The Formula
Your debt to asset ratio is total liabilities divided by total assets. If you owe $180,000 and own $300,000 worth of things, your ratio is 0.6, or 60 percent. That is the whole calculation. No adjustments, no weighting, no formula behind the formula.
It answers a different question than net worth does. Net worth is the gap between the two sides. The ratio is how much of what you own is financed by what you owe.
Reading the Number
A lower ratio means more of what you own is genuinely yours. A ratio above 1.0 means your debts exceed your assets, which is ordinary for someone early in a mortgage or carrying student loans against a small asset base.
Context matters more than the figure itself. A ratio of 0.7 driven almost entirely by a low rate mortgage on a home you intend to keep is a very different situation from a 0.7 made up of revolving credit card balances.
Watching It Move
The ratio earns its keep as a trend rather than a snapshot. Tracked across a year or two, it shows whether you are paying down faster than you are borrowing. One reading tells you where you are. A series of them tells you which way you are heading.
Conclusion
Work it out once from totals you already have, then check it whenever you update your numbers. It costs nothing to track and it catches drift that a net worth figure on its own can hide.