A family net-worth target: setting a number you can live with

An evening conversation after the kids are asleep. One of you asks, half joking: "How much do we actually need to feel calm?" Then silence. Not because the question is awkward, but because neither of you knows the answer.

You save. Maybe not a lot, but steadily. There is something put aside, there is a keren hishtalmut (קרן השתלמות), a tax-advantaged savings fund, and there is a general sense that you are heading the right way. You just have no idea towards what. Being "set" is an entirely real wish, but you can't measure it, so you can't tell whether you're getting closer.

And the story behind the silence is that a wealth target is for rich people, or for finance types with spreadsheets. An ordinary family doesn't need a number; it just needs to keep going.

Why having no target feels safer

Part of you wants direction: to know that today's saving leads somewhere, and that in a few years you will be able to say "we made it".

Part of you prefers the fog, and with some reason: "What if we write down a number and find out we're years away?" The fog protects you from something real: the feeling of being behind. As long as there is no number, you can't trail it.

Both are fair. Without direction there is no progress, and a wrong number can freeze you. So the number built here comes from your own life, rather than one that grades you.

The round number from the headline: why it freezes you

When a family does try to set a target, it usually borrows one from a headline. "A million shekels." "Ten million for retirement." The round number is too big, it isn't yours, and it has nothing to do with what you actually want. So you give up before you start and go back to the fog.

Goal-setting research explains part of this. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, summarising decades of work in the field (American Psychologist, 2002), found that specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than "do your best". And a goal that is too distant, with no stops along the way, usually feels too far off to act on today.

The problem was never you. You aren't short of willpower. What was missing was a number built from the bottom up, from what it is meant to make possible, and split into stops you can actually reach.

A net-worth target built from your own life

The number starts with a sentence, not a calculator: "Our number is meant to let us…". Every family finishes it differently. Move to a four-day week when the youngest finishes school. Help each child with their first big step. Know that if one of you changes careers, there is a year of calm.

From that sentence you build a first number. Here is a family with two children whose monthly spending, from what they actually recorded, is 17,000 ILS:

Notice what is missing from the table: no national average, no target by age, no one else's number. Every line is your decision, and you can change it. The number is a working assumption, not a promise and not a test.

From the sentence to the first stop

What you are building: a number chosen together from what it is meant to make possible, split into dated stops. No round number from a headline. And no embarrassment about how far you are from it today, because the distance is just where the map starts.

Stage 1: the purpose sentence. Sit down together and write it. One sentence, not a list. If you disagree, write two, and the number becomes the sum of both. What you want to be free from, and free for, has its own article: defining financial freedom.

Stage 2: a first number. Like the table. Each line of the sentence gets an amount, and the amounts add up. Don't chase precision; a rough round figure is good enough for the first year.

Stage 3: stops every year or two. Break the road up. If you have 120,000 ILS aside today and put away 3,000 ILS a month, the first stop might be 160,000 ILS by the end of next year. A close stop is one you can reach, and celebrate.

Months to the first number, with no return assumed

Monthly deposit₪3,000

Time to the target

145 months

This assumes no return at all, so it is deliberately conservative. To see the same monthly deposit under an assumed return, open the calculator; it starts from zero, without the 120,000 ILS already put aside. 4% a year is kept low on purpose so the example doesn't look better than life; it is not a forecast or a pointer to any product, and if the result lands near the target, that is the assumption talking, not a promise:

The same monthly deposit in the calculator, age 38 to 50, assuming 4% a year

From age 38 to 50, ₪3,000 a month at an assumed 4% a year.

Open the calculator with these numbers

The rate here is an assumption for the example, not a forecast.

In AlphaHome: In the savings plan you enter a final target and date, large future expenses, and a yearly return you choose to assume, and you get the required monthly deposit, a month-by-month projection, and a warning when the plan can't reach the target. The plan itself has no name; your sentence goes into a savings goal, in its name and description, and you link that goal to the plan.

Stage 4: a check every quarter. Fifteen minutes, four times a year. Where you are today, where the stop is, and the gap. Nothing more.

In AlphaHome: The household net worth, which brings together home equity, savings, long-term funds and trading capital, shows where you stand today. How it's calculated and why it moves is in our net worth guide.

Stage 5: a yearly update of the target itself. Life changes and the sentence changes with it. Once a year, read it again and ask: is this still what we want the number to make possible?

A year when net worth went down

There will be a quarter when the number drops. The market fell, the car was replaced, there was a renovation. The stop moves. The target isn't cancelled. What to do today: write the reason next to the number, so a year from now you remember it was a decision or an event, not a failure. What to change: if a big expense caught you off guard, add it to the plan as a future expense so the next one doesn't.

And a partner who doesn't connect with the number? Don't argue about the amount. Go back to the sentence. People connect to what a number makes possible, not to its zeros. And as you get closer there is a new question worth asking, which we cover in how much is enough.

An answer to the evening question

Without a number, chances are that in five years you'll be in the same fog, with the same silence in the same evening conversation. Not because you didn't save, but because you didn't know what for.

With a number, even a distant one, something shifts. Every deposit is a step along a particular road, every quarter is a point on a map, and both of you know what you're talking about. The next time someone asks, half joking, how much you actually need, there will be an answer. Maybe not a final one, but yours, and built from your own life.

This week: write one sentence together that starts with "Our number is meant to let us…", open a savings goal with that as its name and the full explanation in its description, and link it to the savings plan.