price. Cars lose value, so update this every 6 to 12 months.

Everything else

• Other real estate such as a rental property or land
• Business ownership, valued conservatively
• Money owed to you by family or friends, if you expect repayment
• Valuables like jewelry or collectibles, only if they have a realistic resale value

Empower notes that manual accounts do not update automatically, which is true of every app. Set a reminder.

Key takeaway: Linked accounts keep themselves current, but manual assets drift. Pick one conservative valuation method for your home and car, update them on a fixed schedule, and treat them as estimates.

Step-by-step setup

1. List every account. Banks, credit cards, investment and retirement accounts, loans and HSAs. Do not forget old 401(k)s from past jobs.
2. Choose a tool from the table above.
3. Turn on multifactor authentication at each institution before linking. Our list of banking app security settings covers what to enable.
4. Link accounts one at a time. Prefer connections that send you to the institution’s own login page.
5. Add manual assets and liabilities. Home, car, other property and any debts that will not link, such as a private family loan.
6. Check for duplicates. Some apps import the same account twice when you link through 2 routes.
7. Categorize accounts as cash, investments, retirement, property and debt so the trend is easy to read.
8. Set reminders to update manual values and to review the total.

If you share finances with a partner, decide whether to track a household number together; our guide on how couples manage shared money with apps covers shared views.

How often to check your net worth

Daily balances change with every paycheck, bill and market move. Watching them can cause stress without helping you decide anything.

For most people, a quick monthly glance and a deeper quarterly review work well. Many apps chart net worth over time; the line’s direction over 12 months matters far more than any single day.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Counting your home at an optimistic value. It inflates net worth and may encourage overspending.
• Leaving out debts. Student loans or a 0% card balance still count.
• Ignoring taxes in retirement accounts. A traditional 401(k) balance will be taxed when withdrawn; a Roth balance generally will not. Some people track both totals. Our guide on opening a Roth IRA online covers the difference.
• Letting broken links go stale. Aggregator connections drop when passwords change. If a balance stops updating, reconnect it.
• Comparing yourself to others. Use national figures for context only.

The bottom line

Tracking net worth automatically takes about an hour to set up and a few minutes a month after that. Link everything that will connect, add your home, car and other assets with conservative values, and review the trend monthly or quarterly. A rising line is the clearest sign your financial plan is working.

Sources

• Federal Reserve: 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances release (October 9, 2026) — median family net worth of $215,900 and change since 2022
• Federal Reserve: Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2022 to 2025 — full survey report
• Empower: How to link accounts to your dashboard — account types that can be linked and the online access requirement
• Empower support: Create a manual account — manual assets like a home and the need to update them yourself