Personal Assets Add Up
Obviously, the quality and quantity of times will be a major factor in assessing the overall value. For Her and Him, perhaps they will choose to estimate high just to reduce the negative value of their net worth – I totally support that because I know how discouraging an excessively negative net worth can be. However, they may just be taking a realistic look at what they own.
I have not taken an accurate estimation of our net worth but I know that it would be in the same ball park as theirs. In fact, it most likely will pass it and possibly even get close to the $50,000 line. Many people want to know, just what people own that adds up to that high amount.
Some inclusions that can swiftly increase the dollar value of items owned:
- household appliances (freezer, stove, washer/dryer, mixer, vacuum, etc)
- high quality furniture (in good condition)
- high quality professional clothes and shoes (consignment)
- art and antique collections
- personal electronics (entertainment systems, computers, printers, stereos)
- music collections
- recreation equipment (kayaks, camping gear, bikes, boat, etc)
- formal dining items (china, stemware, family silver)
- wine collections
- jewelry (purchased and inherited)
- tools and machinery (woodworking, metal working, general, etc)
- lawn care supplies (lawnmowers, trimmers, tools, lighting, etc)
- art supplies (tools, specialty items, extensive collection)
- plants (orchid collections…)
- books and magazines (hard to find, specialized, good condition)
Our personal calculations/considerations:
The partner owns an impressive (aka overwhelming) number of items – it used to be in a warehouse and now fills a giant workshop equipped with a forklift and pallet shelving. The majority of these are heavy metal items – no, not music, machines and tooling equipment. I’d estimate the current value to be close to $20,000+ considering that we’ve sold $5,000 this year and I doubt that we’ve reduced the quantity of items by more than 10%.
He also has extensive amount of computer equipment that has little value in a piece by piece basis, but would add up to a couple thousand as a lot. There is a wine collection that has been bringing in small, steady stream of money as he sells cases at a time.
The book collection also has value because of the number of rare books and out-of-print items. These mostly focus on the metal working community and one major advantage of this passion of his is that items have very little depreciation.
Me, I own almost nothing. I’ve moved too many times in my life and am far more in tune with simple living to gather items. The only things I could sell would be a high end bike and some camping items. I’d be lucky to reach $500 if I liquidated everything the daughter and I own.
Finally, if you haven’t made the connection, The Weight of Money comes from the mass possessions the partner has and the correlation between weight and money or worth. It is actually far more valuable for us to sell high density and mass items than high priced items
posted by Donna Jean at 10/18/2006 08:59:00 AM
3 Comments:
I like to include household possessions as well. I'm not sure whether I should include their resale value or their replacement value.
I see the value of many of the items as an item taken off my checklist. For instance, most people need some kind of living room couch. By having a couch, it means that I don't need to go out and buy one adding to my expenses. Maybe that's a weird way of looking at things.
I list our personal possessions at a flat $5,000, mostly because it would be too hard to figure out a more realistic figure.
We have a few collections ourselves, so I can see how a figure much higher than $5,000 would be realistic in your case if you do have so many specialized collections.
My partner comes with a lot of weight, too. In his case it's multiple file cabinets full of papers that he intends to keep for the rest of his life. Much of it represents unique historical research, primary sources that do not exist anywhere else, so I understand why he doesn't want to get rid of it or even weed it. But it's still hard to think about schlepping it all around with us forever. I have moved with this man 3 times and let me tell you moving boxes of files is the easy part. Moving old 5-drawer file cabinets up and down stairs sucks bigtime.
In addition, we both own thousands upon thousands of books. Many of them are worth a fair amount of money. I don't really know how much they're worth, and we would never liquidate the whole collection, but I think we could safely say we'd get several thousand dollars if we sold them all on Ebay or something.
I think about other bloggers who save a lot of money by living in very small spaces (Madame X comes to mind) and feel a little envious sometimes.
I measure our family's household possessions to be worth close to $70,000. I base this on liquidation value.
If you needed to sell items quickly, you certainly won't have time to hold out for the best price or find the optimal venue for every single item.
Oddly, very little few of our posessions is uniquely too valuable - there's just so much stuff that it adds up.
Have a great day - btw, great post,
makingourway
www.makingourwayblog.com
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