By: Dr. Tamara Patzer
October 12, 2026
In Brief: Net worth is assets minus debts, but for a business owner, two more columns decide whether the number means anything: how liquid each asset is and who legally owns it. This worksheet-style feature uses the Federal Reserve’s newest family figures and the words of a New Orleans tax attorney to show how to build the fuller picture.
Net worth is easy to state: what you own minus what you owe. For a salaried household, that single number is a decent guide. For a business owner, it is not, because the same number can hide a company that cannot be sold quickly, a pile of assets held in the wrong name and a cash position that does not match the total. Attorney Todd M. Villarrubia of New Orleans, author of Entrepreneurial B.E.A.S.T. Mode™, suggests adding two columns. This worksheet shows how.
What Does the Standard Calculation Tell You?
Something, and no more. The Fed’s newest Survey of Consumer Finances (October 9, 2026) lists 2025 median family net worth at $215,900 and the mean at $1.24 million1. Those are measurements of net worth in the usual sense, applied to all families. They say nothing about how any family’s wealth is held.
The distributional accounts add another view. FRED’s Fed-sourced series shows $60.3 trillion of net worth in the top 1% in the second quarter of 20262. At that scale, one number summarizes a vast range of situations.
What Is the First Extra Column: Liquidity?
Liquidity is how fast an asset can become cash without a loss. A checking account is fully liquid. A building takes months. A minority share in a private company may take years and a buyer. Villarrubia notes that for most owners the largest asset is the least liquid. In his words: “It isn’t until a liquidity event that their wealth is fully realized; until then, it’s largely paper value.”
To fill the column, mark each asset as available in days, months or years, or as not realistically available without a sale of the company. The totals in each row often change the owner’s sense of how well-off they are.
In Schwab’s 2025 poll, respondents averaged $2.3 million as the cost of being wealthy and $839,000 as the cost of being comfortable3. An owner whose net worth is far above the first number and whose liquid assets are far below the second has found the gap that the worksheet is designed to expose.
What Is the Second Extra Column: Ownership?
Ownership is who legally holds each asset. The question sounds simple. Many owners cannot answer it quickly. A property may sit in a personal name, an old entity or a trust. A bank account may belong to the company. Shares may be partly held by a family member.
The answer decides who can reach the asset in a dispute, who controls it if the owner is unable to act and how it will pass at death. Villarrubia’s line is direct: “Wealth preservation depends not on what you own, but on how you own it.” A net worth figure that ignores the column treats all dollars as equal when they are not.
How Does the Estate Tax Fit In?
For the largest estates, it adds a fourth question. Under the IRS’s 2026 figure, $15,000,000 per person is the federal basic exclusion amount4. An owner can read the total net worth, compare it with that figure and see quickly whether there is a federal question to answer. The liquidity column then shows whether the estate could pay a tax bill without selling the company.
State rules differ and are not covered here, and the federal exclusion can change. The worksheet raises the question and does not answer it.
What Does a Filled-In Worksheet Look Like?
Each row is an asset. The columns are value, liquidity and owner. A typical founder’s sheet might show the following in broad terms:
- The operating company: a large value, illiquid, held by the founder personally.
- Real estate used by the company: a large value, slow to sell, held in a separate entity.
- Cash and investments: modest value, immediately available, held jointly with a spouse.
- Retirement accounts: moderate value, restricted, held individually.
- Debts: personal guarantees, loans and mortgages, with the names that appear on each.
That sketch is invented to show the layout. It is not a real person’s balance sheet. The value of the exercise is the pattern it reveals: a large number, little cash and most assets in the founder’s own name.
What Should an Owner Do With the Result?
Take it to the advisers, all of them, at once. The pattern the worksheet shows is the very thing the book says to coordinate around. In Villarrubia’s words, “Your wealth is managed as an integrated business system, not as scattered pieces.”
Questions to ask include whether any asset should be held differently, whether liquidity is adequate for the family’s needs and the estate’s, and who would act if the owner could not. The answers belong to the owner and a licensed attorney and tax professional, not to a worksheet.
What If the Numbers Are Uncomfortable?
They often are. An owner who adds the two columns may find that nearly all wealth is illiquid and nearly all of it sits in a personal name. That is a starting point, not a verdict. Most owners are in that position when they first look, and the worksheet is how they stop being in it by accident.
How Often Do the Columns Change?
More often than the total. A company’s value may stay level while its liquidity changes because a loan comes due or a partner sells. Ownership shifts with every gift, transfer or restructuring. Check the liquidity and ownership columns whenever something material happens, and at least once a year even when nothing seems to have changed. Surprises tend to live in the columns that were not being watched. Keep earlier versions so you can see the trend, since a column that is slowly worsening deserves attention before it becomes urgent.
Common Questions
How often should I update the worksheet? At least once a year, and after any large event such as a sale, a birth or a death.
Do I need a spreadsheet? A page is enough. The point is to see the pattern.
Is this the same as a personal financial statement for a bank? No. A bank statement focuses on borrowing capacity. This worksheet focuses on liquidity and ownership.
Sources
- Federal Reserve Board, press release on the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances
- Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts, Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (FRED)
- Charles Schwab, 2025 Modern Wealth Survey (Business Wire)
- Internal Revenue Service, What’s New: Estate and Gift Tax
About the Author: Dr. Tamara Patzer is a publisher and former newspaper editor. She was on the staff of The Charlotte Sun when it was named a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for its Hurricane Charley coverage.
About the Source: Todd M. Villarrubia is an attorney with an LL.M. in Taxation and a Juris Doctorate. He is an Accredited Estate Planner, a Board Certified Expert in Estate Planning and Administration, and a Fiduciary Investment Advisor Representative. He is the author of Entrepreneurial B.E.A.S.T. Mode™.
Wealth Planning Law Group, 101 W. Robert E. Lee Blvd., Ste 404, New Orleans, LA 70124.
Phone: 504-982-8207
Email: todd@lawealthplan.com
Website: Wealth Planning Law Group.
Disclaimer: Attorney advertising. Sponsored feature written on behalf of Todd M. Villarrubia. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Results vary.
