massive debts will make your life miserable. I have both a mortgage and student loans and in a global 'poverty' sense my debt level is massive (but probably qu

massive debts will make your life miserable. I have both a mortgage and student loans and in a global 'poverty' sense my debt level is massive (but probably quite normal from an upper middle class Westerner perspective). However my household income more than covers all the costs of servicing those loans as well as making sure my entire family is comfortably fed, housed, educated and healthy, and still leaves me with money left over every month to save for a rainy day. That is how wealth should be defined. Basically, having a net worth of negative $400k is not necessarily a problem if your income is $200K. Being in debt is not in it self a problem, not being able to make your debt payments is what will make you miserable. A wealth indicator should try to capture that distinction.