By Amy Arnott of Morningstar

A summary of all your assets and liabilities is a crucial first step toward getting a better handle on your finances. Before you start putting together a net worth spreadsheet, gather as much information as you can to get the best sense of what it can tell you.

Overall net worth (assets minus liabilities)

The ultimate insight from a net worth statement is exactly what it says: the net worth number, which is simply assets minus liabilities. The number in isolation doesn’t tell you too much, but it is a useful benchmark to track over time. A negative net worth figure would obviously indicate room for improvement.

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Debt ratio

To calculate your debt ratio, you’ll need to add up all required monthly debt payments, including mortgage payments, student loans, auto loans, and credit card debt. Then take the total and divide it by your monthly gross (pretax) income. Lower is better for this number, and any number greater than 43% will likely create problems in obtaining or refinancing a mortgage.

Emergency fund

Most financial advisors recommend keeping at least three to six months’ worth of monthly living expenses in cash or other low-risk, highly liquid assets to cover a sudden job loss or other unforeseen events, such as car repairs, appliance replacement, or other home repairs. Some investors may want to keep closer to 12 months’ worth of expenses in cash if variable pay makes up a significant portion of their total compensation.

Division of assets between partners

This question normally comes up in the context of divorce, but it can be worth considering for couples who plan to remain married, as well. Depending on your state’s estate-tax limits — and potential future changes to federal estate-tax laws— it can be beneficial for couples to try to balance out the assets owned by each individual. It’s also important for each member of a couple to have their own retirement assets.

Allocation of assets among taxable, tax-deferred, and real estate holdings

There’s no particular reason why the allocations need to be exactly one third each, but the principle of equitable distribution helps avoid assets that are out of balance in any particular area. In particular, it’s wise to avoid an overly large concentration in residential real estate because it’s not particularly liquid. Investors should generally direct most of their savings toward tax-deferred retirement accounts, but once those have accumulated a healthy balance, it can make sense to steer some savings toward taxable accounts.

Single-company risk

If any one stock accounts for a large share of your net worth, that might be cause for concern. That’s particularly true in the case of employer stock because it means that your human capital — your ability to generate income and earn a living — and financial capital both depend on the fortunes of one company.

Liquidity and valuation issues

For most assets, valuation is straightforward. But things get a bit trickier for collectibles that aren’t liquid, such as antiques and baseball cards. For any physical assets, make sure all of these assets are both securely stored and itemized on their homeowners’ insurance policy.

Number of accounts

Life is complicated enough without having a bunch of financial accounts scattered across different institutions. It’s easy to accumulate multiple accounts if you changed jobs and never moved assets from a previous employer’s plan or set up different IRAs at different times. But the hassle of keeping track of account numbers, passwords, and updated account balances may not be worth it. That’s particularly true for investors approaching age 72 when required minimum distributions kick in.

Investors don’t have to take RMDs from each account but will need to base their withdrawals on the account totals in every covered account. Having a limited number of accounts to deal with also makes things easier for family members if you die or become incapacitated.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to  https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance

Amy Arnott is a portfolio strategist at Morningstar.

KOOCHICHING COUNTY, Minn. — When it comes to spending time outdoors, it’s pretty tough to beat sitting by a campfire on a nice spring evening when the natural world is coming back to life after a long winter.

Such was the case late last month, when I met up with a friend at “The Shack,” the headquarters of his family’s deer camp in Koochiching County not far from the Big Fork River, for the weekend.

There was nothing on the agenda, other than “bombing around” the woods a bit to see what we could see (and hear what we could hear) and hanging out at the firepit surrounded by spruce and poplar trees.

It was glorious.

Earlier that Friday, before heading east to the Northwoods, I had attended the Glenn Allen Paur Lecture on the University of North Dakota campus in Grand Forks, which featured Marilyn Vetter, president and CEO of Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever and a 1988 UND grad, as keynote speaker. I sat next to Dave Lambeth, often referred to as “the dean of Grand Forks birders,” who asked me if I’d fired up my Merlin bird-identification app yet this spring.

As I told Lambeth, I hadn’t used the app to that point but hoped to use it as soon as later that evening.

Good plan, he said, as the weekend was shaping up as a good one for spring bird activity.

That evening as we sat by the campfire, a five-star sunset had dipped below the wall of trees, and darkness was descending when the show started. Somewhere back in the trees, a tiny saw-whet owl was calling. Some say the call is like the high-pitched sound of a saw being sharpened — or “whetted,” as they might have said in the old days — a repetitive “to-to-to” kind of sound.

One calling owl became two, then a third and then — somewhere in the distance on the other side of the road — a fourth.

The saw-whets definitely were chatty and putting on a show. A better serenade to a spring evening by the campfire would have been hard to imagine.

It was completely dark, save for the stars shining above us, when a different-sounding owl joined the show.

I fired up the Merlin app, which revealed the new bird was a barred owl, a common Minnesota owl with a hooting call the state Department of Natural Resources describes as “who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all.”

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We couldn’t decide whether the barred owl was moving around or whether there was more than one because the sound would come from different places in the forest, but no more than one at a time. We’d hear an owl calling in one place, only to hear a call in a different part of the woods a few minutes later.

The saw-whets, perhaps intimidated by the larger owl, had gone quiet.

At one point, it sounded like a real ruckus was going on as the barred owl’s call changed from hooting to more of an eerie wail, or screeching sound. Like owls fighting, perhaps, or fending off a predator.

We could only imagine what was going on somewhere back there in the trees. In the dark.

It was kind of creepy, but in a good way.

On a March evening 10 years earlier, we’d been sitting at the same firepit surrounded by the same dark woods when we heard a creepy sound we never were able to identify.

In a column I wrote about the encounter, I described it as “kind of a ‘yeep!’ noise, a single call that overtook the chorus of coyotes that were howling on the other side of the road.

“It wasn’t a ‘whoop’ or a ‘yelp,’ and it definitely wasn’t a screech,” I wrote. “Just a single ‘yeep!’”

What the …?

Whether it was a bird, an animal or some kind of creature that goes “bump” in the night, we’ll never know, but I sure wish the Merlin app had been a thing back in those days. At the very least, I wish I’d have recorded the call to play it back for someone more knowledgeable than me.

On that Saturday night, after spending the afternoon bombing around the woods and hearing several ruffed grouse drumming, we took a hike to a swampy area on the other side of the road just before dark.

Chorus frogs — which make a sound like plucking the teeth of a comb — and leopard frogs (at least I think they were leopard frogs) were in full voice in a small wetland. We could hear them but couldn’t see them, other than occasional ripples on the surface of the water.

At times, the sound — “joyous” is the only word I can use to describe it — was almost deafening.

From owls one night to frogs the next, with drumming ruffed grouse in-between, the weekend served up a Northwoods symphony at its finest.

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Today is Saturday, May 10, the 130th day of 2025. There are 235 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven in a ceremony in Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.

Also on this date:

In 1775, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, along with Col. Benedict Arnold, captured the British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, New York.

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In 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union forces near Irwinville, Georgia.

In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (later known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI) by President Calvin Coolidge; Hoover would serve as FBI director until 1972.

In 1933, book burnings were held in 34 cities across Germany, targeting authors whose ideologies were in conflict with Nazism.

In 1940, during World War II, German forces began invading the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and France. On the same day, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill formed a new government.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated, becoming the first Black president of South Africa.

In 1994, the state of Illinois executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy, 52, for the murders of 33 young men and boys.

In 2014, Michael Sam was selected by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the NFL draft, becoming the first openly gay player drafted by a National Football League team.

In 2023, Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican infamous for fabricating his life story, was indicted on charges that he duped donors, stole from his campaign and lied to Congress. (Santos pled guilty in August 2024, and was sentenced to 87 months in prison in April 2025.)

Today’s Birthdays:

Basketball Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun is 83.
Musician-songwriter Donovan is 79.
Sen. Fashion designer Miuccia Prada is 76.
Olympic skiing medalists Phil and Steve Mahre are 68.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., is 66.
Singer-activist Bono (U2) is 65.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, is 65.
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is 62.
Model Linda Evangelista is 60.
Rapper Young MC is 58.
Racing driver Helio Castroneves is 50.
Actor Kenan Thompson is 47.
Olympic swimming gold medalist Missy Franklin is 30.

By JANIE HAR, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Trump administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.

Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities last week, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.

“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.

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The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.

The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.

They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.

“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”

Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.

“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”

But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.

“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”

The temporary restraining order applies to departments including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veteran Affairs.

It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order.

Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.