If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends.

The saying proposes a social rather than monetary “accounting” of value: a person’s worth is reflected in the genuine relationships they sustain. It implies that character—kindness, loyalty, reliability, and generosity—tends to be measured most accurately by the presence of true friends, since friendship is voluntary and usually earned over time. The line also critiques status markers like wealth or public acclaim by suggesting that a richer, more human metric is the community one has built. Read this way, it encourages investing in reciprocity and trust, and it frames friendship as both evidence of virtue and a form of lasting wealth.