Net Worth vs. Liquidity: Why Equity Won't Buy Groceries

By Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin, Dylan Koch · September 28, 2026

A question Mike DeHaan overheard in a TSA line — is a person happier being the richest of their friends, or the poorest? — turned into one of the more useful money conversations the Collecting Keys hosts have had. Not because they settled it, but because it pushed them into the gap between net worth and actual liquidity, and why equity-heavy investors got caught leaning on a number that can't pay a bill.

Why do the hosts call net worth an ego metric?

Mike's framing is blunt: "your net worth doesn't buy groceries." For most people, he says, the bulk of that number sits in hard assets — real estate equity, a primary residence, retirement accounts they can't touch yet. Anything you can't reach without a major liquidity event that triggers additional costs isn't really providing security. In Mike's mind, net worth held that way is purely ego driven.

Dan pushes back a little. To him, wealth is mostly comfort and peace of mind, and that does connect to some level of satisfaction. But he agrees on the structure: if all you own is a retirement account and a primary residence, you're hurting without meaningful cash and other securities behind it.

Dylan adds that having net worth goals isn't a bad thing. What's harder is tying your self-esteem to the number, because the number moves.

• Mike says his net worth is down roughly 35% from a couple of years ago after selling a number of properties, paying a very significant tax bill, and re-analyzing his portfolio.
• Dylan says his own number is down by a similar amount, and estimates Bitcoin is off about 50%.
• Mike's take on his own drop: because he's out of equity and into actual liquid assets, he says he doesn't care at all.

How did real estate equity hide leverage?

Dan has watched this play out in their circle. For years the flex was "I have this much net worth," and it was all real estate, paired with unit counts and the rest of the ego metrics. His read is that a lot of those people were far more leveraged than they realized, and when equity came down it started showing their position for what it was.

He's not only talking about big names. Dan describes the average operator who went from something like a $5 million net worth to $3 million — and of that remaining $3 million, not much is liquid. The asset column looked strong right up until someone needed cash.

Is a business worth 7x EBITDA just because the industry trades there?

Mike says the wildest version he sees now, which he ties to the buy-a-business trend popularized by Codie Sanchez, is people whose entire net worth is their business equity. The math he describes: the industry supposedly trades at seven times EBITDA, so an owner takes a business doing $1 million a year in top-line revenue and calls it worth $7 million, then books that as personal net worth because they own all of it.

Mike calls that absurdly false in every way, and his real concern is behavioral — people are making financial decisions off a number they invented. Dan's response was short: "that's silly."

Would a guaranteed windfall kill your drive?

Mike asked Dan a hypothetical: if you knew with certainty you'd receive $10 million at age 55, would it change how you invest or how you view what you've built? Dan said that as a younger man it probably would have pushed him to take bigger risks instead of defaulting to "I need a career," but he doesn't think it would have removed his motivation. He does think a guaranteed windfall hurts some people — in his words, it steals a bit of their life, because the memories that stick out are the ones where you had no money and had to figure it out.

Dylan raised the credibility angle: if people know a big share of your position was inherited, some of the credit you'd get as an investor or operator gets discounted. Mike also pointed out the assumptions baked into a promised payout — you might not make it to 55, and the money may not mean the same thing by then.

Dylan's most practical point came on comparison itself: when you benchmark against someone with a bigger number, you usually ignore how much longer they've had to compound. Talk to them, he says, and often they just did the same thing for a long time. Dan agreed that time is the biggest factor in investing. Mike used Alex Hormozi as the opposite example, saying Hormozi strikes him as brilliant at what he does but never satisfied, because the people he benchmarks against are always further up. Dan compared that obsessiveness to athletes like Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, with money as the scorecard instead of championships.

Mike's guess for the general population is that most people are happier being the wealthiest in their circle, because image drives a lot of decisions — the nice car parked at a rough house, or the nicest house with beat-up cars in the driveway. One habit he credits to Pat Hiban: if you want to do something that's cost-prohibitive for your friends, just buy the tickets and invite them. When March Madness opening rounds came to town, seats ran about $1,500 each, so Mike bought four and invited different friends each night. He says he's never regretted it.

The full episode is a loose, philosophical one, but the operator lesson inside it is sharp: know how much of your number you could actually reach, and how long it would take to get there.

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Educational content from the Collecting Keys podcast. Not financial, legal or tax advice.