Understand your net worth and financial insights

Understand your net worth and financial insights

Fireball brings your accounts, assets and debts together so you can see the bigger picture. If you are new to tracking money, some of the numbers may feel unfamiliar at first. This guide explains what they mean and what to check when something does not look right.

You do not need to use every chart. Start with net worth, then explore the insights that answer a question you have about your money.

Net worth in plain English

Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe.

For example, imagine you have:

• $12,000 across your everyday and savings accounts;
• $5,000 in investments;
• a vehicle worth $10,000; and
• an $8,000 loan.

Your assets total $27,000. After subtracting the $8,000 debt, your net worth is $19,000.

Net worth is not the same as money available to spend. A home, vehicle or long-term investment can increase your net worth without putting more cash in your everyday account. Use your budget and Safe to Spend for day-to-day decisions.

What Fireball includes

Fireball builds the current net-worth total from the financial information in your Accounts screen. This can include:

• balances from connected bank, credit-card, loan and investment accounts;
• cash accounts and debts you added manually;
• manual investments, vehicles and valuables;
• property values; and
• debts shown in Fireball.

Fireball shows assets and debts separately, then subtracts the debts from the assets.

If an account or asset uses another currency, Fireball converts it into your reporting currency. You can review the reporting currency in Settings. A change in an exchange rate can therefore move your net worth even when the original foreign-currency balance has not changed.

Your net worth and your FIRE amount can be different. Net worth includes the whole balance sheet, while a FIRE projection also considers whether money is investable or available at the time it may be needed. A vehicle or primary home, for example, can form part of net worth without behaving like an investment portfolio. For help with a FIRE result, see My budget or FIRE calculation looks wrong.

Read the Accounts screen first

Open Accounts when you want to understand the current total.

The net-worth card shows:

• your current net worth;
• total assets;
• total debts; and
• the change since the newest available snapshot before today.

Net Worth History shows how your total has changed across the dates for which Fireball has recorded balance information. An account, asset or property only contributes from its first available balance record, so a newly added item may not appear in earlier points. Select a point on the chart to see the net worth, assets and debt recorded for that date.

The asset-allocation chart groups the current balance sheet into areas such as cash, term deposits, KiwiSaver, investments, vehicles, property and debts.

Open an individual account, asset or property when you need to understand which value is contributing to the total. A connected account can also show when its balance was last updated.

Use Insights to answer a question

Open Insights from the side menu and use the chart selector to choose the view you need. The available views depend on the information Fireball has for you, so another person may see a different set of choices.

• FIRE Plan lets you visualise your long-term plan and explore “what if” scenarios, such as changing your retirement age, spending or contributions. These temporary changes let you compare possible outcomes without changing your saved FIRE settings.
• Projection starts with your current assets and debt and shows how they could change in the future under your plan’s assumptions. Switch between Net worth and Assets & debt to see the total or its estimated breakdown. Use What if? to temporarily explore different investment growth, monthly savings and timelines without changing your saved plan. Projection is forward-looking, it does not reconstruct net worth from before Fireball had balance information. Use Net Worth History for recorded past figures.
• Net Worth Changes explains how assets and debt moved the total over a selected period.
• Income vs Expenses compares money coming in with spending.
• Cash Savings Rate shows how much of the income counted for a period remained after spending.
• Investing shows how much money you moved into investments over time. It tracks contributions, not market gains or losses.
• Cash Flow shows how your recorded income was divided across spending categories and what remained as savings. Use it to understand where your money went and which areas most affected your ability to save.
• Recurring summarises confirmed recurring income, bills and transfer commitments.
• Categories shows where your money came from and where it went. Switch between Income and Spending to view the category breakdown and compare it with the previous equivalent period.
• Top Merchants shows where you spent the most and how that spending changed from the previous comparable period.

These are different views, not separate versions of your accounts. A current balance comes from the Accounts side of Fireball. Spending, income and cash-flow insights also use transaction and recurring-activity information.

Common changes that can be surprising

Moving money between your own accounts

Moving $1,000 from an everyday account to a savings account does not make you $1,000 richer. One included account falls by $1,000 and the other rises by $1,000, so total net worth should stay about the same.

This is why transfers are not treated as ordinary spending. If one side of the transfer or one of the accounts is missing, the change may look incomplete until the data is present.

Paying down debt

Suppose you have $20,000 in assets and an $8,000 loan. Your net worth is $12,000. If you use $500 of cash to reduce the loan by $500, your assets become $19,500 and the loan becomes $7,500. Your net worth is still $12,000.

You have improved the debt position, but the payment moved value from an asset to a liability. Interest and fees can still reduce net worth. Use the debt planner when you want to focus on repayment progress rather than expecting every repayment to create an equal net-worth increase. See Plan and track debt payoff.

Buying something that remains an asset

If you spend $8,000 on a vehicle, the bank balance falls. Fireball cannot know that the purchase became an asset unless the vehicle is also represented in your Accounts screen. Adding the vehicle as a manual asset can give a more complete balance sheet.

Only add an item manually when it is not already represented by a connected account or another asset. Otherwise you may count the same value twice.

Investments and foreign currencies changing value

An investment price or exchange rate can change net worth without a matching bank transaction. That is normal: net worth measures current value, while a transaction chart explains money that moved.

If the current net worth looks too high or too low

Start in Accounts and work through these checks. Stop when you find the difference.

1. Compare the Assets and Debts totals with the accounts you expected Fireball to include.
2. Open the account that looks wrong and check its current balance and update information.
3. Look for a missing account or the same account represented twice.
4. Review manual accounts, investments, vehicles, valuables and properties. Check that the quantity, current value and currency still match what you intended.
5. Check that a property and its mortgage have not been added twice through different sources.
6. If you use more than one currency, confirm the reporting currency in Settings and look for a message about unavailable currency data.

If connected bank data is missing or stale, follow My bank data is missing or out of date. Do not delete saved history or disconnect a bank just to force the total to recalculate.

If the history or today’s change looks wrong

The current card and a historical chart do not always compare the same dates. Today’s change uses the newest available snapshot before today. A longer chart uses the start and end of the period you selected.

Check the selected range before comparing two numbers. One month, three months, twelve months, all history and a custom range can each produce a different change.

A new account or asset may not have enough earlier snapshots to show a useful history immediately. Fireball may show that more net-worth history is needed. If the comparison includes another currency, it may instead say that historical exchange-rate data is incomplete.

Do not edit several accounts at once while investigating. Make one intentional correction, allow Fireball to update, then check the same range again.

If an Insight is missing or looks wrong

Some views only appear after Fireball has the information needed to build them. For example:

• Net Worth Changes needs enough net-worth history for a comparison.
• Income vs Expenses and Cash Savings Rate need suitable monthly activity and recognised income.
• Investing needs recognised investment activity.
• Recurring needs confirmed recurring commitments.
• FIRE Plan and Projection need enough account and FIRE information to build a projection.

If a transaction-based insight looks wrong, check the period first. Then open the contributing transactions and review their categories, transfer status, splits and refund matches. Tags and private notes help you organise activity but do not change the financial calculation. See Organise and correct your transactions for those steps.

A projection is an estimate based on current data and settings. It is not a promise that an investment, income or spending pattern will continue.

Contact support when the numbers still do not make sense

There is no safe one-button fix for every net-worth or insight difference. Open Fireball’s menu, choose Support, then choose Contact support.

Include:

• the screen and chart name;
• the selected period or date range;
• the number you expected and the number Fireball showed;
• the account, asset or debt that may be involved;
• whether you recently connected, removed or edited anything; and
• the exact message shown.

The in-app email includes privacy-safe diagnostic information. Do not include passwords, bank login details, one-time codes, full account numbers or more transaction detail than support asks for. If the email option does not open, email support@heliosstudio.app.