One fall night in 2010, my wife Nicole and I were watching the Suze Orman Show. (Yes, I used to DVR it). There was this fun segment where someone would call in and Suze would analyze that person's financial health and give them a grade. It was called How Am I Doing? One term that we kept seeing over and over again on this segment was “Net Worth”. Since we were personal finance newbies, we had no idea what this meant. Nicole and I were making a combined annual income of $130,000 so we figured our net worth must be HUGE. After the show was over, we decided to see how rich we really were. There was no doubt in our mind that we’d be better off than most of the jokers that call in to the show and get an “F” grade from Suze! We walked upstairs and started to write down all of our numbers on a big whiteboard. By separating our “assets” (what we owned) and our liabilities (what we owed) into two big columns, we started to discover that we weren’t rich. We were kinda broke. Although we were making a solid income together, our liabilities were much higher than our assets. Here is a snapshot of what our numbers looked like back in 2010 (rounded educated guesstimates based on me losing some of our data along the way):   There’s no way were going to get an “A” grade on Suze’s show with a -$50,000 net worth! This epiphany moment was just the jolt of reality we needed to start making progress on our finances. Our short-term goal was to get this net worth number in positive territory ASAP! It was time for us to make a change. Here's what we did to increase our net worth by $800,000 in 8 years.  1. Track Your Net Worth Net Worth Total (September 2010) = -$50,000 Nicole and I quickly realized that we couldn’t improve our financial situation if we weren’t tracking our net worth. This number was going to be the barometer for our future financial success. We took all of the numbers off of our whiteboard and inserted them into an excel spreadsheet. From that point on, we updated our asset and liability totals monthly to track our progress. Even just seeing the numbers helped! (Side Note:  Personal Capital wasn’t around back then, but if it was, it would have made the whole net worth tracking process a lot easier. It’s free and it automatically updates your net worth by synching up your accounts. We use it now and love it.) 2. Live on a Monthly Budget Net Worth Total (January 2011) = -$35,000 Another monthly habit Nicole and I adopted around this time was living on a budget. We got the idea after reading Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. He talked about the importance of living on a zero-based budget and giving every dollar an assignment. Getting on the same financial page with Nicole before each month began was really important for us as we started our marriage. Each month, we’d do the following: Review our spending, saving and debt balances Plan out next month’s budget Discuss our financial dreams and goals to ensure we’re headed down a path we’re both excited about We eventually learned about a budgeting tool called Mint that automated the budgeting process much like Personal Capital did for our net worth tracking. This tool saved us a ton of time and it was free too! (Side Note:  If you’re looking for a budgeting tool specifically for couples, Zeta is an excellent option.) 3. Eliminate Your Consumer Debt Net Worth Total (September 2011) = $20,000 After being inspired by Dave Ramsey’s debt crushing ways, we decided that becoming consumer debt-free would be an excellent way to increase our net worth. For me, I really hated having student loans and wanted them gone as soon as possible. My 6.8% interest rate did not help the process either. (Debt refinancing services like SoFi would have been huge for me back then!) For Nicole, she loved her 2008 Audi A4 and thought it would be incredible to own it outright with no payments. Through our monthly Budget Party, we discovered