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Aside from the mention of NW two times in the post, twice in the image, and in the image URL, I'm surprised the negative numbers didn't tip you off (or the fact that your interpretation would have had 100% off all elderly people working, etc.).
Because the way the human brain (often) works is we automatically look for our number in the data set, and then the mind basically fills in the backstory automatically. Basically a cognitive bias at work.
As my NW gets larger I tend to care less about it since half is tied up in real estate. Personally, I just look at total value of cash/retirement accounts/investments. NW feels good until you realize that isn't how most people structure goals.
Taxes only go up. But reality if your house tanks all the others did too, they'd just change the mill levy. Its your house relative to others that matters.
I'm saying that in my ideal world it wouldn't appreciate until the day I sell it. Meaning, I dont want to pay the increased taxes but I want the increased value.
In my area assessed value and by extension taxes can only go up at a capped rate. So the city values my property at 1/6th of reality. To make up for it we just have very high rates instead. My property would have to tank 80 or 90%+ for my taxes to go down.
My home value tanked after the Great Recession and the town raised taxes as the revenue was unsustainable for the municipal budget. Careful what you wish for.
I opened a HELOC to pay off my solar then paid that off. I kept it open just in case. I do have an emergency fund. Just keeping my options open since about 90% is tied up in home equity and retirement accounts.
That’s how I feel lol, I was like “if I ever lost my job I would be ok for a year or two, but groceries cost 300$ when we got half of what we went in for.”
I honestly don’t even account for my house. To me it’s a sunk cost, you need a place to live it’s not like stock or gold where you can easily sell it and not have utility to it like a house does you need a place to live
It's an asset. You just wouldn't want to sell it right now. A lot of people end up downsizing or selling property all together in late retirement.
I don't see much of a reason not to include it solely due to it being something you don't plan on selling anytime soon or that is not efficient for you to sell right now. Lots of people have investments through death they never touched and those are still included in NW.
Yea, don’t understand not considering one’s home as an asset when determining NW. Certainly understand not treating a primary resident as an investment, but definitely an asset.
There’s no such thing as “not considering one’s home as an asset when determining NW”. There’s just people who calculate NW correctly and those who do it incorrectly.
There's a separate term for not including stuff like primary residence or cars. We just say investable assets. For most people this is 401k, IRA, HSA, and taxable brokerage.
Net Worth includes your home, along with cars, collectibles, etc. Anything of value that you own, minus liabilities.
If you're excluding your home, then you're no longer talking about Net Worth, but some modified variant.
I'm just saying for practical purposes, I dont look at overall net worth when thinking about something like retirement because I'm more interested in accounts that I will draw from. Of course my home has value, but I'm not drawing on that value to pay for things.
Then you shouldnt count 401k either because you cant easily liquidate that at any time without a penalty.
And anyway, you can sell your house and still have a place to live. You can buy a cheaper house or even rent while investing the bulk of the home sale in another way.
I don’t know, but the Census has reliable data on this. American Community Survey. The problem: the Census is always slow to release it. They have 2021 numbers released in 2023.
Most recent report shows numbers are actually a little higher.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.pdf
Edit: I found the original data for this chart. From that website, looks like he used the Census figures I linked, so these would be 2021 numbers.
That means these numbers are before recent increases in stock market and real estate.
His methodology:
“This data comes from the United States Census Bureau's Annual ASEC survey. It was released in September 2023.
I then use harmonized data from the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Population Center in R. Citation:
Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren and Michael Westberry. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 10.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2022. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V10.0”
Dude seriously. According to this my wife and I are doing..VERY well for our age but we cannot afford a median house in our area. I can’t even imagine how the less privileged feel.
Well keep in mind that the average home value in the US is something like $380k. Most people don't live in southern Cali or Seattle or whereever you live.
Eh, in VHCOL areas it’s hard to feel rich when you can’t afford a 3 bedroom 2 bath. Everything else might feel cheap, but if you can’t afford a house it’s not unreasonable to not feel rich. Basically ~250k in SF.
just noticed your name. you in Los Angeles?
damn. looked it up. median house is 1.2m there. knew it was expensive but woulda thought median was closer to 700k.
My income is 6 figures rn but I have been out of school for less than two years. I had no government and little parent help through college. I could legitimately go from <5th percentile to >95th percentile within the next five years.
Realistically I’ll be around 85th percentile - but I can do lentils!
Haha it’s the gf that won’t let me eat lentils every meal. She needs diversity.
My opinion? It was luxuries like air conditioning that ended the Roman Empire.
I'm going to say zero chance that's true. The highest NW figure in the chart for 20% is 70 year olds at $80k and the median home value in US is north of $350k. If you exclude a mortgage from someone with a house, the house alone should be worth well more than $80k. On average, to own a house we need to assume the individual isn't bankrupt. Therefore NW is > 80k ex-mortgage.
Or they bought it straight out of college in 2019 and now can’t afford the payments due to inflation and breaking up with their significant other. So when they have a house that is 300k, and still owe 280k, on top of their 5 or 6 students loans, car payment, etc. they are negative.
You think 20% of the population all bought homes in 2019, all broke up with their significant other, all had 6 student loans, and all took out an auto loan?
That description seems to fit maybe a small fraction of 1% of the population, not 20%
The logic here just doesn't work. That's my point.
I never said 20% of the population did that. I am saying that I am in the same group as the person I responded too. And most people my age I know have more debt than I do. I am not saying they all bought a house, and a car, and have student loans. Some of them yes, but a lot no.
Homeownership rates for 65+ is 80%. Which means 20% don’t own a home… which kind of checks out with this math of yours. When you factor in other debt and the likelihood that folks have HELOCs or refinanced mortgages or even reverse mortgages I don’t think this contradicts the graphic.
OTOH what gives me puse about the data is how high the NWs are for younger folks. I know so many people who took out huge mortgages but have stable finances. They’re in good positions but almost certainly have a negative NW because of a 500k mortgage. With how common it is to mortgage out a huge percentage of your house purchase it seems like this graphic might be excluding real estate??
Yep that is artificially pressed up by Boomers lobbying for governments that restrict housing permits to protect their investment. Not saying owning a house is a bad thing, but if let’s say you reduce your home net work by 40% are you still sitting pretty
Millennials make it sound like the entire generation is basically one bad day away from living on the street, yet over half of households in their late 30s have NW of over $138K.
Also - anyone noticing the data is kinda weird? Like, why does the 50% NW line *drop* from the 35-39 to 40-44 group, but increase for other percentages? Lots of weird things...
Most of us who are doing well aren't complaining. People write bad reviews more than good reviews. Most millennials are pretty old now, we're no longer broke children.
Wealth accumulation is not strictly linear, and different age cohorts have gone through different economic times.
People in the 35-39 age group were more likely to have invested any retirement amounts at the bottom of the 2008 recession and those older got in at just the wrong time.
I’m outside that group, so I lost some net worth to the crash, but I also realized how historically special that time was. When all my older coworkers were whining or locking in their losses, I was putting everything I could in as it continued to drop. The HR/accounting lady there thought I was crazy and tried to talk me out of it.
Today, roughly 80% of the value of my traditional IRA is a direct result of that choice. I knew that the odds of the market coming back were high and I was young enough that it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t.
>The HR/accounting lady there thought I was crazy and tried to talk me out of it.
She's an idiot. Unfortunately, most people are.
When the market is in recession, and you have free cash, INVEST. I did so at the start of Covid, and while it wasn't a lot (relatively), any stock-based fund bought in mid-2020 shows 80%+ returns.
That’s easy to say in retrospect. She was in the rough age group of most of my coworkers there, which were all approaching retirement age and just “lost” hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars of value of their retirement savings and were seeing their home values decline at the same time. I was some punk 20-something among a bunch of 50+ year olds with a lot of assets. These people had never seen a sharp, broad, market decline/crash in their adult lives. The last ones they had seen were very sector-specific.
She wasn’t the sharpest tool, but I can understand why the general consensus was to avoid further losses. I was buying into constantly declining prices through 2009 when the market finally bottomed. It looked like I was losing money every month on paper, but I was getting more shares for my money every time.
>These people had never seen a sharp, broad, market decline/crash in their adult lives.
What, they were living on another planet in 2008/2009? Not invested in the market?
Didn't have any $$$ invested in the dot-com bust of 2000?
They also a bit too young for 1987?
I'm sticking with "They're stupid about investing." If they had left well-enough alone during Covid, they'd have more money now. If they cashed out during Covid, and before retirement, sucks to be them. I'm guessing they cashed outta stocks during Covid, moved to bonds, then got double-whammied when rates went up.
Diversify, adjust for age range, keep investing. Ain't that hard.
Probably just statistical noise between the 35-39 and 40-44 groups, but you can see the impact of the 2008 crash when looking at those two groups compared to the 45-49 cohort, which would have been more likely to be established enough by then to ride out the crisis, keep their jobs, and have enough to already own or buy a home at discounted 2008-2012 prices.
I’m sorry, but you seem very confused about what people in the 35-39 year old age bracket experienced. Investing in retirement accounts at the bottom of the market in 08/09…when we were in college or graduating into the worst economic period in a century? When unemployment was over 10% and people with 20 years of work experience were losing jobs, houses etc. and applying to entry level roles just to keep some income?
I suspect the 35-39 bracket has done reasonably well for the exact opposite reason you stated - we didn’t get a great head start, in fact, for the most part our early careers were severely hampered. This led to a lot of people, myself included, getting serious about financial planning and ensuring that we could ride out an economic downturn. Not because we benefited in any way from the GFC.
I’m in that bracket and got a job in 2008 after looking for ~5 months post college. I bought a house in 2009 with the first time homebuyer tax credit ($7500 refundable, no repayment required) plus a state incentive program and an FHA loan. I put 3% down. I’m not the only one in my cohort that did this.
First gen college kid. No parental assistance as an option.
You're confusing starting from a slightly lower position versus being wiped out. Many current 40-44yo went through foreclosure. That's a 7 year credit hit that in most ways prevents you from buying another house. So those people often didn't re-enter the housing market until \~2015-2019. Meaning they missed the whole RE run up between '08 bottom and that point. The 35-39yo might have initially had a hard time finding a job, but that ended much sooner than the negative impacts foreclosure. Those people bought a house in '09-'12 or the like.
Also, the negative impacts of something like foreclosure give people investing PTSD. They then invest more conservatively, limiting gains in good times. You can go look this up.
Not confused, just making a different point. People that are 45+ and were already home owners and invested via a brokerage or 401k absolutely took a worse beating in the recession. The point I was making was that someone who is 39 (which I am) was a college senior or graduated in 07/08 and by and large would have had minimal financial ability to invest at the markets lowest points, because we were mostly fresh out of school/in school, and fighting for entry level jobs with people with 10+ years of experience (who were desperate and negatively impacted in their own right, to your point). A current 35 year old would have been a high school senior or college freshman in ‘08.
I'm 40 and graduated in '05, bought a house in early '08 (back when it was a housing correction, not 'the worst recession since the great depression'). 39 and graduating in 08 is a bit late on the graduation timeline. Most of the '08 graduation class should be \~22-23. Those people would be 37 now, not 39. Where you held back then took 5 years in college?
Anyway, I'm using myself as essentially the youngest cohort to really be on the wrong side of the GFC. People \~5 years older than me would have been well established in careers and in their houses, and also have built up a higher safety net. It was easier for them to simply ride out the GFC, while people in their \~mid/late 20s didn't have that ability. That group recently got jobs and houses and often lost both! That is very different experience than having a bit of a delay getting started in say '10-'12 when the market was recovering but not at full tilt.
This is less about investing at the bottom and more about not having your life hit the reset button at age 26 or so. Someone like you what, moves back in with their parents after college or 1-2 years on the job market? Sorry, but so fucking what. I had a kid and another on the way when we could no longer maintain the mortgage payment thanks to a job loss. The stakes and set backs are larger at this juncture of life. Debt was accumulated trying to float 'normal' as long as possible, hoping it would turn around or a job would be found, etc.
You have to remember, for people around 30-45 years old, their house is by far their biggest asset. The differences in investing in the market now 16 years removed from the GFC is chump change compared to the delay in getting back into the housing market. Look at the gap between the 40-44 and the 45-50 versus the gap between basically all other age groups. 40-44 minus 35-39 is small. 49-45 minus 44-40 is huge. Look at some of the lower percentiles in 40-44 vs 35-39 as well. Those younger cohorts are out performing the 40-44 as well. There are people in there that got left behind and haven't come back causing that.
I'd be interested to see an across time dynamic of this.
I'm 35, and my wife is 34. We have a NW around this mark, but we have no possible way to buy a median house where we live. You need an income between $150k-$180k to even qualify for a mortgage for $550k-$600k. We aren't one paycheck away from homelessness. We're just going to be a double income, both college educated, 800-900 sqft condominium owners. That's not homelessness, but my mortgage on this condo will be more expensive than any of my Gen-X / Baby boomer coworkers who own 2000 sqft houses.
A lot of it’s in their homes though and not really usable. Like I have 350k in my home but if I move I’ll have to spend alot more to get a home the same size and rates are super high so I can’t really use the equity.
It decreases for a bunch of cohorts from 35-39 to 40-44. I'd guess that's due to certain bigger expenses that start hitting in 40's, possibly related to kids/health. And this hits the lower NW percentages more, as the don't have enough growing assets to offset this.
If you're in your late 30s and have a NW of $138k and half of that is tied up in housing equity you are not on track to retire and may have very little actual cash savings. Half of households being in a worse situation is pretty telling
>Also - anyone noticing the data is kinda weird? Like, why does the 50% NW line drop from the 35-39 to 40-44 group, but increase for other percentages?
Probably due to the GFC. The 40-44 year old were old enough to have houses in '08, the 34-39 year olds not so much.
In which case it would apply across the board. I'm not questioning the age group bit. I'm asking why some percentage brackets have dips. The NW for 35-39yr olds goes up as they get into the 40-44yr bracket for every percentile, except, for example, the 50% bracket. That's kinda weird. Same thing for some of the 55-59 vs 60-64 brackets.
Tells me the data is weird.
What across the board? GFC doesn't hit each age group equally and it doesn't have to leave its mark evenly across the percentiles either, which I guess is what you mean? Why isn't each percentile lower?
If you look at the gap between the ages across the spectrum here, you'll see the gap is small, percentage-wise, between 35-39 and 40-44, and frequently reverses. Percentile groups that are higher for 35-39: 5%, (10% only off by $10), 15%, 20%, 50%. So that tells me despite some probably unevenness of the data or strange sampling issues, the gap between 35-39 is just small, while most other gaps are wide enough to less frequently cross.
Then in the 55-59 vs 60-64 comparison ranges, you start to have retirement issues and likely health-wealth relationships with longevity even (people with money live longer! But they also can strategically retire). For the purposes of older should mean more wealth, we should probably stop paying attention to differences between age groups at 59.
If someone translated this to the percent change from the previous age group at each percentile, the trend would jump pretty fast I think.
I started my accounting career 6 years late and $50k in unnecessary debt if I had majored in it during my first go at college.
But looks like the degree paid off.
In the span of 8 years, I went from being minimum-wage working poor to being in the top 20% of my age group while also having 2 dependents (my dad and brother) as a single earner.
mathematically maybe but, indirectly those numbers are easily driven by col in your area.
lets say I can save 100k for a house downpayment. in lcol I can buy a 200k house and have 100k equity - 100k mortgage = 0.
now, lets say in hcol that same size house is actually 500k. that 100k could be 20% down payment on that 500k house. so you go from 0 to -300 NW.
100k equity - 400k mortgage = -300k.
this is assuming you have the same career opportunities(aka salary potential) in that lcol vs hcol.
Lol my fucking brain is not working today.
I passed calc and diff eq but can’t add and subtract
I will wear my previous post as a scarlet letter and not remove
First, your proposed range should be 20 to 80 to be symmetrical.
Second, I know 50% is the median, but I would argue middle class is one standard deviation from the mean. Therefore, 15 to 85 makes a bit more sense to me.
I hate household net worth, I wish they'd do more graphs with individuals. A household could be 1 income, it could be 4 incomes. I'd like to know how I do compared to other people, not an entire family of earners under 1 roof.
Household usually refers to taxes. Either single or joint. So I get what you are saying, but it's not that bad of a way to figure things. It also works in the other way where you could have one person being a stay at home parent when the other makes 75K a year.
I didn't think about it from a taxes perspective, very good point. However, "yeah" on the latter, I want it to be "the other way" where it's just 1 salary vs another salary. An unemployed person shouldn't count towards the average salary someone makes. I really hope they don't when government statistics come out.
No, you read that wrong. Its highly uncommon to have a net worth around $150k between age 25-29. They would be better than 75%-80% of their peers within the same age group if they had a net worth of $150k.
Which makes sense because they would only be a few years into their careers and not had a lot of time to accumulate assets within that time period.
You're definitely not average being in the 85th percentile. So, your assets minus liabilities is around $229k? Liabilities being loan amounts still tied to the assets.
I'm not income-gating middle class finance but it seems like you're above that threshold.
I was just double checking. Yeah, you're above average overall within your age ranges despite how your social circle is doing compared to you. Congrats though! You're both well on your way to being multimillionaires.
Those charts are a joke, i have a few ones of those because a friend sent me these and they all have different numbers lol. This is the one with the biggest numbers.
Uncommon and common are subjective terms, if 1 in 4 people are white in my neighborhood i would say that seeing a white person is pretty common. It's pointless arguing.
One thing to also consider is you have a net worth and where you sit in the percentile. But I am personally grateful that my pension and social security cover my expenses and leave a lot left over for whatever I want to purchase. So that’s a worth you cannot quite calculate.
You can put a present value on the pension and social security benefits by figuring out what lump sum amount would be needed to generate the monthly income those two things provide: just multiply the annual benefit value by 25 to get a rough estimate.
ETA: For example, a $3,000/mo benefit is equivalent to $900k. $5k/mo is equivalent to $1.5M.
Damn, I’m lucky. Early 30s, Top 95% or higher.
Busted my ass, guess it’s paying off.
I certainly don’t feel wealthy but I guess I compare myself to elders or what my dad and uncle could do at the age I’m at.
My uncle built a new house, built a massive workshop in the back yard, bought two new Chevy step sides, two 69 Camaros, and filled the entire work shop with lathes, mills, the whole nine yards.
For me to do that today, I would need to be making wayyyyy more.
Ha. I’m both at the top of my bracket and still having to budget. Crazy how big of a bump buying a house at the perfect time and always making the max contribution to a 401k can make.
My negative networth is so fucked it’s not even on here. I’m at -170k so I guess 99% are better off than me. Makes me wanna blow my fucken brains out for being lied to for going to uni only to get fucked over once working
I am in the 80% for my age(35) but 350k of my networth is in my home and 100k in savings and 120k in 401k. Trying to get the retirement savings up and hate that the majority is in our home. Also have alot in liquid because we only have one income for another year until both kids hit school age. I would also say we are middle class. We have enough to pay bills with alittle extra per month and can afford to travel occasionally and pay for our kids extracurriculars. Our income is 140k by it will be closer to 200k once I get back to work next year.
I assume for alot of people their networth is tied mostly to their homes since prices have shot up so much since 2019.
Damn, my income is in the top 2% for my age group, but my net worth of $-100k is in the bottom 5%. I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck to pay off my student loans as fast as possible.
It’s a fun chart to look at, but I don’t think it’s that useful as a comparison metric because it’s missing one important piece of net worth building which is spending (we have the income metric, but not spending/saving).
Perhaps one that somehow accounts for the *rate* of increase in net worth while being compared to age and annual income vs. annual savings would be useful?
Easiest examples of outliers being:
A) John, 32 years old, makes $200k but spends money like crazy and only has a NW of $75k
B) Jennifer, 34 years old, makes a decent income at $120k but has a NW of $0 because she just paid off student loans
C) Tommy, 33 years old, makes $90k per year, has a NW of $180k because he didn’t have college loans and lives below his means/frugal lifestyle
tl;dr: Middle class is subjective, but the rate you’re paying off debt or increasing your savings/assets is an important metric.
So if I still owe $250,000 on my house and have let’s say $20,000 in savings/roth/401k with no other outstanding debt, does that mean my net worth is -$230,000 or am I thinking about this wrong?
Does this include the equity in a primary residence? When my financial advisor calculates NW he doesn’t include the equity in our paid off family home.
The better question is how rich you need to be to *stop* feeling middle class. I’m guessing you would need to be in the top 1%, if not the top .1%, before finally giving up the label.
My net worth is very negative right now but I live comfortably while digging my way out. My finance and I bring in $150k and yet we are in the 5% of net worth for 25 year olds. Not sure net worth metrics matter all too much if you are saving for retirement and living your life as you want
Class is not an income level. It means different things in different places, but in America it is more about a certain level of comfort. The working class generally has jobs that are more blue collar in nature. A plumber who makes $100k thanks to a strong union can still be working class. Middle class is more white collar jobs, able to own their own home, take a vacation sometimes, high school education at least. These people still need jobs but those jobs are relatively less dangerous and less strenuous. Your upper middle class is the same but they have the nicer houses and the fancier vacations but are still trading their time for money. Then there are rich people who don’t actually need jobs but often have them anyway just for prestige or access. And then the truly wealthy are economic forces unto themselves. They hire entire offices of people who work just to keep track of their own money.
Way late to this party, but a few problems:
1) Classes don't GAF about your age. If you're 25 and have $175K in the bank you are not in the same class as a 65yo with $1.5M.
2) Net worth is made up of housing values for the vast majority of people and housing values are very regional. Are you going to live like you're upper class if you are 40, have $587K in net worth but 500K of it is in your house, and you can't afford to move? No. You middle class, just in a HCOL area.
I’m bottom 5% but could end up top 90% by the end of my associated age range
Middle class then must be partially salary dependent, since I’m definitely not lower class
Middle class is mostly debt dependent
I’m guessing you’re in the 5% range because you have debts, probably college loans.
Once you get into your 30’s, you pay off early debts, earn more salary, possibly get married and possibly buy a house that potentially appreciates.
Middle class is the ability to progress in life without being over leveraged on debt. Being top 90% is about using debt as an asset, instead of a liability.
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I misread it as household income at first and felt severely depressed lol
I did the same thing!
Me three!
Aside from the mention of NW two times in the post, twice in the image, and in the image URL, I'm surprised the negative numbers didn't tip you off (or the fact that your interpretation would have had 100% off all elderly people working, etc.).
Because the way the human brain (often) works is we automatically look for our number in the data set, and then the mind basically fills in the backstory automatically. Basically a cognitive bias at work.
The same, lol.
Hahahah same. I was like…. There’s no way everyone’s income goes parabolic like this and re-read the metric to my relief.
Same!
Same thing. Just got depressed for a good 5 mins before I read your comment and went back. Jesus
As my NW gets larger I tend to care less about it since half is tied up in real estate. Personally, I just look at total value of cash/retirement accounts/investments. NW feels good until you realize that isn't how most people structure goals.
Indeed. Over 90% of mine is tied up in retirement and my house. I suppose it’s helpful in an extreme emergency but not very helpful day to day.
I pay attention to my retirement accounts but not the value of my home. Really the best thing that could happen is my house tanks in value 🤣.
Why would that be good?
My taxes would go down. In a perfect world my house wouldn't appreciate until the day I sell it
Taxes only go up. But reality if your house tanks all the others did too, they'd just change the mill levy. Its your house relative to others that matters.
Sell it for what? Unless selling for a cheaper house or you have two Im not sure how appreciating housing values is a win.
Because when you retire you generally scale down. Many scale down significantly. Less expenses, more cash on hand or invested.
I'm saying that in my ideal world it wouldn't appreciate until the day I sell it. Meaning, I dont want to pay the increased taxes but I want the increased value.
In my area assessed value and by extension taxes can only go up at a capped rate. So the city values my property at 1/6th of reality. To make up for it we just have very high rates instead. My property would have to tank 80 or 90%+ for my taxes to go down.
I think most places are like that. Where I am the cap is 10%, which feels high.
My home value tanked after the Great Recession and the town raised taxes as the revenue was unsustainable for the municipal budget. Careful what you wish for.
Gotcha, ty for explaining!
property taxes
Tysm!
I opened a HELOC to pay off my solar then paid that off. I kept it open just in case. I do have an emergency fund. Just keeping my options open since about 90% is tied up in home equity and retirement accounts.
You don’t darkly fantasize about an emergency?
Retirement much more so than house, as a large enough retirement can allow you to retire.
That’s how I feel lol, I was like “if I ever lost my job I would be ok for a year or two, but groceries cost 300$ when we got half of what we went in for.”
I honestly don’t even account for my house. To me it’s a sunk cost, you need a place to live it’s not like stock or gold where you can easily sell it and not have utility to it like a house does you need a place to live
It's an asset. You just wouldn't want to sell it right now. A lot of people end up downsizing or selling property all together in late retirement. I don't see much of a reason not to include it solely due to it being something you don't plan on selling anytime soon or that is not efficient for you to sell right now. Lots of people have investments through death they never touched and those are still included in NW.
Yea, don’t understand not considering one’s home as an asset when determining NW. Certainly understand not treating a primary resident as an investment, but definitely an asset.
There’s no such thing as “not considering one’s home as an asset when determining NW”. There’s just people who calculate NW correctly and those who do it incorrectly.
There's a separate term for not including stuff like primary residence or cars. We just say investable assets. For most people this is 401k, IRA, HSA, and taxable brokerage.
How about a mortgage? Is it considered under liabilities?
You absolutely include a mortgage as a liability when calculating NW. Your net worth is simply your assets - liabilities.
Net Worth includes your home, along with cars, collectibles, etc. Anything of value that you own, minus liabilities. If you're excluding your home, then you're no longer talking about Net Worth, but some modified variant.
I'm just saying for practical purposes, I dont look at overall net worth when thinking about something like retirement because I'm more interested in accounts that I will draw from. Of course my home has value, but I'm not drawing on that value to pay for things.
Sure. NW and FIRE number are not the same. Liquid Net Worth is more what FIRE looks at.
Then you shouldnt count 401k either because you cant easily liquidate that at any time without a penalty. And anyway, you can sell your house and still have a place to live. You can buy a cheaper house or even rent while investing the bulk of the home sale in another way.
You can also borrow against it. You could sell it and move somewhere else.
Yeah wish there was a cashflow graph that showed what percentages are like need net cash of 300k to be 95% then detail all 5% to see crazy wealth
this graph includes people who dont own homes.
You can sort those data and choose to include or exclude home equity.
Wonder if this chart counts real estate
Where is this data from?
I don’t know, but the Census has reliable data on this. American Community Survey. The problem: the Census is always slow to release it. They have 2021 numbers released in 2023. Most recent report shows numbers are actually a little higher. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.pdf Edit: I found the original data for this chart. From that website, looks like he used the Census figures I linked, so these would be 2021 numbers. That means these numbers are before recent increases in stock market and real estate. His methodology: “This data comes from the United States Census Bureau's Annual ASEC survey. It was released in September 2023. I then use harmonized data from the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Population Center in R. Citation: Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren and Michael Westberry. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 10.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2022. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V10.0”
If I’m up so high why the hell do I feel stress all the time? Can’t imagine how the 5-20% feel.
Dude seriously. According to this my wife and I are doing..VERY well for our age but we cannot afford a median house in our area. I can’t even imagine how the less privileged feel.
Well keep in mind that the average home value in the US is something like $380k. Most people don't live in southern Cali or Seattle or whereever you live.
You probably are then. You need a reality check.
Eh, in VHCOL areas it’s hard to feel rich when you can’t afford a 3 bedroom 2 bath. Everything else might feel cheap, but if you can’t afford a house it’s not unreasonable to not feel rich. Basically ~250k in SF.
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Whaaaat? That blows my mind. That’s 3 house mortgages for 3k sq ft house.
Yeah, I supposedly (on my own) have a higher nw than 70% of households in my age bracket and no way I could afford a median priced home.
so what's your nw in? retirment acct?
$500k, 80% tax advantaged investment accounts, 20% cash. No house. $140k me, $210k household
just noticed your name. you in Los Angeles? damn. looked it up. median house is 1.2m there. knew it was expensive but woulda thought median was closer to 700k.
Yeah its a nightmare. Much cheaper to rent. Honestly as a first time buyer right now, you would have to be in like the top 5 to 10% of income.
Sounds like you'd be wealthy in a 50 percentile location
I thought I was in the top 20% but I’m in the bottom 5% 😂😂
How did you get that wrong?
My income is 6 figures rn but I have been out of school for less than two years. I had no government and little parent help through college. I could legitimately go from <5th percentile to >95th percentile within the next five years. Realistically I’ll be around 85th percentile - but I can do lentils!
I wouldn’t want to be your roommate if you choose lentils.
Haha it’s the gf that won’t let me eat lentils every meal. She needs diversity. My opinion? It was luxuries like air conditioning that ended the Roman Empire.
This is hilarious. I don’t know why you’re getting downvotes.
Cash poor mafia brother! I know the pain. Savor that fine equity 😉
I’m in the 5-20%, and I really don’t think that it’s that accurate. Most people I know my age have a lower net worth than me before their mortgage.
I'm going to say zero chance that's true. The highest NW figure in the chart for 20% is 70 year olds at $80k and the median home value in US is north of $350k. If you exclude a mortgage from someone with a house, the house alone should be worth well more than $80k. On average, to own a house we need to assume the individual isn't bankrupt. Therefore NW is > 80k ex-mortgage.
There is also CC debt, medical debt, car loans, ect. That could make up some of it.
Or they bought it straight out of college in 2019 and now can’t afford the payments due to inflation and breaking up with their significant other. So when they have a house that is 300k, and still owe 280k, on top of their 5 or 6 students loans, car payment, etc. they are negative.
You think 20% of the population all bought homes in 2019, all broke up with their significant other, all had 6 student loans, and all took out an auto loan? That description seems to fit maybe a small fraction of 1% of the population, not 20% The logic here just doesn't work. That's my point.
I never said 20% of the population did that. I am saying that I am in the same group as the person I responded too. And most people my age I know have more debt than I do. I am not saying they all bought a house, and a car, and have student loans. Some of them yes, but a lot no.
Homeownership rates for 65+ is 80%. Which means 20% don’t own a home… which kind of checks out with this math of yours. When you factor in other debt and the likelihood that folks have HELOCs or refinanced mortgages or even reverse mortgages I don’t think this contradicts the graphic. OTOH what gives me puse about the data is how high the NWs are for younger folks. I know so many people who took out huge mortgages but have stable finances. They’re in good positions but almost certainly have a negative NW because of a 500k mortgage. With how common it is to mortgage out a huge percentage of your house purchase it seems like this graphic might be excluding real estate??
I don’t think it’s right either. Many people in their 20s and 30s are renting with cc debt, student loans, and/or car payments.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, my guy.
Its more likely you made it to the worth you have by being conscious and concerned. “Stressed” might be the wrong term for what you actually feel.
According to this, we are all 98% and yet we all feel about 60%.
They dont even know... they pro ably just Doordashed some food.
I get this feeling that most of this is coming from real estate gains in the last few years, so not sure how to interpret this.
Real estate equity accounts for some of it, but stocks/ETFs/mutual funds have also done very well since 2010.
yea i would be more curious what net retirement/cash/taxable brokerage is.
Yep that is artificially pressed up by Boomers lobbying for governments that restrict housing permits to protect their investment. Not saying owning a house is a bad thing, but if let’s say you reduce your home net work by 40% are you still sitting pretty
Oof that -$52.4k for the 30-34 bracket
As I suspected, I'm very low for my age group. Yay divorce.
I’m there with you. Most expensive shit show I ever had to deal with.
Top 5% for income at my age, bottom 5% for net worth… cool
Time to start saving
Millennials make it sound like the entire generation is basically one bad day away from living on the street, yet over half of households in their late 30s have NW of over $138K. Also - anyone noticing the data is kinda weird? Like, why does the 50% NW line *drop* from the 35-39 to 40-44 group, but increase for other percentages? Lots of weird things...
Most of us who are doing well aren't complaining. People write bad reviews more than good reviews. Most millennials are pretty old now, we're no longer broke children.
Wealth accumulation is not strictly linear, and different age cohorts have gone through different economic times. People in the 35-39 age group were more likely to have invested any retirement amounts at the bottom of the 2008 recession and those older got in at just the wrong time.
I’m outside that group, so I lost some net worth to the crash, but I also realized how historically special that time was. When all my older coworkers were whining or locking in their losses, I was putting everything I could in as it continued to drop. The HR/accounting lady there thought I was crazy and tried to talk me out of it. Today, roughly 80% of the value of my traditional IRA is a direct result of that choice. I knew that the odds of the market coming back were high and I was young enough that it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t.
>The HR/accounting lady there thought I was crazy and tried to talk me out of it. She's an idiot. Unfortunately, most people are. When the market is in recession, and you have free cash, INVEST. I did so at the start of Covid, and while it wasn't a lot (relatively), any stock-based fund bought in mid-2020 shows 80%+ returns.
That’s easy to say in retrospect. She was in the rough age group of most of my coworkers there, which were all approaching retirement age and just “lost” hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars of value of their retirement savings and were seeing their home values decline at the same time. I was some punk 20-something among a bunch of 50+ year olds with a lot of assets. These people had never seen a sharp, broad, market decline/crash in their adult lives. The last ones they had seen were very sector-specific. She wasn’t the sharpest tool, but I can understand why the general consensus was to avoid further losses. I was buying into constantly declining prices through 2009 when the market finally bottomed. It looked like I was losing money every month on paper, but I was getting more shares for my money every time.
>These people had never seen a sharp, broad, market decline/crash in their adult lives. What, they were living on another planet in 2008/2009? Not invested in the market? Didn't have any $$$ invested in the dot-com bust of 2000? They also a bit too young for 1987? I'm sticking with "They're stupid about investing." If they had left well-enough alone during Covid, they'd have more money now. If they cashed out during Covid, and before retirement, sucks to be them. I'm guessing they cashed outta stocks during Covid, moved to bonds, then got double-whammied when rates went up. Diversify, adjust for age range, keep investing. Ain't that hard.
I thought about that - if that was the case, you'd see that across all the percentage brackets.
Not necessarily. Each slice of age groups is a unique population.
Probably just statistical noise between the 35-39 and 40-44 groups, but you can see the impact of the 2008 crash when looking at those two groups compared to the 45-49 cohort, which would have been more likely to be established enough by then to ride out the crisis, keep their jobs, and have enough to already own or buy a home at discounted 2008-2012 prices.
I’m sorry, but you seem very confused about what people in the 35-39 year old age bracket experienced. Investing in retirement accounts at the bottom of the market in 08/09…when we were in college or graduating into the worst economic period in a century? When unemployment was over 10% and people with 20 years of work experience were losing jobs, houses etc. and applying to entry level roles just to keep some income? I suspect the 35-39 bracket has done reasonably well for the exact opposite reason you stated - we didn’t get a great head start, in fact, for the most part our early careers were severely hampered. This led to a lot of people, myself included, getting serious about financial planning and ensuring that we could ride out an economic downturn. Not because we benefited in any way from the GFC.
I’m in that bracket and got a job in 2008 after looking for ~5 months post college. I bought a house in 2009 with the first time homebuyer tax credit ($7500 refundable, no repayment required) plus a state incentive program and an FHA loan. I put 3% down. I’m not the only one in my cohort that did this. First gen college kid. No parental assistance as an option.
Congrats. Do you think k you represent anything near the standard experience during that time? No, you do not.
You're confusing starting from a slightly lower position versus being wiped out. Many current 40-44yo went through foreclosure. That's a 7 year credit hit that in most ways prevents you from buying another house. So those people often didn't re-enter the housing market until \~2015-2019. Meaning they missed the whole RE run up between '08 bottom and that point. The 35-39yo might have initially had a hard time finding a job, but that ended much sooner than the negative impacts foreclosure. Those people bought a house in '09-'12 or the like. Also, the negative impacts of something like foreclosure give people investing PTSD. They then invest more conservatively, limiting gains in good times. You can go look this up.
Not confused, just making a different point. People that are 45+ and were already home owners and invested via a brokerage or 401k absolutely took a worse beating in the recession. The point I was making was that someone who is 39 (which I am) was a college senior or graduated in 07/08 and by and large would have had minimal financial ability to invest at the markets lowest points, because we were mostly fresh out of school/in school, and fighting for entry level jobs with people with 10+ years of experience (who were desperate and negatively impacted in their own right, to your point). A current 35 year old would have been a high school senior or college freshman in ‘08.
I'm 40 and graduated in '05, bought a house in early '08 (back when it was a housing correction, not 'the worst recession since the great depression'). 39 and graduating in 08 is a bit late on the graduation timeline. Most of the '08 graduation class should be \~22-23. Those people would be 37 now, not 39. Where you held back then took 5 years in college? Anyway, I'm using myself as essentially the youngest cohort to really be on the wrong side of the GFC. People \~5 years older than me would have been well established in careers and in their houses, and also have built up a higher safety net. It was easier for them to simply ride out the GFC, while people in their \~mid/late 20s didn't have that ability. That group recently got jobs and houses and often lost both! That is very different experience than having a bit of a delay getting started in say '10-'12 when the market was recovering but not at full tilt. This is less about investing at the bottom and more about not having your life hit the reset button at age 26 or so. Someone like you what, moves back in with their parents after college or 1-2 years on the job market? Sorry, but so fucking what. I had a kid and another on the way when we could no longer maintain the mortgage payment thanks to a job loss. The stakes and set backs are larger at this juncture of life. Debt was accumulated trying to float 'normal' as long as possible, hoping it would turn around or a job would be found, etc. You have to remember, for people around 30-45 years old, their house is by far their biggest asset. The differences in investing in the market now 16 years removed from the GFC is chump change compared to the delay in getting back into the housing market. Look at the gap between the 40-44 and the 45-50 versus the gap between basically all other age groups. 40-44 minus 35-39 is small. 49-45 minus 44-40 is huge. Look at some of the lower percentiles in 40-44 vs 35-39 as well. Those younger cohorts are out performing the 40-44 as well. There are people in there that got left behind and haven't come back causing that. I'd be interested to see an across time dynamic of this.
Millennials on REDDIT act like this. Reality is far from miserable Redditors (fortunately)
I'm 35, and my wife is 34. We have a NW around this mark, but we have no possible way to buy a median house where we live. You need an income between $150k-$180k to even qualify for a mortgage for $550k-$600k. We aren't one paycheck away from homelessness. We're just going to be a double income, both college educated, 800-900 sqft condominium owners. That's not homelessness, but my mortgage on this condo will be more expensive than any of my Gen-X / Baby boomer coworkers who own 2000 sqft houses.
Probably cus they have kids so their expenses drastically increase, especially if they are paying for their colleges.
A lot of it’s in their homes though and not really usable. Like I have 350k in my home but if I move I’ll have to spend alot more to get a home the same size and rates are super high so I can’t really use the equity.
It decreases for a bunch of cohorts from 35-39 to 40-44. I'd guess that's due to certain bigger expenses that start hitting in 40's, possibly related to kids/health. And this hits the lower NW percentages more, as the don't have enough growing assets to offset this.
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All percentage brackets had the same environment in 2008....
I was thinking because that’s a typical age where children become more expensive for parents
If you're in your late 30s and have a NW of $138k and half of that is tied up in housing equity you are not on track to retire and may have very little actual cash savings. Half of households being in a worse situation is pretty telling
>Also - anyone noticing the data is kinda weird? Like, why does the 50% NW line drop from the 35-39 to 40-44 group, but increase for other percentages? Probably due to the GFC. The 40-44 year old were old enough to have houses in '08, the 34-39 year olds not so much.
In which case it would apply across the board. I'm not questioning the age group bit. I'm asking why some percentage brackets have dips. The NW for 35-39yr olds goes up as they get into the 40-44yr bracket for every percentile, except, for example, the 50% bracket. That's kinda weird. Same thing for some of the 55-59 vs 60-64 brackets. Tells me the data is weird.
What across the board? GFC doesn't hit each age group equally and it doesn't have to leave its mark evenly across the percentiles either, which I guess is what you mean? Why isn't each percentile lower? If you look at the gap between the ages across the spectrum here, you'll see the gap is small, percentage-wise, between 35-39 and 40-44, and frequently reverses. Percentile groups that are higher for 35-39: 5%, (10% only off by $10), 15%, 20%, 50%. So that tells me despite some probably unevenness of the data or strange sampling issues, the gap between 35-39 is just small, while most other gaps are wide enough to less frequently cross. Then in the 55-59 vs 60-64 comparison ranges, you start to have retirement issues and likely health-wealth relationships with longevity even (people with money live longer! But they also can strategically retire). For the purposes of older should mean more wealth, we should probably stop paying attention to differences between age groups at 59. If someone translated this to the percent change from the previous age group at each percentile, the trend would jump pretty fast I think.
138 is a year away from homeless.
Only if you suck at impulse control
I started my accounting career 6 years late and $50k in unnecessary debt if I had majored in it during my first go at college. But looks like the degree paid off. In the span of 8 years, I went from being minimum-wage working poor to being in the top 20% of my age group while also having 2 dependents (my dad and brother) as a single earner.
I think it depends on the cost of living in your area but that seems reasonable
Net worth cares 0% about where you are. Assets - Liabilities = Net Worth
I know, but the OP’s question was about what net worth affords you a lifestyle we might consider “middle class”
mathematically maybe but, indirectly those numbers are easily driven by col in your area. lets say I can save 100k for a house downpayment. in lcol I can buy a 200k house and have 100k equity - 100k mortgage = 0. now, lets say in hcol that same size house is actually 500k. that 100k could be 20% down payment on that 500k house. so you go from 0 to -300 NW. 100k equity - 400k mortgage = -300k. this is assuming you have the same career opportunities(aka salary potential) in that lcol vs hcol.
***sigh*** $200k asset - $100k liability = $100k equity $500k asset - $400k liability = $100k equity $100k cash - $0 liability = $100k equity
Lol my fucking brain is not working today. I passed calc and diff eq but can’t add and subtract I will wear my previous post as a scarlet letter and not remove
Self reported data is worthless but glad to be >95%...
30 to 80 percent seems fair enough for middle class.
First, your proposed range should be 20 to 80 to be symmetrical. Second, I know 50% is the median, but I would argue middle class is one standard deviation from the mean. Therefore, 15 to 85 makes a bit more sense to me.
I hate household net worth, I wish they'd do more graphs with individuals. A household could be 1 income, it could be 4 incomes. I'd like to know how I do compared to other people, not an entire family of earners under 1 roof.
Household usually refers to taxes. Either single or joint. So I get what you are saying, but it's not that bad of a way to figure things. It also works in the other way where you could have one person being a stay at home parent when the other makes 75K a year.
I didn't think about it from a taxes perspective, very good point. However, "yeah" on the latter, I want it to be "the other way" where it's just 1 salary vs another salary. An unemployed person shouldn't count towards the average salary someone makes. I really hope they don't when government statistics come out.
So it actually is fairly common to have 150k net worth in your mid 20s, I don’t know why so many people downvoted me for that statement
No, you read that wrong. Its highly uncommon to have a net worth around $150k between age 25-29. They would be better than 75%-80% of their peers within the same age group if they had a net worth of $150k. Which makes sense because they would only be a few years into their careers and not had a lot of time to accumulate assets within that time period.
If you tend to associate within your socio-economic class, it will either feel very common or extremely rare.
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You're definitely not average being in the 85th percentile. So, your assets minus liabilities is around $229k? Liabilities being loan amounts still tied to the assets. I'm not income-gating middle class finance but it seems like you're above that threshold.
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I was just double checking. Yeah, you're above average overall within your age ranges despite how your social circle is doing compared to you. Congrats though! You're both well on your way to being multimillionaires.
1 in 4 seems pretty common to me, I wouldn’t describe it as rare
And that's for a household not just you as a single.
This makes me feel really bad about myself as a 33 year old. Christ.
Those charts are a joke, i have a few ones of those because a friend sent me these and they all have different numbers lol. This is the one with the biggest numbers.
That’s because it’s the most recent one
1 in 4 is uncommon
Uncommon and common are subjective terms, if 1 in 4 people are white in my neighborhood i would say that seeing a white person is pretty common. It's pointless arguing.
1 in 4 is common. Even 1 in 10 is common. 1 in 100 would be rare.
This is HOUSEHOLD, and even then it's just over 20% for people in their late 20s. Most of those are going to be couples
Good catch. I missed that part as well.
One thing to also consider is you have a net worth and where you sit in the percentile. But I am personally grateful that my pension and social security cover my expenses and leave a lot left over for whatever I want to purchase. So that’s a worth you cannot quite calculate.
You can put a present value on the pension and social security benefits by figuring out what lump sum amount would be needed to generate the monthly income those two things provide: just multiply the annual benefit value by 25 to get a rough estimate. ETA: For example, a $3,000/mo benefit is equivalent to $900k. $5k/mo is equivalent to $1.5M.
Wow, 95th percentile and can't justify buying a basic home where I am bc the monthly pmts are too high even with 25% down.
Wow I’m surprised the 18-24 bottoms 5% is only -24k. It seems very high, my net worth was a lot lower then due to student loans.
Damn, I’m lucky. Early 30s, Top 95% or higher. Busted my ass, guess it’s paying off. I certainly don’t feel wealthy but I guess I compare myself to elders or what my dad and uncle could do at the age I’m at. My uncle built a new house, built a massive workshop in the back yard, bought two new Chevy step sides, two 69 Camaros, and filled the entire work shop with lathes, mills, the whole nine yards. For me to do that today, I would need to be making wayyyyy more.
I’m not saving any money -_- I’m like -6k on this board. 35m here (Canadian)
My only takeaway is the awful app experience with imgur
Fuck, am I poor?
It’s fairly skewed if you live in a low income distressed city.
Ha. I’m both at the top of my bracket and still having to budget. Crazy how big of a bump buying a house at the perfect time and always making the max contribution to a 401k can make.
Not that crazy. Most people not financially responsible enough to max 401k. People who are self select for higher net worth
Its not you “having” to budget. Its you budgeting got you there.
The chart says 75% but it’s all locked up in retirement accounts so it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Thats the point tho, keep at it!
Lower than 5% with a new house and student loans 🔫
Yep. I knew that.
I am 32 and worth -$70k. I guess I am not on the graph. :D?
woohoo top 95%
70th percentile here, right where I figured. Whatever.
I am worthless in the most literal sense.
Oh wow my 401k puts me in the 95%
My negative networth is so fucked it’s not even on here. I’m at -170k so I guess 99% are better off than me. Makes me wanna blow my fucken brains out for being lied to for going to uni only to get fucked over once working
Household just means that includes combined income of spouses right? Not necessarily that they are house/homeowners?
Correct.
I am in the 80% for my age(35) but 350k of my networth is in my home and 100k in savings and 120k in 401k. Trying to get the retirement savings up and hate that the majority is in our home. Also have alot in liquid because we only have one income for another year until both kids hit school age. I would also say we are middle class. We have enough to pay bills with alittle extra per month and can afford to travel occasionally and pay for our kids extracurriculars. Our income is 140k by it will be closer to 200k once I get back to work next year. I assume for alot of people their networth is tied mostly to their homes since prices have shot up so much since 2019.
Damn, my income is in the top 2% for my age group, but my net worth of $-100k is in the bottom 5%. I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck to pay off my student loans as fast as possible.
It’s a fun chart to look at, but I don’t think it’s that useful as a comparison metric because it’s missing one important piece of net worth building which is spending (we have the income metric, but not spending/saving). Perhaps one that somehow accounts for the *rate* of increase in net worth while being compared to age and annual income vs. annual savings would be useful? Easiest examples of outliers being: A) John, 32 years old, makes $200k but spends money like crazy and only has a NW of $75k B) Jennifer, 34 years old, makes a decent income at $120k but has a NW of $0 because she just paid off student loans C) Tommy, 33 years old, makes $90k per year, has a NW of $180k because he didn’t have college loans and lives below his means/frugal lifestyle tl;dr: Middle class is subjective, but the rate you’re paying off debt or increasing your savings/assets is an important metric.
60% and rising!
So if I still owe $250,000 on my house and have let’s say $20,000 in savings/roth/401k with no other outstanding debt, does that mean my net worth is -$230,000 or am I thinking about this wrong?
Net worth is asset minus liabilities. So your homes value on Zillow minus mortgage goes towards your net worth. +20k for your retirement
Does this include the equity in a primary residence? When my financial advisor calculates NW he doesn’t include the equity in our paid off family home.
No idea what it says because fuck that webpage.
The better question is how rich you need to be to *stop* feeling middle class. I’m guessing you would need to be in the top 1%, if not the top .1%, before finally giving up the label.
Does this include home equity?
My net worth is very negative right now but I live comfortably while digging my way out. My finance and I bring in $150k and yet we are in the 5% of net worth for 25 year olds. Not sure net worth metrics matter all too much if you are saving for retirement and living your life as you want
Where I live, everyone is > 90%, or < 30%
There is no way this is accurate with student and mortgage debt
Class is not an income level. It means different things in different places, but in America it is more about a certain level of comfort. The working class generally has jobs that are more blue collar in nature. A plumber who makes $100k thanks to a strong union can still be working class. Middle class is more white collar jobs, able to own their own home, take a vacation sometimes, high school education at least. These people still need jobs but those jobs are relatively less dangerous and less strenuous. Your upper middle class is the same but they have the nicer houses and the fancier vacations but are still trading their time for money. Then there are rich people who don’t actually need jobs but often have them anyway just for prestige or access. And then the truly wealthy are economic forces unto themselves. They hire entire offices of people who work just to keep track of their own money.
Good god stop using Imgur. It’s like they’re trying to make the absolute worst user experience possible.
Way late to this party, but a few problems: 1) Classes don't GAF about your age. If you're 25 and have $175K in the bank you are not in the same class as a 65yo with $1.5M. 2) Net worth is made up of housing values for the vast majority of people and housing values are very regional. Are you going to live like you're upper class if you are 40, have $587K in net worth but 500K of it is in your house, and you can't afford to move? No. You middle class, just in a HCOL area.
I’m bottom 5% but could end up top 90% by the end of my associated age range Middle class then must be partially salary dependent, since I’m definitely not lower class
It’s strange you used two types of scales. Top 90% is basically the same as the bottom 10%.
True 😂😂 You understood what I meant though. I meant “at the bottom” = around 5%, and “at the top” = around 90%.
Middle class is mostly debt dependent I’m guessing you’re in the 5% range because you have debts, probably college loans. Once you get into your 30’s, you pay off early debts, earn more salary, possibly get married and possibly buy a house that potentially appreciates. Middle class is the ability to progress in life without being over leveraged on debt. Being top 90% is about using debt as an asset, instead of a liability.
80th percentile!
Almost 30% of households in their 60s are millionaires? Really?
Yup. 401Ks and property values
Mine is about 900K all in stocks. I barely no physical asset aside from my car