I'm having a hard time understanding your situation. You seem to live in an expensive area with a lot of equity in your personal house (lower middle-class but could sell for $2 million is not average by any means). You mention you have some rental income and tenants paying off your mortgages, but I assume it isn't much cash flow? Of course, you can't eat net worth, so growing net worth is great, but you can't live on it. I don't like to count a personal residence in net worth calculations, as that equity is essentially dead and provides no value. You would have to sell your house and move to a cheaper area to make any use of it. So you might consider measuring your net worth without your primary residence to see where you stand. And of course, cash flow is king, so it is critical to track passive income (cash flow, not net worth) compared to living expenses. High net wroth can make you look rich on paper, but it doesn't make you wealthy by any means. Cash flow does.