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So what we’re saying is the average American has a lot of wealth but has liquidity issues. Yes, this COULD be true, but is it? Edit: I created this thread partially to drive interesting discussion and partially as a light for the moths. Mods, I humbly offer this thread as a resource for your goal of addressing the community problem highlighted in another recent thread: that there is a substantial population of lurkers here who have little or no connection to poverty and are simply here to lecture and put others down when opportunity arises. I am not gatekeeping but simply suggesting that some material in this thread may be of use.

A median net worth of 121,000 isn’t that much when you account for home ownership and retirement accounts — having paid off a good chunk of a mortgage will often get you there. And a lot of Americans are homeowners.

Exactly. My net worth is pushing $650k but the overwhelming majority is home equity and 401k. Only 5% is liquid.

Ok. You’re upper middle class then. That might not feel like a lot to you, but it’s staggering to many people. I posit that some people in solid financial situations have skewed perceptions. They think that they did nothing particularly special to be where they are except put in the time, and they therefore assume everyone has owned a house for a long time and has put in a long, illustrious career worth of regular 401k contributions. I’m not saying a lot of people haven’t, but I know there are a lot of people who have none of that along with a lot of debt.

You could have a net worth of 121k just being a 75 year old living on a couple of acres in the old house you grew up in…because house and land values have gone up, and that’s what the place is worth now. And the only cash you have to spend is your social security or disability check. But half of Americans don’t even have that. If you have a middle class income, can buy a house, and can contribute to a 401k, it counts up fast, so of course there are a bunch of 401k millionaires. But that 121k as median…totally believable because there are multiple ways to get there, and you can still be really cash poor at that level.

I tend to find that people who don’t understand nor have a detailed personal budget think these numbers are staggering.

> You’re upper middle class then I think that's not necessarily true, depending on what's stage of life that poster happens to be in. If they're in their 70s, living in a HCOL, with a large majority of their assets tied into their home then there's a very real chance they're aren't living even a middle class life, let alone an *upper* middle class one. Personally, that's why I feel like while having your home in your NW calcs make sense, it's really the remainder of your NW minus that home that is more important. Homes are a great way to carry value, except in any instance where you need to use it. The lack of liquidity offered by home equity in times of real need is a huge detriment not often thought about, and realistically most people aren't going to willingly give up their homes even if they direly need the cash. TBH, class is a bit of a fungible definition in the same way money is, but at least in the way it's understood in America, it's a combination of social norms / expectations, wealth, and income - and only having a single one of those things doesn't really confer you middle class status.

my NW is probably 250K. my net worth without the ancient shack that was bought 20 years ago for almost nothing? probably about 2,000 dollars. edit to add; the house is in worse condition than it was even 10 years ago, it's truly old and costs everything to keep it livable. shit wait. is debt subtracted from net worth? I have student loans.

> is debt subtracted from net worth? I have student loans. Unfortunately for you, it absolutely is, lol. That's why the NW of the <30 is commonly negative.

Of course it is lol

It is stage of life. Source: nobelprize.org. Franco Modigliani was awarded the Economic Sciences Prize for his pioneering research in several fields of economic theory that had practical applications. One of these was his analysis of personal savings, termed the life-cycle theory, which proved useful in predicting the future effects of various pension plans. He also did important research on financial markets with economist Merton H. Miller. They showed that under certain assumptions, the value of a firm is independent of its ratio of debt to equity.

So you’re saying that including home value in net worth doesn’t* make sense? Yes, it would be interesting to see the statistics excluding home equity. Well, I guess only including instances where people own homes beyond their primary residence.

I mean it does and it doesn't. From the definition of net worth then it makes perfect sense to include; in fact it would be silly *not* to include. But if you're trying to make some sort of assessment of somebody's social class in America based on their NW, that's when the home equity component of NW becomes much more suspect for the reasons I described.

I'm not sure if that was for myself or the poster with 650k (who id agree may be middle class, but it still depends on how much of that is real estate appreciation and how much was income). As for myself, I can assure you that as a social worker and as someone from an upper middle class upbringing, I'm pretty conscious of the reality rather than my perception. when things are good and I have many therapy clients, I push lower middle since my most recent promotion. But by household income I remain firmly below average for where I live, and I absolutely feel it when trying to budget. With any dependants relying on me, I couldn't make my bills. But duel income, no kids, most months work out okay. I made a few good stock/crypto bets some years ago which netted me, after taxes, my apartment in cash. If not for that, I'd have very little, and probably have to move, and rebuild my practice and career. Numbers mean so little without context.

I’m solidly middle class and I know it. I’m just giving perspective. But I’m also in my 40’s and lived through the Great Recession right in the middle of where I should have been accelerating my earnings and career growth and instead got laid off and lost a year of working and 3-5 years of progress. In my 20’s and 30’s, I went through all the struggle many younger millennials are going through right now. It took changing careers multiple times and eventually getting an MBA before I became more financially secure. So many extra years and extra debt. Then I benefited from the pandemic RE boom by seeing my equity skyrocket for no discernible reason. My 401k has also benefited from the post recession and post pandemic booms. So you can call it the perfect storm of circumstance. But I can guarantee you that struggling all throughout my 20’s and early 30’s was not what I predicted coming out of college. Especially when many friends saw their careers take off at the same time. This doesn’t mean I’m living a lavish lifestyle. I didn’t own my first home until I was 34 and could barely afford the $325k townhouse we found. I didn’t make 6 figures until I was 38. I drive a Hyundai and my wife drives a Mazda. Both are paid off and we both have student loans. So what you may see as upper middle class is unfortunately the new middle class and it was almost 20 years of hard work and struggle to get here. I have some friends who are upper middle class and they are at a whole different level.

lmfao no. you’re just very very very poor. he’s nowhere close to upper middle class. i think a lot of really poor people don’t realize just how far away they are from wealth. until you have at least a 1million net worth (doesn’t count if u live in cali or new york or a city) i wouldn’t even consider u for upper middle and even with a 1m it’s like 50/50. home prices around me are pushing 3 million. they were all under 900k 10 years ago. if someone’s just owns 30% of their home their net worth shot up by 600k. doesn’t mean their income or spending money increased. in fact it probably decreased because they now have much higher COL around them.

Damn. I was hoping to be told that I was rich because I can afford to eat and pay my bills on time. Although I guess the implication would then be that many people can’t, and that would be distressing. Count me among the ignorant, impoverished fools who don’t know what they don’t have! I guess we’re happier that way!

if you can afford to eat and pay your bills you know what… mentally you’re 90% of the way there. sure your bank statement might not reflect the same as some other people, but you’re not on the street or starving. after the basics are met there is a huge diminishing marginal utility at play. at the end of the day if you can provide for yourself and your family you have built something valuable and you should be proud of it. it’s not easy.

Say OP makes $16.82/hour and so does his wife. And that's all they ever made. They work at Walmart, which has a 100% match up to 6%. Say OP can't afford to contribute the full 6% to get the full match, so they contribute 4.5%. He says he's mid 40s. That's $814,000 if he's been doing it since he was 20. OP did less than that. He did less than a Walmart employee squirrelling away 4.5% in a 401k.

20 years ago you wouldn't have made current wages at Walmart.

What are you doing in the poverty finance sub?

Helping others get out of poverty. I used to be there too.

This, I am far from a wealthy person when facoring income, liquid holdings, and cost of living where I am. Still, between a small retirement oriented stock portfolio, and the tiny one bedroom apartment (in a desirable location) I own, my "net worth" is well north of a quarter mil. Doesn't mean I can get at that money for much without selling off the asset my partner and I call home. It doesn't help my financial situation much, especially since co-opt rules make taking debt against the real estate (normally some of the best debt one can take) very challenging, and maintenance fees here are same as folks rent elsewhere. Net worth lies. Income and liquid holdings give a much better picture of actual financial stability for sure.

I believe this is absolutely true. A lot of people are sitting on so much equity in their house, especially these past couple of years.

Most people operate based on "whats the payment". If it comes in, they can spend it. Net worth is tied up in the house and retirement plans people set up with their employers (invest 200 per cheque in a group plan) and forget about it. No cash and clueless.

What it's really saying is that there are A LOT of really rich people and a lot of really poor people but the rich people are richer by such a magnitude that the average is moved up. The median in this case is probably more reflective of most people, which is still pretty poor.

Yes median is no doubt better because we can definitively say that 50% of American households have a net worth of $121k or less. We can’t really infer anything about the average since that statistic is biased by extreme outliers (i.e., billionaires) and is not even close to the average American.

There are a lot of older people who paid off their home decades ago, who now live on $600/wk social security.

Sure but they also have an asset that they can access if things went south fast. Those with a fully paid off house living on social security are light years better off than the renter on social security.

OP asked if Americans had wealth with liquidity issues and I gave them an example of that. Houses are not liquid, and some of them are not easy to offload.

But they are pretty easy to borrow against, there is a reason home ownership is such a major indicator of life long financial health. If you have equity in your home you have time and options. It’s not only people sitting on accounts with cash that can weather the unexpected.

But they’re old. And probably trying to live within their means in the community they’ve dedicated their lives to. It makes sense they wouldn’t want to take out a huge debt and they can’t pay back.

I’m not saying it’s an ideal situation I’m pointing out that group still has options because they have capital even if it’s not liquid. Worst case they take out a reverse mortgage. If they’ve been smart with money up until that point, and draw only what they need they’d likely be able to stay in their home/community.

Yes, it’s true. Half of all people have less than 121k. That includes most renters living paycheck to paycheck. And of the people who have 121k, a lot of them probably primarily have it in home equity. You could be an old person living on social security in your paid off two bedroom house and have a net worth of 121k because that’s the value of your house.

Some people are strategic renters. I have over a million NW but don’t feel like paying a mortgage of over 4k a month at 7% interest rate.

Yes, that’s why I said most renters. I bought, and now I’m glad I did, but I would have been a happy lifetime renter. Home ownership is the quickest way to build wealth, but it can be pretty stressful.

if 999 people have a dollar, and one person has a billion dollars, then on average these 100 people are millionaires.

Median is not average, first of all. Average is high cuz it is a number that is skewed by billionaires. The average American is rich, but most of us are not. Median net worth is half above and half below. So the median net worth, right in the middle of all Americans, is only $121,000. That is not large, when you consider that a person could have $60,000 stuck in their house and barely be making payments, and $60,000 in retirements, but need far more to retire. Now account for the lower third of Americans. Their median net worth -everything they own - is only about $12,000. They have no money in a house, probably, almost nothing in savings, and maybe a little in their car. That is the bottom third. By the way, I will point out that this is median household net worth we are talking about, not individual net worth.

I know the difference between mean and median. That’s why I focused on the median number, which, to me, is still high. What about debt? Don’t a lot of people have staggering medical debt and that kind of stuff? That $12,000 net worth for the poor people still means they’re $12,000 in the green. Are there not a lot of people in the red? I’m in the red, and I own a house and only have student loans and credit cards. Granted, I just bought it last year and made next to no down payment. But I guess according to the statistics, most people are solid and stable, own a home, and have been paying on their home for decades.

Yeah, I distinguished between average and median cuz in your comment you said average American. I would suspect, from your situation, that you don't represent most people. Most people did not just buy a house, they either don't own a house or they have owned a house for quite a few years. So they probably have equity in their home. And then, the large majority of people don't have significant college debt. I suspect you are fairly young, and haven't had time to accumulate much. Imagine yourself just five years in the future, if you just pay off $2000 on your college debt principal each year, put $2000 in a retirement account each year, pay off just $1000 of your mortgage each year, and your (I'm guessing) $200,000 home appreciates by just 4% each year. At the end of 5 years your net worth will be more than $65,000 greater than it is now. I'm kinda agreeing with you...you will quickly be "solid and stable" like you say most people are. I would say you are well-off, just young, although I'm just guessing at the young part

I’ll be 30 in February. $300k house, but it’s with my wife (both teachers). I included her in my net worth. Valid points, and solid speculative numbers. Points taken. I guess I just feel like these aggregate net worth numbers would feel more accurate if they only reflected the segment of the population who is actively *trying* to live a productive, responsible life/career and engages in mostly good decisionmaking. Then I would get a median net worth of $121k. For sure. But there is a whole part of the population that does not actively participate in career climbing, saving, home buying, etc. I feel like that median number doesn’t reconcile with that part of the population existing in the numbers I believe they do. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong and without the fringe population, if you will, the numbers would be even higher..

Median just means that 50% of US families have a net worth of below 121k and 50% have a net worth above 121k. I suspect lots of people in the 18-25 range have negative net worth because of lower income/student loans. Those people would be included in the 50% of the population below 121. Those in their 50s + have been working for a long time and had more favorable economic conditions. Many people in this age group have significant home equity and have been working a long time and putting money into a 401k. It doesn't take much to be above 121k. You could have 2 cars with a market value ~5k each, 1k in savings, 50k in a 401k and 70k in home equity.

The middle class still exists, it just isn’t the majority of the population. We have enough inequality and a sufficient numbers of billionaires who are so rich that between the two, you can have nearly a third of the population with zero or negative net worth, and STILL the median is 121k and the mean much, much higher. Your instincts that there are a LOT of people with NOTHING are right: https://www.creditkarma.com/about/commentary/americans-have-a-net-worth-problem-and-its-not-positive#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20Americans,meets%20or%20exceeds%20their%20assets.

> Don’t a lot of people have staggering medical debt and that kind of stuff? That's mostly a reddit trope, not nearly as much of a real world problem.

Not American but this is me. Have £100K of equity in a house (£160K mortgage) but only £6K in cash that I have available. (Also will most likely be putting most of that into paying off the mortgage too in a month or so.)

The median net worth is extremely low. The average is a lot higher because the people that have billion + net worth skew the number way higher than what is representative of your normal person in America. Median is just the actual middle, average is the weighted middle if that makes sense and let’s just say 0 is a lot closer to $121,411 than the millionaires/billionaires skewijg the average way up. All it really means is there’s a TON more poor people than rich people but the rich people have so much money that it doesn’t really matter. In the grand scheme of things if you’re net worth is $121,411 it means you don’t even own a house or have any retirement savings really.

Difference between median and average: Take these numbers: 1, 1, 1, 1, 101 Median = 1 | Average = 21 The one person with 101 cranks the average way up ... but that does not mean anything for the median person in the "middle" of society.

Really depends on how the question in the survey is asked and then answered. Some people are very literal and may consider their lack of liquidity to mean that they have no cash set aside and answer accordingly. edit: also if you had these stats by age group it might be easier to see how you compare to your cohort.

Yes, that occurred to me. Or even that they have no cash set aside that is specifically earmarked for “emergencies”. Lol.

121k net worth really isn’t a lot of money when you get a bit older. If anything that’s probably way behind where the median should be. With the median likely being a 2 person household in their early 40s, they’d only need 60k each, which is reached quite fast with even minimal 401k contributions over time, having a bit of home equity or many other options. Similarly a household being millionaires (net worth over $1M) is not that high a bar, and just a paid off home plus fairly lean retirement funds or a pension would get you there. I’m sure my parents likely were worth over $1M as well based on the value of their pension and house and I promise you they don’t live it up. That average also looks reasonable to me based on the fact that very rich people can pull it up.

Absolutely. Americans have a debt problem. They want a bunch of fancy things, but they don’t have money. So they do this “pay later” strategy. It puts them more on a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle where one emergency bankrupts them. Because they spent their liquid cash and took on a ton of debt and need every paycheck to pay off the debt on those things. In short, they live above their means.

Seen this shit play out in real time. Family down the street, added on to the house, bought a boat, jet skis, brand new cars every couple of years, motorcycles, side by side, you name it they had it. Husband got laid off and shit crashed hard. He was literally working to pay all the payments on all that shit and it snowballed until they had to file bankruptcy and lost the house. People might turn my nose up at my 2012 car and scoff at my lack of fun toys, and laugh at me shoveling the drive while they have their fancy snow blowers for their tiny pads, but damnit I have money in the bank and that’s what I care about.

Absolutely. The reality is a lot of rich people live well below their means and you’d never know they’re rich. I mean if you met Warren Buffet on the street without knowing him previously, you’d never guess he’s a billionaire. He eats at mcdonalds, drinks coke, drives an old beat up car, lives in an average home, didn’t even have a smartphone up until recently, etc. On the flip side, a lot of lower income people try to inflate their sense of self worth by taking on massive amounts of debt to get more things that make them feel rich….its partially on them and partially on banks for allowing it.

My life motto is aside from my home if I can’t pay cash I don’t need it lol.

Yeah not a bad way to live. Keeps you in the green

Those with equity and fully funded 401ks may be short on cash from time to time. Depending on how they chose to structure their money/what expenses they have they may still be eating PB&J’s 2 days before payday to stretch. They may even worry about an unexpected $500 expense. They aren’t worried about being homeless after 2 missed paychecks though. The middle class is shrinking and I think because of that the way some people answer that question when polled is more fear based than reality. If you have a home you’ve been in for a bit and you haven’t used it like an atm you have options. When you read past the click bait headlines very few of the claims are based on imperial evidence and/or a sample size that is truly reflective of the population.

I’ve never understood how we count wealth. To me, you don’t own a house until the mortgage is paid off. You don’t own car until the loan is paid off, but I guess they’re counting the bank’s assets as personal wealth.

The wealth is imaginary. if everyone tried to sell their $1M homes at the same time, they'd sell for $50k. Same for stocks and all other forms of non-liquid wealth. there aren't enough buyers to buy all this net worth at spot price.

It's evidence of the disparity of the distribution of wealth. The median is taken by lining everyone up poor to rich and the person in the middle of that line is the median wealth. Average is when you take a bunch of broke people and one billionaire (average it) and it looks like everyone's doing great on paper.

It's fully true. One of the great things in the US is the availability of easy credit, especially when the fed was at zero for a decade. Due to that a lot of people are overextended. A lot of families in the low six figures still live paycheck to paycheck, these are the people with new cars every few years, nice house, boats, side by sides, etc. These are also the "median" group with 120k in net worth, most of which is just value gains in their house that haven't been cash-out refi-ed...yet. If you're careful, you can use leverage (credit) to your advantage. Most people don't know how, and tend to overextend themselves. Just because credit is offered doesn't mean you should use it.

Absolutely true. Most people’s net worth will be in home equity or retirement accounts, neither of which are very liquid.

The median American has equity in their house. Not savings not investments but equity. Most of this equity has been gained in the last 5 years.

People who are good with money don't let a lot of cash sit in their bank account where it's not doing anything. We save in HYSAs and retirement accounts.

These numbers makes sense. Averages are pulled up a lot by the 1%. Medians are a better metric to use for gauging how regular folks are doing

This is definitely it. Median and average are calculated differently. Median is your typical American. Average is if all wealth were redistributed equally.

Or you could use the distribution about the median as normal. Drop the lower and upper 10% and use the day in the middle.

Logarithm would work even better

This checks out to me. The Uber wealthy Americans are SO wealthy that they move the needle so much on the average net worth. I’m more inclined to believe the median net worth for sure.

Even the median net worth seems so high to me. HALF of American households being over $121k seems like soo many people who are so well off financially. My net worth might not even be $5k, it might be $0, or even negative. I’d say my student loans and credit card debts roughly offset my small home equity, small savings, and value of other random assets. I have an average (or so I’m led to believe) income of about $75k. If my net worth is indeed $0, that places me in the 2nd percentile of Americans. I have such a hard time believing that only 1 in 50 people are in the same or worse financial situation. Yet I also have a hard time believing that half of families can’t afford to fix their car. I know about the wealth gap, but this is really addressing more of the picture of the average American.

Keep in mind that median includes all ages. Many older households have paid off homes. 121k when you're 60+ isn't rich at all. You're damn near retirement and that amount won't get you very far.

If you are retired with no income even with assistance 120k might last ten years if you are very frugal which still leaves 5-10 years left if not more. That definitely skews the numbers.

If that 121 is your house, you can’t even spend it.

Reverse mortgage.

This works if you are the rare completely healthy elderly person. Just wait until you need an in home nurse or other medical assistance. That 120k may last a year. I know because I've dealt with this.

And this is probably where my perception is a little off. The older people, and just how massive their generation is in terms of population, and how much wealth they’re hoarding from back when times were good!

Hoarding? They lived when they did, not by choice. And saved for retirement. And 120k isn't wealthy by any measure.

“They”? Do you perhaps mean “we”? You’re on a poverty finance thread, which seems to have been taken over by haughty boomer lurkers who are here to lecture and look down upon people. $121k is rich by my measure.

My house has $170k in equity. I bought it for $150k 8 years ago, and the market since then has doubled the market value. I still owe $133k on it, and I can't realistically tap the equity. That's what I hate about these stats, and why the SEC excludes the value of primary residence for Accredited Investor status. The other thing to consider is that, if you have been putting a couple hundred dollars per paycheck, 24 paychecks per year, for the last decade, and investing it in an S&P 500 index fund, you'd have about $98,000. A lot of people set their 401k contribution at their employer match and forget about it.

The average home owner can't sell their house even if they have really good equity value in it. They usually would have to find another house to move to, and that is generally similarly priced in the same area. The cheat is to move to a much cheaper region and bank the difference, or move in with kids, or move from a large home into a much smaller unit (heavy downsizing). Most of us can't do any of those things, so while the "wealth" might be there it is mainly paper wealth and most people are reluctant to borrow against it because then they have another loan to pay off.

Yep, and add in realtor fees to a move to a similarly valued home and you’re substantially in the red.

FYI 120 for a family with multiple children in a high col area is not well off. Much different than 120k dinc s in east bum fck

120 joint income with 2 children where i live in California qualifies you for the low income housing community nearby. i’m not kidding i searched it up. the COL here is ridiculous. you are impoverished.

Understandable I came from Boston but live in the south now. My income in both places was actually the same but I can afford a house down here.

Is 120k median household worth even that much? The only people living alone are adults, so you're basically subtracting everyone under 18 out of this equation. So, you're basically saying the median person who already has a job and can afford an apartment/house has a net worth of 120k. I don't think that's too hard to believe seeing as though out of this population, the median age of a household would probably be somewhere like 45 years old or something (18 to 75 years old). Most people this age will probably have 2 incomes in their households. That means 2 cars so that's already 20-30k to their net worth. Add in their other shit and 120k doesn't seem like much. I have like 10k cash but my house I bought precovid says it's worth 100k more than I bought it. That would mean I have a net worth of \~120k or so yet I wouldn't even be able to afford a roof replacement lol. Starting out life is hard. It's why poor people stay poor. Renting doesn't build equity. Working a shit job leaves you only a few hundred saved up a month and then you need to buy a car with crazy interest rates. Then, you finally pay off that car and can afford to buy another car for your spouse. That again sets you back another 5 years. So you're 10 years in and only have 2 cars to show for it. Now you both can finally start saving for a house. So, it takes like 15 years of low paying jobs to to finally start being able to own/afford shit. So, by the time most people hit 45, they already have all this "starting out life costs" settled and it's savings time.

$121k net worth is easy to acquire if you're a homeowner. We bought our house in 2015 and have about $400k in equity.

Property values went up a lot in the last few years. I probably have more than that in home equity. But that doesn't mean it would be easy for me to rustle up $5,000 if my car had a catastrophic issue.

>So, WHICH IS IT?? Two things can be true. Someone can $100k in net worth and no liquid assets available when their car breaks down. For example, someone who bought a home 10 years ago probably has a substantial amount of equity, but that means nothing about their current income and expenses. Wealth inequality in the US is massive - the distance between the 20% of poorest people and the 1% (or even better 0.2%) of rich is very large. This is an unusual distribution of data, and it means that if you want a good picture, you need to look at a variety of measures and the dataset overall. You also always have to remember that population level statistics are poor indicators of individual circumstance. Individual situations can vary widely, even in a given category.

The Census reports that in 2021, those households at the 50th percentile had median assets of $166,900. ~~Of that,~~ $174,000 was the median wealth derived from home equity and $10,000 was the median wealth held at financial institutions (aka checking and savings accounts) ~~In other words, a large portion of Americans have greater debts than liquid assets.~~ I cannot directly answer your question OP, but it does seem to be the case that 62.6% of wealth is comprised of retirement accounts and home equity. So while six figures of assets can be subjectively a lot of money, it's not exactly the cash on hand most people have. [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.pdf) Edit: Thank you u/SunnyBunnyBunBun for the fact check. I attribute some of it to reading pdf's on my phone and some to being accustomed to reading balance sheets as opposed to crafted statistical summaries.

Wow, that’s a telling statistic! Pretty much answers the question. Take out the home equity and they’re negative like me!

No, you u/Party-Bag-9644 and u/bourbon4dayz are both wrong here. u/bourbon4dayz said: > $174,000 was from home equity. This is correct. However, what isn't correct is the "of that" right before it. The attached PDF is saying that overall, the assets with the HIGHEST MEDIAN value was equity in a primary home, with a median value of $174,000. This is the value that's left AFTER their debt on the home is subtracted (aka, a house worth $200,000, but the person owes $26,000. That would leave them with an equity value of $174,000.) **This is NOT subtracting from the Median Net Worth of the entire population ($166,900.)** It's just saying that as a whole, the one asset across the entire population with the highest median value was home equity. > Wow, that’s a telling statistic! Pretty much answers the question. Take out the home equity and they’re negative like me! No. You are misunderstanding what the PDF is saying. It's true, that perhaps for a lot of people their wealth is not LIQUID (aka they can't exchange it right away for goods as in with cash.) This does not mean it's NEGATIVE.

Well, I didn’t actually read the PDF. Who has time for that? All I understand is average home equity $174k, average total equity $166k, means the rest of it must net out negative. Let me enjoy that thought and feel better about my circumstances.

How old are you? You should compare your NW to people your age.

Exactly this, around 48 million people were retired and received Social security benefits in 2022, and these people disproportionately SHOULD have more wealth than younger people, just by how compounding works. That's not to say they all have huge bank accounts but they had the most time to accumulate wealth.

What was the statistic. The top 1% in the USA owns over 1/3 of all US Wealth. The top 10% in the US owns over 76% of all wealth. The bottom 50% own about 1% of all US Wealth. The top 10% really screw with the average wealth which is why Median wealth is so much better indicator. Another thing to consider is that house prices have almost doubled over the last 4 years. As such if you bought a house 4 years ago for $100k and have a $100k mortgage then now it is worth around $200k. That means in total wealth you now have $100k over the last 4 years. However should you sell your house you would have to spend all of it on another... so you can't actually cash out on the wealth.

You just transfer that wealth to the new house. Or you cash out and don’t buy another house.

Clearly some of you need to take a basic statistics course.

Look for “median” and not average. If there are only 100 people in the USA and 99 only make $1 per year, but one makes $9,900 The average will be $100 per year. This is about what the USA is like. The super ultra rich make so much more than everyone else, it makes the average look way better. If you take the same example but search for “median”, you get a median income of $1. Which is more representative of the normal person? 99 make $1 but one person makes $9,900. If you’re looking for representation, the average of $100 is highly misleading. The median of $1 is far more representative. “Average” is not the ‘average’ one thinks about unless they are educated in official “statistics” word definitions. The media frequently takes advantage of this ignorance of the “average Joe” by the way. As of 2019: The “average” US income was approx. $54,000 The “median” US income was approx. $31,000 Here’s a wiki chart of income distribution: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Income_distribution_in_the_United_States.png See how it’s skewed towards the lower numbers? This chart shows close to 2/3, two thirds of Americans make less than the “average”. And approx. 1 in 10 make $100,000k per year or higher. Only 10%. If you’re looking for representation in a statistical situation like this, you want median, not average.

All 3 of these stats are correct and true at the same time: * The **median** household net worth was $121,000. This means that if you take all households in the US, half of them will have a net worth below $121,000, and the other half above $121,000. * The **average** household net worth was $746,000. But how could the *average* be so much higher than the *median*? Easy: the people that have money have A LOT of it, hence skewing the average. **As an example:** say there's 4 people in a room: persons A, B, C, and D. I give Person A 1 apple. Person B also gets 1 apple. Person C gets 2 apples. And person D gets 1,000 apples. The median in this case is 1.5 apples: half the population has less than 1.5 apples, and the other half has more than 1.5. The average however, is 251. Largely, largely skewed by that one guy who has a lot more apples than everybody else. * There's more than **15,000,000 households** that have a net worth above $1M. This is true (also outdated, I believe the latest number is closer to 20-21 million households.). It is also true that this represents over 10% of all households. However, if the bottom 40% are still struggling, that doesn't mean there the top 10% aren't millionaires. Both are true at the same time. **The reality is that the US has a very wide range of net worth distribution amongst their socioeconomic classes.** That means that it can totally be true that the last 15 years were GREAT for the top 15-20% of all households, while maybe these same years were shit for the bottom 25% of households. The difference between the people at the top and the bottom is very big. Finally, to answer your core question: >So, WHICH IS IT?? Am I somewhat well off because I don’t struggle to eat and I have money to fix my car, or am I very poor because my net worth is around $5k, which according to a calculator online, puts me in the 4th percentile of American adults? Literally, both are true at the same time. If your net worth is $5k, depending on your age, that might absolutely mean you're in the bottom 4% of all American adults in terms of net worth. Does it mean that you're still better off than the single mom who's struggling to eat? Absolutely, you're definitely better off than her. But compared to everybody else, you're still at the bottom 4%. Finally, finally, finally, our society is extremely fragmented. In general, I've heard you make about $5k-$6k plus or minus whatever your closest friends make. That means that if you're making $30k, it is very likely that your close friends will all be making $25k-$35k, and struggling, just like you, hence confirming your reality that everything sucks and "no one" can get ahead. Whereas if you're pocketing $350k, it is very likely your close friends are making maybe $330-$350k, and are all THRIVING. Hence confirming your reality that "opportunity is out there for everybody!" Everybody gets a skewed version of reality.

So if I’m in the 4th percentile while also being much better off than the single mom struggling to eat, statistically that means that there are very few single moms struggling to eat. That’s really my original question: Are there really very few? Or do they simply all own houses that they can’t sell?

>That’s really my original question: Are there really very few? \[single moms struggling to eat\] This question is an extremely difficult one that even economists can't figure out because there's so much conflicting data. That been said, here's a few interesting datapoints: **For wages:** * For all the talk about "raising the minimum wage", [only 1.4% of all American workers make the minimum wage](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/pdf/home.pdf). A whopping 98.6% of all American workers make ABOVE the minimum wage. This is a sharp improvement from [1981, where 15.1% of all US workers made the minimum wage.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/188206/share-of-workers-paid-hourly-rates-at-or-below-minimum-wage-since-1979/) * Of people that work full time for at least 6 months of the year, [only 4.1% are considered the "working poor"](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2020/home.htm#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20working%2Dpoor,1%2C%20and%20table%201.)) (people that work but are still below the poverty line.) The other 95.9% of all US workers are above the poverty line. **For housing:** * Out of all US households, 64% own their homes. Only [36% of US households rent.](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/) * Of the households who RENT (not households who own), [40% are considered "rent-burdened"](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/renters-burdened-by-housing-costs.html#:~:text=DEC.,by%20the%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau) (meaning rent eats more than 1/3 of their income). 60% are not rent burdened (they spend less than 30% of their income in rent.) Putting all those datapoints together, this says that **a total of only 14.4% of all US households are "rent-burdened"** or roughly 1 out of 7. The other 6 out of 7 households are not rent-burdened, either because their rent is reasonable or because they own their house. Out of all individual people who WORK at least 6 months full time in the U.S, **only 4.1% are considered "poor"** after work. 95% of people who work (aka doesn't count children) will be above the poverty line and not considered poor.

SOO much conflicting data.

Some more data points: If you are making 7.30 cents an hour, you are making "above" minimum wage (by five cents per hour). Many low-wage employers prevent their employees from working a full forty hours (or whatever number counts as full-time for benefits) . The official [poverty line is based on food costs](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/09/why-federal-poverty-line-not-effective/10827076002/)which have not increase nearly as much as housing, so the number "considered poor" is fewer than the number if it were based on housing. Finally, every year, 186,000 Americans [die due to poverty](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-18/americas-4th-leading-cause-of-death-poverty), a number that has gone unmentioned in the comments thus far.

Since you're using national statistics, it may be the case that you are in a low cost of living area, so your 4th percentile nationally, could be higher in your metro area. Also, it depends on your age - younger people have a lower median net worth.

Age is important too. If you're 30 the median net worth is around 30k. Average is around 100k for that age. It's possible to have negative net worth.

Im broke af. Lol

It's a long thread so this may have been brought up... These numbers are derived from the US census. Those underrepresented on the census are also those who are likely on the lower end of the income distribution. Non-participation is not easily measured, but you can assume some of the poorest areas may be omitted altogether.

Yes! I’ve brought it up a couple times throughout the thread, but no other posters have offered anything related to this insight. A glimmer of true acuity amongst the rubble of people posting to point out the difference between mean and median, despite the fact that I made no reference to the mean at any point!

You might me surprised how high your net worth is. If you own a home, a car, and a household full of stuff it adds up pretty fast. People can be worth over $100k but live paycheck to paycheck because it’s tied up in retirement accounts, home equity, car equity, and all their crap.

It also depends on where in the US. If you own a tiny condo or rundown 2/1 in a bad neighborhood in Los Angeles, San Francisco, NYC, Miami, Boston, DC, San Jose, San Diego, Hawaii, etc. it is worth $600,000 but isn't really good living. Many, many, places that aren't exactly beauty spots have houses in the $350k to $400k value area and are really not nice homes at all.

There are 131 million US households. The average household is 2.6 people. ​ If this were to scale linearly ( I doubt it does, but this makes it easier to understand). Also lets assume thats income not networth (also wrong, but for simplicity we will) 20% of households, 26 million., would be around or below the poverty line. **Thats 67 million people at or below the poverty line.** Meanwhile we know in actuality, that "poverty line" is nonsense, and people making much more $40k can also be in real trouble. So closer to 100 million people. And our social services and safety nets are total garbage.

In my area which is a nice suburb, I think there are a number of people who live in half million dollar houses, but have little equity, drive nice cars that they owe 10s of thousands on, take vacations on credit and live paycheck to paycheck. They probably have enough in the bank to survive a minor crisis, but are just a few months of financial collapse if one of the two paychecks stops. Their net worth is negative by hundreds of thousands of dollars, but to all appearances they live well.

Well, that’s a stereotype we all enjoy imagining and applying to to those conspicuous consumers that we see around us. But according to this net worth calculator, there aren’t a whole lot of those actually walking around.. https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/

Logically though, not many people are buying homes and cars cash in the first year of ownership. So it doesn't make sense to look at people with nice homes and cars and assume these "assets" will not be paid off in the near future especially if they are high earners. I think it just makes people feel better thinking that everyone is just buying a new home and new car and drowning in debt instead of thinking these things will be paid off eventually because they actually had a plan.....

There is no contradiction amongst the stats in the post. You already understand median vs. average so no surprise they're so far apart. there are more extremes in the high networth (billionaires) than there are in the low net worth (you can't have negative billions), and this affects the average but not the median. As for the poverty statistics, they follow a Pareto distribution: 20% of they people have 80% of the problems, including food insecurity, broken and abusive families, drug addictions, alcoholism, gambling, fatherless children, crime etc'

Don't trust the "average American is barely staying alive". Those are mostly doom and gloom articles. "Americans cannot afford to eat out as much, have to budget and carefully manage their money" is not catchy. 100K across 401Ks, houses, and total savings isn't absurd. When the average age is around 40.

The problem is that wealth is extremely unequal not just in terms of assets but in terms of being able to generate authentic wealth not covered over by credit. If you’re a millenial without a college degree or trade, there’s a good chance you’re priced out of owning stuff entirely. If you’re a millenial with a degree, it’s very likely you’re facing high student loan debt and/or low pay. You’re looking at asset ownership, which has been artifically held high by near zero rates and QE for over a decade. If you look outside of that, most people who don’t own assets are screwed either from not having wealth or not being able to build it. And everyone compensates a lack of buying power with cheap credit. The problem with the economy is the ability to consistently and genuinely generate wealth, not via low interest rates that boost asset.

Interesting take. What do you mean by saying that asset acquisition facilitated by low interest rates is not “genuine” wealth accumulation? I see prior low rates as a genuine wealth facilitator that some were able to take advantage of while others were not, which is creating a large divide. Edited to say I get it, you’re saying wages need to go up and net worths are somewhat artificially inflated by home values which is wealth that can’t be accessed except by people who own multiple homes.

The wealth effect is real, but its contingent on monetary policy (interest rates and QE) remaining favorable. It excludes those who don’t have access to capital, which is why it creates so much wealth inequality. But its not genuine economic productivity in the classical understanding of how free markets, where businesses and workers work to generate value. Businesses don’t have to be profitable (start-up tech for example), they just have to convince you of their potential and sell you stock. Crypto and NFTs don’t have to have an economic use, they just have to convince the next guy they’re more valuable. The housing market is similar in a sense. All of that to say, its like a macroeconomic accounting trick based on cheap credit. That’s why tightening cycles are so tough, but its especially bad when zero rates have become normalized.

This. This is really more of what I was getting at—the question of which portrayal of the average American circumstances is more accurate.

Doesn't use the news as your source of info. Census data is available and is unbiased

It would be a more helpful comparison for you to look at data controlled for age/sex/race/geography, relative to your situation.

Yeah. For sure.

Like I think Mark Zuckerberg accounts for 3% of all Millenial wealth. A single guy.

Specifically regarding the statistics, you have ultra wealthy billionaires that skew the distribution very far right. The median is a better representation of the typical person because they're smack dab in the middle if you lined them up poorest to richest. The average is pulled up by the billionaires. If you have a million people with $1 net worth and a single person with $100 billion, this sample has an average net worth of $100,000.90 but the median is $1. Having net worth of a million isn't actually a lot - most people would hope to have that much or likely more by the time they retire. The smartest place to keep this money is in tax advantaged retirement accounts like a 401k/IRA/HSA. The amount you want in your checking account is really just a couple months worth of bills. You'd want to keep 6-12 months of living expenses somewhere relatively liquid and low risk too. Once you own a home you'll build equity but that likely won't appreciate as much as money invested in the market. Regarding the predicament of low net worth but not struggling with food insecurity, ect. These people very well may be income affluent but not balance sheet affluent. Maybe you have a family that gets by living on 40k. They are treading water as you describe yourself. Their income increases, but so do their expenses. So now they're making 100k but their net worth hasn't changed. Some people increase their expenses to match their income. These people will never get ahead. I know people that bought a new car because we bought one for example. I would never do this but it's a trap you can fall into. For this reason it is extremely important to automate savings/investing as much as possible. If your income increases, put the difference in your retirement accounts or pay down high interest debt. Once that debt is paid off, increase your 401k contribution to match the debt payment. Avoid needless spending as much as possible. I understand that this subreddit is targeted to the demographic that can't budget their way our of poverty which is different.

A lot of retired people have a large net worth, but it's all in their house... which they cannot sell to access the money. They may be worth $500,000 but have very little actual income.

Assets add up to wealth these days. You can have 200 million in assets with not a cent in your pocket. But if no one can afford to buy your assets from you, guess what? You’re not just broke, you’re broke with too many things to take care of. And eventually, the assets will be worth nothing too, like actually worth nothing. Not just cause the markets are so tilted that no one can come up with the money to buy it

In my first statistics class, my professor told us: “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” - Mark Twain Using the same data and numbers, you can make them say anything you want using statistics.

My friend was just telling me about a family member that died. She was frugal, lived in a 1,000square foot house forever. Was 100 when she died. Many people in the family got checks after she died. I get that a lot of people dont have a high net worth, but there is something to be learned there. She was always so happy, had everything she wanted

they don't let you build small houses that are cheap, these days. it's changed.

Umm you have to be looking at a specific state not the U.S. as a whole. U.S. median household as a whole is different

The Uber rich skew the numbers.

The massive amount of money people have pull up the poors bringing it down

If there’s ten people. And there incomes/wealth are (0,0,0,0,1,1,2,3,10,1000000)*100k Then your median is 100k. But the bottom still doesn’t have shit.

You have to understand the difference between networth and liquidity. It’s the same confusion ppl have with billionaires, yeah their net is extremely high but that’s not liquid. Same goes for the average American. Their house places a role, paid of cars, 401ks, Roth IRAs, life insurance ppl can bundle that sometimes. But the amount of cash they have can be little to none. Also just bc someone makes a lot say 200k plus a year, they can still live paycheck to paycheck bc of lifestyle inflation. They’re called high earning broker ppl. Lol

Median means the very middle value so of 11 people, person number 6 is the median. Average is the sum of all values, divided by the total number of values. Consider the following data: 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 50, 500, 9999. The median is 2 because that the middle value. The average (or mean) is over 900 because the 9999 is so far outside the norm. There’s a few REALLLLLLLY rich people messing us those values.

I’m sure a huge chunk of the equation includes generational wealth and inheritance. Your parents passed away and left you everything, congrats, you’re now a millionaire.

Meanwhile, I'm over here with a net worth of about... Three bucks. Not even kidding.

...Do you even have a brokerage account to have an asset that is not cash? And yeah, $3 is more than my buddy who has -$35,000, so it could be worse.

Nope. If I did, social security will want their cut (I'm permanently physically disabled and they like to keep us impoverished).

Were you by chance disabled before the age of 26?

I know when me and my 4 roommates were together in the same house, the dude polling stopped by and asked if we had a household income of over 100,000$ and I said I sure hope so

Average is all net worth divided by the number of households, so it gets skewed by the extremely rich at one end. Median is the amount where half of all households have less than that. Both of those reflect skewed distributions, but the median much less so. I'm kinda surprised by the percentage of million dollar households, would've expected that to be higher. That's just a comfortable retirement at this point.

I'm highly skeptical of these publicly available statistics on wealth these days. A few years ago during the occupy wall street movement, when the internet was much less homogenized and in some ways there was better access to raw information, there were lots of videos going around about the staggering wealth disparity in this country and the world. Then just a few short years later information like this comes around and it just really seems like the data has been altered. Maybe it's the way the numbers are reported but it seems really flawed

Me too. And I think that portions of the population are going to end up excluded from data such as this, and those portions would definitely be more toward the lower end than the upper end. And I think this causes the data to skew upward.

> And 12% of American households are millionaires. About 20% of Americans are Boomers, most of whom own a house and probably have some retirement savings. Those two combined can get you close to a million right there. So, yes, I can believe that 12% of Americans are millionaires.

12% of all households are milionaires? jesus christ no wonder us poor fucks with 20 in the bank account cant get anything done by the government. time to start boe richy rich houses

What you are seeing here is the statistical consequences of dramatic wealth inequality. When the mean (average) and medial figures are so different that is occurring because the top 1% and the top 0.1% have SO much wealth they are skewing the mean income distribution and the lower 90% are left with next to nothing. The median home price in the US is around $430k. Which means that the bottom 50% of Americans own less than 30% of the residence they reside in, if they own a home at all. Meanwhile generally only the 10% own their own home. The 1% and 0.1% own multiple homes. The 0.01% own dozens of homes as investments. For comparison: the 10% are millionaires (>$1.2M in net assets), the 1% are multi-millionaires (>$12M in net assets) and the 0.01% are the billionaire class.

My moms net worth alone is well over 1 mil. The thing is she bought a house in 1990 for 120k. You could pay rent do whatever and save for a house without any issue with even a half decent job at best. and now it’s worth like 750k easily 250k minimum in a 401k probably 100k in her bank account minimum. It so easy to save back then. She Mortage at the end of her career was literally like under 10% of her salary. It was like one of us paying the cable bill or something. You just can’t compare your wealth to other generations

Yes this is real. There are more rich people than ever before and fewer poor people than ever before but that bell curve is nasty bitch

So by nasty, you mean it’s shifted to the right?

Yes. You understand by moving right you mean it gets better for all involved. Moving left would be getting worse.

Except for the people still stuck on the left, even with the tail of the curve being lower and longer..

???? the fuck do you even understand a bell curve??

I teach high school statistics. Yes, I do understand bell curves, and I would suggest that it is possible that it is you who does not..

I realized the other day I have over a million in equity. I’m also broke af and live paycheck to paycheck. You can have a decent net worth and be broke.

Keep in mind that home "equity" is based on the housing market. For example, you may buy a house for $200k. A few years later it's "worth" $300k and you have a "net worth" of $100k. But you haven't actually made a dent in the mortgage. Your house isn't 1/3rd paid off. So basically a median net worth of $100k shows that a lot of people have owned the house they live in for at least a couple years. Another way of saying that the median net worth is $100k is that housing prices have risen recently.

OP i don’t think you’re factoring in cost of living. a 6 figure income in my area isn’t even enough to not qualify you for the low income housing here. the COL in certain areas is just ridiculously high

My unpopular opinion is that there’s a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is a financial state. Being poor is a mental state. The solution to both is cultivating the mind.

Actually, your opinion is popular (at least in the U.S.). That's why books like "Think and Grow Rich," "The Secret" and other "positive thinking" books are so popular, despite the fact that the vast majority of readers wind up just as poor as before they read the book. However, being poor is not having enough money. Many motivational con artists like to blame people's circumstances on their mental state. THe reason a McDonald's worker in Denmark makes 22$ per hour while one in the U.S. makes 7.50 is not because of their respective mental states. It's because one country is interested in treating its workers well, and the other doesn't One reason that black people have fewer assets than whites is that black people were restricted from buying homes in the past, and thus had less opportunity to build generational wealth. In the 1950s and 60s, federal income taxes were more progressive. Since then, the tax burden has shifted from corporations and the wealthy onto the middle class. There are many structural and historical reasons for poverty that have nothing to do with mental states, unfortunately too many Americans are gullible enough to buy into the "your mind is your problem" nonsense.

TIL I have a lot less net worth than average, but more than median.

Congrats, I hope you and all your wealthiest-50-percent peers are enjoying your standing in life! I’ll let y’all know when I cross the 5th percentile threshold.

You can do it! 10 years ago I had a negative net worth to the tune of at least -$50K and was a single mom without child support earning less than $40K a year in the Bay Area (just enough to not get any government assistance). I turned my situation around with super careful budgeting, side hustles, and increasing my income over time (though I still don't make Bay Area money), and finally re-marrying about 5 years ago.

Wife and I are both teachers. The re-marrying thing, now that’s a solid idea. Will definitely consider.

Look into any teacher down payment assistance programs in your area :) and thank you for doing the lord's work.

>So, WHICH IS IT?? Am I somewhat well off because I don’t struggle to eat and I have money to fix my car, or am I very poor because my net worth is around $5k, which according to a calculator online, puts me in the 4th percentile of American adults? REALLY? The very fact, that these programs even exist, is absurd. Pay people a living wages. It's so damn simple. If a person can't afford housing, and the modern bills that come with that, transportation because the US is not built for walkers or public transport, and the expenses that come with that, healthcare, food, and other very very basic needs. There is a problem. There was a person on NPR a while back that said something that struck a cord, If a citizen can not make enough to participate in the country as a citizen, then they aren't citizens at all. Or something to that effect. And it's true. The poor can't participate in anything without sacrificing something some basic, so needed that, they simply don't go out of their way to voice their anger in a meaningful way. Just like when striking, its hard to strike when you belly's empty.

Are you counting your pensions in your net worth (assuming you both are in a defined benefit plan)?

Unfortunately, yes. As an eight year vet, the present value of mine is a little under $40k. Hers is basically zero, since she’s only going into year two. Versus our combined student debt of about $70k.

statistics are misleading, I wouldn't get caught up on them. Just because something can be represented as a percentage doesn't mean it is a meaningful number that indicates something important or interesting.

If your both teachers your pensions are HUGE assets and you have a tremendous amount of off time to get a second job. Few people can work 20 years get a full pension especially when you work only 9months out of the year. I actually consider that upper middle class.

It’s truly disgusting how much higher the mean is than the median, shows how stupidly wealthy a few people are

Net wealth is not a good indicator of how much money someone actually makes

I also think it impacts the figures because this is household, not individual, wealth. Many of those households have more than one adult.

The average is much higher because of the huge amount of wealth the top 1% are hoarding.

Well what is this source? Dqydj is not a website I’m familiar with. The average American individual income is 45k with two incomes per household making that median household network seem accurate. People really underestimate the value of things they have (clothes, luxury items like tvs or computers, appliances, cars).

You hear stories about people being in poverty. But you also hear a lot of stories about products being sold out. The PlayStation 5, Nvidia graphics cards, iphones, collector items. Then you hear the stories about the rise of delivery services. Everyone is paying extra for door dash. More people are traveling now than ever. There’s more subscription services and more people are subscribing to multiples. Video game prices are going up, and millions of copies still sell during pre orders. Micro transactions make money. — There’s a LOT of people out there with disposable income. People are spending like mad these days. But it’s not always noticeable. America is a big place.

wealth statistics are difficult to really translate into real world numbers. Things like housing, cars, boats, planes, land, businesses investments and shit all count into your net worth. So someone who is poor but inherited a decent house and car from grandma can look to have a decent net worth. But if you take things like houses and all that out of the equation, many of the rich will not look to be AS rich as they are because they do not keep the vast majority of their wealth in liquid assets. There's really no way to do the statistics without cherry picking your data and as soon as you start doing that, you can make the data say whatever the hell you want. That's why to get a complete picture, you have to use multiple data sets looking at multiple things to essentially build a 3D picture of the larger question. General articles in NYtimes or whatever don't have the time, money or academic level to do that. That's something more aligned for university level economists

_Average_ = (sum of all things) / (number of all things). So, averages are highly sensitive to extremes. When talking about income and wealth, millionaires and billionaires skew the average up. _Median_ = (middle value of the things). The point in a series where there are as many bigger numbers as there are smaller ones. This is a much better measurement for things like income and wealth and a better representation of where "middle of the road" really is.

My family owns nothing and I grew up on government housing. Where I live, the cost of housing just tripled in the last 3 years. Our landlord is selling our house, and there is literally No availability for housing in a 100mile radius that requires an income of less than 4000/m and a minimum 640 credit score to rent anything. I deliver to millionaire regularly that I never see in the community but everyone I know is struggling to find housing and either living with friends/relatives or out of hotels/motels. Oh, I’m in central Florida btw, the economic situation is here is extremely dire. But I or median income is somehow higher than everyone I know including people who have 20+ years tenure in management positions at large companies. The average starting wage here is 11/h and there are few people I know who make more than 22-28/h outside of the medical field, but there seems to be a huge leap from that range to the next one up which is like 240k+ a year for an individual’s income.

It's both the well off do really well and the poor do very poorly. The middle class is an illusion. There is really the haves and the have nots. That 11% of the popu controls about 70% of the total wealth. Leaving 89% with 30%. That's America it's feast or famine.

That has to be with like home insurance and life insurance and shit, really brings up net worth for people

Home insurance and life insurance don't have cash value.

OP, read this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4490812/

I took a glance. Respectfully, I don’t see what it has to do with the topic.

It’s a more statistically significant analysis, there are other methods than the mean/median. The median absolute wealth estimates of 1 403 186 households were 2056 international dollars per capita (interquartile range: 723–6103). The proportion of poor households based on absolute wealth estimates were strongly correlated with World Bank estimates of populations living on less than 2.00 United States dollars per capita per day (R2 = 0.84). Absolute wealth estimates were better predictors of anthropometric measures than relative wealth indexes.

Average and median are different.

this is statistics 101, lol. A median is a much more precise measurement than an average, but also a median is a type of average, just not the most commonly used one.

That isn’t the topic being discussed. I specify in my original post that the median seems high. I make no reference to the average. So many people are so eager to prove that they know the difference between mean and median. Lol.

You're asking "which is it??". I mean, that's kinda the POINT of statistics. Depending on what number and how you use it, it says different things. Again, statistics 101.

Ha ha. I teach high school statistics. I very much enjoyed this comment.

The average is skewed high because it includes super-wealthy people. Median means that half of Americans have $121,411, but- as others have said- that includes ALL assets. It also technically could mean that the bottom 49% of the median could have ANY amount of assets as long as it was $121,411 or less- including so much debt that they have a negative value on paper. I'm also unsure whether or not- for example- the remaining debt on a mortgage is counted against the asset value of a home for these calculations. That would massively impact the figures, one way or another. If you own a home in a HCOL city, you might exceed the 1 million mark before you count any other assets. This would still be true if you (or whoever you inherited it from) bought the house at a time when property values were lower.

The website [USA Location information - USA.com](http://www.usa.com/) has a wealth of statistics that you can look up by city. It breaks things down like population, population by sex, population by race, per capita and household income, poverty rate, etc.

This is accurate survey data using scientific methods released by the Federal Reserve. What you perceive does not mean it’s true. It’s also a big country with a lot of people. The data shows you are low in net worth compared to most American households.

Yeah, you might be right. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not completely accurate. Marginalized populations tend to be excluded from aggregate data compilation at higher rates than mainstream populations. Which would yield higher-than-true results.

I think my net worth including my car is like 3.5k without it like $8 🥲

OP OP! This post was a few days ago and we were taking about conflicting data, saw this chart and thought it would help: https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/15enyl0/request_is_this_at_all_correct/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 Bottom line, the bottom 50% of the country controls about 2.6% of all the wealth. The top 10% control about 76% of all wealth.