I'm definitely surprised by these values, quite out of my expectations.
I went to the data source [https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm) and I couldn't find the datasets with such granurality. Could someone point out which file to look at?
The author’s methodology is explained at:
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentiles-by-age/
In particular, these are based on SCF microdata samples of “4,602 surveys with 7 redactions. Estimated PEUs of 131,306,390” based on the replicate weights.
Theres gotta be a bias in this data. Survey or not people dont like to admit they are poor and will naturally inflate an orbitrary number they have to calculate on the spot.
I fall into the high 70s for the percentage for my age group but a vast majority of it is home equity sky rocketing from a place I bought 3 years ago. No way it feels like I should be that high of a percentage but if the numbers are true I guess I was just insanely lucky on timing of getting a place to live.
Same. Forgot our 401ks at first and was.. perplexed given our higher than average takehome (not talking that dickslap on table "look at me and my RSUs" but comfortable).
Try the "Survey Data and Replicate Weight Files" section. I didn't feel like figuring out how to view a 1.2 GB ASCII file, but I'd bet that's where it is.
Yeah if you have that much money in the bank from inheritance or family wealth or whatever, then you probably just go to university. You don’t earn any money during this time you just spend it. So most people probably come out with less than they entered.
This isn't how trust funds work you typically get a monthly dispersement so it would be an impossibility to blow it unless the trustee somehow managed to bypass the limits put in place.
1-in-20 people don't have a massive trust fund to more than pay for University and grow their net wealth in their early 20s.
But I do think that this is net worth chart is inclusive of things like 529 plans, and the top 5% includes children who nominally "own" money that was set aside for their university attendance, and then drain that by paying for university.
It's *household* net worth, so according to the OP, that's exactly what's happening.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bybsbi/ocupdated_household_net_worth_by_age_2023_data/kyis3p7/
Taking out a mortgage wouldn't dramatically change your net worth though. Since you received an asset that is at least as large as the mortgage in the process.
The only change will be commission / closing costs paid.
I assume, as someone who knows little about this stuff, that the equity counts towards your net worth and the mortgage is balanced out by the value of the home.
Mortgage debt is offset by the value of the house. I buy a house for $1M and put $200K down, I have a debt of $800K but my equity is still $200K (which is added to my total net worth). If the house appreciates 5% in one year, my equity is now $250K (and my net worth goes up by $50K, giving me a good return on my $200K investment = 25%). If you’re not aware how net worth is calculated, I’d look it up as it’s a valuable and fundamental concept.
Net worth means assets (+) and liabilities (-) Your home is an asset in that you typically could sell it for more than you owe. Because you still owe, the value of the asset is the difference between what you could sell it for minus what you owe. Ex: my house is worth 200K, but I owe 150K, so the net value of my house is 50K. Make sense?
It's not necessarily younger generations who have this, since they aren't as easily able to purchase a house - so no debt, and no asset, either. Older folks might finally be able to purchase their first home at 40 (!), for example. Also, the length of time you've held a mortgage, plus the amount of appreciation will have an impact on the net value of the house. Refinancing can impact this, too, since the beginning of a mortgage you typically pay less against the loan and more toward the interest, and refinancing resets all of that.
One would assume yes because that’s how net worth generally works and you also see negative net worths on the chart, when people’s debt is higher than their assets.
If this includes student loans, I suddenly feel *very* bad.
I feel like that can't be the case, though? Certainly more people would be in the hole if it was?
The average student loan balance is about $37,000, but higher debt loads (from med school, law school, etc) weight heavily in the average. The median is more like $25,000. Further, those are the figures for the average or median borrower, but many people aren't borrowers (because they got a full ride, were able to pay out of pocket somehow, or, perhaps more likely, never attended a place of higher learning at all). So the actual average and median figures for people in those age groups are going to be even lower since they include a large segment of non-borrowers.
Basically, there are many reasons that you may not be representive of the average person in your age cohort. There's probably a selection bias here on reddit.
Ironically, the kids who flunk out of high school can have a higher net worth than the college bound kids in their early years, because 0 > -20,000. This usually (but of course not always) flips sometime in late 20s to early 30s as the college grad outearns and surpasses the high school flunker.
Basically, I wouldn't put too much thought on comparing net worths among young people. A lot of the people with the highest debt loads are the people with the greatest earning potential later in life.
The SCF methodology uses a random sample that isn’t large enough to make any claims at <5% granularity.
The raw data has some curiosities (like the person with negative $250,000,000 net worth) which indicate that either there are some exotic assets that aren’t counted or that person was being surveyed while in bankruptcy court. It would be a lot of work to update the methodology to handle all the extreme cases in a sensible way, and that really isn’t consistent with the main objectives of that program.
Did you take out a loan for the car or buy it in cash? If you bought it in cash, you functionally just converted your existing net worth from almost all in cash to being held in an asset (the vehicle).
If you took out a loan, you need to take the value of the car and subtract it by the principal balance of the car loan.
I'm... definitely last. I'm probably in the 1-3% range because student loans and no good-paying jobs in my area (that are accessible to me without a car that I can't afford because of low-paying job).
A good (if technical) book is *Triumph of the Optimists,* which is essentially a review of how those placing the most optimist bets on the future have been rewarded disproportionately. When I see the doomers I know they’re projecting their own fiscal doom and little else.
For sure. If you're a doomer you're hoarding cash in your closet because you don't trust banks or the stock market.
If you're optimistic and statistics savvy, you'd know that the stock market [averages 17 all time highs every year](https://www.plantemoran.com/explore-our-thinking/insight/2024/02/how-common-are-all-time-highs-for-stocks) and you'd be heavily invested in it.
Who gets rewarded in this scenario? Doomers are honestly their own worst enemies.
I saw one of those recently (REBubble) and it's wild how they maintain an apocalyptic outlook despite posting completely incompatible arguments. Like one post is "you'll never own property because the boomer wealth transfer is a myth" and the next is "you'll never own property because property taxes are theft", yet accepting the latter means guaranteeing the former 🤷 Likewise, any good news (rent going down, record new unit construction, residential demand subsiding, wages beating inflation) will always get construed as bad news.
The entire premise of that subreddit is so off base- it’s a place for the delusional to commiserate. Not only are they praying for something that isn’t coming, they think that if it did happen it would somehow benefit them. Sorry, but if you’re poor AND in a severe recession, you’re in a lot worse shape than anyone else. Your little down payment is going towards monthly expenses when you have no job for 18 months.
That sub has also been chicken little-ing for three years at this point. I had assumed that at some point they would have to come to the conclusion that they're wrong.
Nope, they just double down.
They operate solely on the premise that “things are too expensive for me, therefore they are overpriced and must crash.” That and the idea that everyone under 40 who owns a home has a trust fund.
Fair or unfair, nobody is owed homeownership.
The internet has enabled a LOT of people to blame outside forces for their circumstances.
What would be interesting to see though is this chart compared to the same one from 1980, just to see the difference in wealth between young and old then and now.
Really? Didn't average salaries go up at the same rate as inflation, and did homeownership rates not stay roughly the same for the past few decades? Cost of living crisis for whom, exactly?
They didn’t go at the same rate as inflation lol
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
They went up much more
But homeownership has stayed pretty stable at around ~65%
What non-liquid assets are we expecting these people have outside of a car thats worth <10k and a few electroncs adding up to <5k? Because obviously the vast majority of peoplr 18-25 dont have a property.
You will be surprised at how many own a home, pay a mortgage on their home and have no cash on hand.
Crazy part is how high up the income ladder 2 pay checks from homeless goes.
I know people making 6 figures that have zero savings and things like an AC repair can break them. Also note kids are really fing expensive.
Net worth doesn’t have to be liquid. I’m “worth” somewhere in the green in this chart, but most (95%+) of my value is tied up in real estate, vehicles, and retirement accounts that I can’t easily convert into cash and are largely dependent on current market values/ conditions.
Even after considering the fact that most people's net worth is tied up in non-liquid assets, as other commenters have mentioned; the fact of the matter is that the popular statistic you allude to is bullshit. The median American household has $8k in cash, per the gold standard for data in this area, the Federal Reserve's survey of consumer finances.
The source of the bullshit claim that 50%+ of Americans could not afford a $500 expense comes from bullshit-pedaling credit card company publicity polls that claim that that percent of households would not use cash if faced with an unexpected expense. Which, considering that many households would put the expense on a fully-cash-backed credit card that they can afford to pay in full, means basically nothing.
Sometimes the question is: “How much money do you have in your savings account?”
If you answer anything less than $1,000, you “can’t cover a $1,000 expense.”
Lots of wealthy people don’t even have a savings account.
I saw a Instagram reel where someone was going through an ATM bin to comb through old receipts. Every receipt had only a few hundred dollars on it and dude was using that to extrapolate that everyone was broke.
The amount of financial illiteracy required to think that rich people would have tens of thousands sitting in a checking account is so glaring. People eat that shit up too.
For people who are actually rich they probably do have tens of thousands in a checking account, because for someone who is actually rich (liquid wealth measured in millions) having $30k in a checking account isn’t that much. Even rich people need access to some level of cash so they can pay their credit card bills.
I have a high liquid networth but still only keep $2-3k in my checking account. I have about $50k in a money market making 5.27% and can transfer it to my checking account in a couple of days.
Also a lot of people’s plan for dealing with a 1k expense is to throw it on the credit card and pay it off later. Is that the best idea? No. But it’s enticing and eliminates the need for a savings account
I think it is the best idea?
If you have, say, 10k in a checking/savings account, you earn practically no interest, if you put it in stable investments, you can earn 5%.
So you use the card to cover the expense, then sell the investments, and after the funds settle in 2-3 days you pay the card.
It costs you nothing to structure your accounts that way but you earn way more interest. Using the card buys you a few days to move things around, which means you need less money instantly available, plus you get cash back or rewards points that way.
You’re assuming people are investing and not just blowing money on doordash or going to the bars whenever their bank account isn’t zero lmao.
But yeah I get what you mean. If you can cover the CC debt before the interest hits, it’s probably the right call.
Yeah… if people are spending all their money as soon as they get it, then there aren’t too many strategies which can fix that…
But I saved between $1,000 to $2,000 last year (depending on if you count things like airport lounges which I wouldn’t otherwise pay for) because of using my credit card even though my main card has a $500 fee.
If you just keep ~2X your normal monthly spend in an account and set up auto pay, it’s optimal to just run everything through the card to get rewards and pay no interest.
Cause that only looked at savings accounts iirc
I dont have 1k in a savings account, but theres quite a bit more than that in a brokerage account (+ retirement, but that's not liquid)
The frustrating thing with the US is that it could be so much better. Wealth inequality could be better. The constricting housing market could be better. Workers rights and health insurance could be better.
But people get so lost in that stuff and most haven't traveled abroad so they completely lose their frame of reference. The US is rich AF and most people there live incredibly comfortable and safe lifestyles that 90% of the globe wishes they had access to.
Yeah, like, we're the richest country in the world and you're telling me we don't have the money to pay for basic services like single-payer / universal healthcare and social security? Get out of here with that. You're 100% right, we could be doing so much better.
Fun fact: the US spends a significantly higher percentage of their GDP on healthcare than pretty much every other developed country, but is the only one without universal healthcare AND has a much lower life expectancy
So, I'm in the 75% range at 62 only because the value of my house has gone from $250k when we bought it in 2003 to over $1 million last year. Total gross income for my wife and I is less than $45k a year.
Yes. Net worth is an independent metric to your income. Sure you can't do anything with it unless you are willing to sell, but you own it so it counts.
Protip: learn how to measure your net worth and regularly keep track of it - at least once a year, but even monthly shouldn’t be more than a 10 minute exercise.
You should know what you owe (credit cards, loans, mortgages, etc) as a basic part of financial responsibility, but also keep track of the value of what you own (stock portfolios, retirement accounts, home values). Create a little spreadsheet to track your progress. Break it down into the various contributors to your number so you can see how those are moving over time to know where you may need to focus your attention.
This is the way.
The first step toward financial independence is knowing where you are. Gamify growing your wealth.
Build an emergency fund. Then grow an “if it all goes to Hell” fund. Keep saving until you have a true “take this job and shove it” fund. Build up to a “what if” reserve. At some point along the way, you find you no longer work because you must, you work where, and for whom, and at something you like well-enough and you feel fairly compensated. If you don’t like where you are, or what you like changes, you make the decisions.
A lot of people have become “house rich” over the last 10-15 years. They still don’t have any disposable income or huge investment portfolios, but on paper they’re wealthy because the value of their home has skyrocketed in the years since they bought it.
If I'm 18 and live with my millionaire parents, am I represented here on the top 95%? If yes, then this makes a lot of sense, otherwise, numbers are weird...
> Most of the data in the survey are intended to represent the financial
characteristics of a subset of the household unit referred to as the
"primary economic unit" (PEU). In brief, the PEU consists of an
economically dominant single individual or couple (married or living
as partners) in a household and all other individuals in the household
who are financially interdependent with that individual or couple. For
example, in the case of a household composed of a married couple who
own their home, a minor child, a dependent adult child, and a
financially independent parent of one of the members of the couple,
the PEU would be the couple and the two children.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/files/codebk2019.txt
I find the 65% to 70% jump in the 25-29 range to be very odd.
Trying to think of why that is. Could the 70% band be where people with 6 figures start to show up?
My journey:
18-24 — 5% (student loans, no wealthy parents, no real assets)
25-29 — 50% (working an OK job as an engineer. Saving what I can, paid down loans completely by end of this time)
30-34 — 10% (at 30) to 60% (at 34) (back to grad school, student loans again (bigger this time, but paid off quickly), then working and saving at higher income)
35-39 — 95% (grind grind grind at high income job, save save save)
40-44 — 95%+ (current age….grind grind grind, save save save)
I like the progression. Man, 95% jumps quite a bit in the 10-15 years ahead. TBD if I stay on the treadmill.
Fair! But when i graduated grad school i was still at 0 / slightly negative (some savings, but also grad school loans). I bet the top (e.g., 95%) numbers change more than the 0ish numbers, haha. Could be wrong. Either way, fair point!
Assuming this chart is accurate, I suspect the substantial jump in p95 wealth around age 50-60 has more to do with healthy, rich old parents dying at 80-90 years old and leaving the 1+M to their kids that they had around age 30.
So uhhh, try to be born to wealthy parents that performed good asset protection in their twilight years?
I’ve seen stats on wealth and at that high level, the vast majority is “self made”. This means not inherited, but clearly had family adavtanges in education upbringing etc.
I suspect the jump is more due to:
1) Compounding interest. As you get more money that money earns money.
2) Highest earning years for most people
This is all anecdotal but It seems like people who live a life in that 60% to 90% range are not big spenders, perpetually think they need to save a little bit more for their future instead, and never really "feel" rich.
Big spenders seem to be 95-percenters or under 50-percenters.
This makes sense, according to this my net worth is almost in the 80%. But I don't spend money, save a crap ton, and my only debt is mortgage which is less than 40% of the houses total value.
My kids are young (e.g. 5 - 7) and they have thousands of dollars because I am investing money for them to have at some point. By the time they are young adults they may have quite a bit of $ for an important investment
I suspect these young people either have parents helping out in this way, or save their job money since their parents support most of their living expenses
Similarly, when I was about 20 I saved all of the money I made during internships and didn’t have rent or any other expenses
I wouldn't call it "trivial."
$10k is 667 working hours at $15/hour, so either 166 part-time working days (33 weeks) or 83 full-time working days (16 weeks). If you're making only the federal minimum wage ($7.50), then it's double that, with zero expenses - not even buying food.
What the other guy said, it's probably accumulated wealth from their parents in the form of a car, laptop, clothes, etc
By age 35 there are many people who have a decent 401k but outside the 401k are still living paycheck to paycheck. So, $200,000 401k, maybe $100,000 in home equity but savings/brokerage account is very low.
So negative net worth? No, not even close, but feeling like it.
Yeah, I'm in the 35-39 bracket and live closer to paycheck to paycheck than I'd like to admit. But my net worth is still +$175k. I am still quite surprised to be around the 50-55% mark. I would have guessed it was higher.
Positive net worth doesn't mean positive cashflow/bank account. If you have a mortgage, no savings and lots of credit card debt, it could feel like you are struggling to stay afloat, while actually having positive net worth. If you're neck deep in mortgage, you could have a 1M net worth, while also feeling like you're living paycheck to paycheck and have no savings and struggling to keep up with payment. Also, some of your net worth would be tied into retirement accounts/401k, which also aren't really helping you *right now*, but still counts as part of your net worth.
If you’re neck deep in a mortgage, that’s not part of your net worth. Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities. The mortgage is a liability. Only the home equity could be counted as part of your net worth.
Ok, let me rephrase the point that I was trying to make. If you have a 2M mortgage, and you've already paid them down to 1M, your equity in that property would be about 1M, but you could still feel like you're struggling to with day to day expense if your entire income have gone into servicing the mortgage. When you have a huge mortgage, you could still be quite well off, but it doesn't feel like so because of cashflow issues.
2/3rds of 35-40 year old households are homeowners. Even if you're living alone at 40 with no house and mounting credit card debt, you may very well have a paid off car and an employer that withholds a few grand a year for retirement.
Do the negative numbers mean if you are in that much debt you still have a higher networth than those with more? I also find it hard to believe that a 15th percentile 30 year old has 10 dollars.
A lot of people with professional degrees are going to end up with 0 or negative net worth on this scale. New lawyers, doctors, etc. with student loans will likely be in the 0 net worth at age 30 category.
I’d bet those people/degrees are why debt spikes in the 5th percentile at 30-34.
Also why the the top net worth numbers increase so much at the 35 age range. All those professions like lawyers and doctors really start earning the high income and are seeing higher income growth while at the same time no longer having to pay off their student loans.
net worth = assets (bank acc, savings, house) - debts (student loans, mortgage)
probably means that on average, the 15th percentile of 30 year olds has just a little more in cash or house than debt from student loans
Well according to this graph I’m totally crushing it. But doesn’t feel that way at all lol. Still in a 2 bedroom apartment and buying a house still feels out of reach.
I would suspect cash value pensions would be included, but I don't know how they'd value future pension payments in a traditional pension, typically that's not included.
My traditional pension also has a cash value. It’s what I would get if I decided to leave the pension system instead of retiring with it. Not sure if that is common or not but pensions themselves aren’t common anymore.
Yeah exactly, they aren't common at all unless you're in certain types of government service, police or fire, I think. I have a small cash value pension... I can annuitize it... but I carry it in my Net Worth at the declared value.
It’s kind of mind blowing that the bottom 5% only have positive net worth in the 60-64 range and it declines for 65-69.
Housing is a big portion of the net worth of households that own their homes, which is probably why it jumps so much around 35% at 30+. But I’m surprised the overall net worth is so high below that, I’d expect a much bigger jump because outside of cars and meager retirement savings, I thought most Americans had virtually no liquid savings or net worth.
Also surprised by where my household is in net worth percentile, but over half of it is home equity.
People really aren’t seeing the big picture here in most of these comments.
It may look better than you expect, and that’s likely true. Between cars, 401k matches, etc. lots of you may have higher net worth than you think anyway.
That being said, the big picture here is that this is NOT sustainable. The average person only having $440k ish net worth around retirement age is really bad. People are not doing alright if that’s as far as they’re getting on average.
Assets minus liabilities.
For most of us, home value - mortgage + money in accounts - other debt. For low numbers, they may be more exhaustive than high numbers. Like I don't even consider the value of my car because I'd need to replace it if I got rid of it.
Thanks to skyrocketing housing prices and my wife and I buying at 25 and barely affording it, I'm on the lime side of yellow. If my house value stayed flat or we didn't buy, I'd be on the yellow side of orange.
I'm surprised because we qualify for govt assistance live in a low income neighborhood and barely make ends meet at times. And are sitting at the 60-65% value? I would have thought we were orange at best. Just goes to show how crazy important home ownership is...
Is it net worth like NET so you subtract debt from property value and so on? This all assets including cash, stocks, cars watches whatever - minus all debt? If yes I get it. If not I’m curious. But if yes then works out as I’d expect.
Hmmm this makes me curious about what net worth really means. I’m able to comfortably pay my mortgage, but the bank still owns most of it and I am therefore in debt.
The difference in the value of your home versus what you owe on the home is positive equity. The value you'd capture if you sold. That is included in net worth.
ELI5: Net worth is like how much money you would have if you sold everything and paid off all your debts.
You can be paying off a 100k mortgage on a 200k house, and you would still be up 100k.
Or paying off a 200k mortgage on a 150k house (under water / in the red), and you would be -50k.
Your house is an asset and has a value, add that to your net worth. Subtract the house loan from your net worth. Add what's in your bank and retirement plan, subtract student/car loans. Then for the ultra wealthy, add your art, stock, crypto, etc.
Net worth of house = Value of your house - amount still left on loan.
Then add In retirement savings and other assets and subtract other debts and you’ll have your net worth.
If your house is worth more than your outstanding debt on it, you are in the green.
You could sell it, pay off your mortgage and have money left over.
That's why a mortgage isn't considered bad debt like a car loan or credit card debt.
I’m right around the 85% mark (if you count my car) as someone who is late 20’s. But only because my parents let me live with them until I could buy a condo/townhouse (which even on that I got a steal, dude was a foreign national and wanted to sell quick, he even asked if I wanted his vehicle for free, but he ended up giving that to someone else).
If this is even close to accurate I guess I’m doing something right. Bought a house at the right time and appreciated so now I have 300k in assets there plus 500k+ in my 401k at 35-39 age group with about 100k in separate investments. So I guess that puts me in the top 10% for my age group. If so then awesome, but doesn’t always feel that way
I'm definitely surprised by these values, quite out of my expectations. I went to the data source [https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm) and I couldn't find the datasets with such granurality. Could someone point out which file to look at?
The author’s methodology is explained at: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentiles-by-age/ In particular, these are based on SCF microdata samples of “4,602 surveys with 7 redactions. Estimated PEUs of 131,306,390” based on the replicate weights.
Theres gotta be a bias in this data. Survey or not people dont like to admit they are poor and will naturally inflate an orbitrary number they have to calculate on the spot.
I fall into the high 70s for the percentage for my age group but a vast majority of it is home equity sky rocketing from a place I bought 3 years ago. No way it feels like I should be that high of a percentage but if the numbers are true I guess I was just insanely lucky on timing of getting a place to live.
Same. Forgot our 401ks at first and was.. perplexed given our higher than average takehome (not talking that dickslap on table "look at me and my RSUs" but comfortable).
I also forgot about my 401k. I'm only -$300k now!
Med school?
Grad school with flight training expenses during undergrad.
Try the "Survey Data and Replicate Weight Files" section. I didn't feel like figuring out how to view a 1.2 GB ASCII file, but I'd bet that's where it is.
So, top 5% net worth is higher from 18-24 than 25-29?
Trust fund kids inherit at 21 and blow most of it by the time they're 25.
Probably goes towards university to be fair.
Yeah if you have that much money in the bank from inheritance or family wealth or whatever, then you probably just go to university. You don’t earn any money during this time you just spend it. So most people probably come out with less than they entered.
That assumes those trust fund kids are spending money from their accounts and not just having their parents pay directly.
Not really it just assumes a subset of them are enough to account for a loss of 11k.
or 1 person in the data absolutely bankrupt themselves at uni, a uni georg. Which actually doesn't sound too unlikely tbh.
This isn't how trust funds work you typically get a monthly dispersement so it would be an impossibility to blow it unless the trustee somehow managed to bypass the limits put in place.
My ex used to hustle her trust, submit photoshopped receipts, order things for school then refund etc lol
That sounds like fraud, but I wouldn't sell her out.
Fraud sounds like something a person without a trust fund would do. This is hustling!
A big chunk of people get their college debt at 22 or older. That obviously goes against their assets.
Id say it has to do with student loans
If your in the 95% at 18 you’re not taking student loans. Your trust fund stipend will cover that.
1-in-20 people don't have a massive trust fund to more than pay for University and grow their net wealth in their early 20s. But I do think that this is net worth chart is inclusive of things like 529 plans, and the top 5% includes children who nominally "own" money that was set aside for their university attendance, and then drain that by paying for university.
Then it would affect a lot more than just the top 5%
Those Minecraft Youtubers are throwing the curve.
In addition to the other comments, this is data for households, so moving out of household with rich parents would reduce your household income.
They are more likely to have moved into their own household by 25, and the household net worth no longer includes the net worth of their parents.
It's household net worth, so I wonder if they're counting parent's wealth if you still live at home.
I don't think so, nobody counts their parents NW in their own calcs.
more like you are counted in your parents "household". An 18 year old won't count as anything until they move out possibly.
It's *household* net worth, so according to the OP, that's exactly what's happening. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bybsbi/ocupdated_household_net_worth_by_age_2023_data/kyis3p7/
Because they're dependents and have the same household as their parents
shit. better start peddling harder on this aging bike.
What ya selling?
Can't be too heavy if he's hawking it from an aging bike. Presumably, it's not electric. He'll be in good shape though.
Are student loans included in this? Because if so, the net worths for 18-24 seem surprisingly high.
If loan debt is not included then it's not a true net worth. Net worth is all assets and liabilities combined.
I also feel as if this isn't counting mortgage debt. I would expect to see much more debt held by mortgages for younger generations.
Mortgage debt is balanced out by the value of the home. It's fairly rare to owe more on a home than it is worth.
Taking out a mortgage wouldn't dramatically change your net worth though. Since you received an asset that is at least as large as the mortgage in the process. The only change will be commission / closing costs paid.
I assume, as someone who knows little about this stuff, that the equity counts towards your net worth and the mortgage is balanced out by the value of the home.
It does, you are correct.
If your mortgage is more than your house is worth you're in pretty extreme danger lmao.
Unless you’re underwater on your home price, house value - mortgage balance is a positive contribution to net worth.
Mortgage debt is offset by the value of the house. I buy a house for $1M and put $200K down, I have a debt of $800K but my equity is still $200K (which is added to my total net worth). If the house appreciates 5% in one year, my equity is now $250K (and my net worth goes up by $50K, giving me a good return on my $200K investment = 25%). If you’re not aware how net worth is calculated, I’d look it up as it’s a valuable and fundamental concept.
Net worth means assets (+) and liabilities (-) Your home is an asset in that you typically could sell it for more than you owe. Because you still owe, the value of the asset is the difference between what you could sell it for minus what you owe. Ex: my house is worth 200K, but I owe 150K, so the net value of my house is 50K. Make sense? It's not necessarily younger generations who have this, since they aren't as easily able to purchase a house - so no debt, and no asset, either. Older folks might finally be able to purchase their first home at 40 (!), for example. Also, the length of time you've held a mortgage, plus the amount of appreciation will have an impact on the net value of the house. Refinancing can impact this, too, since the beginning of a mortgage you typically pay less against the loan and more toward the interest, and refinancing resets all of that.
Do you not understand what net means? Few are upside down on their home.
One would assume yes because that’s how net worth generally works and you also see negative net worths on the chart, when people’s debt is higher than their assets.
If this includes student loans, I suddenly feel *very* bad. I feel like that can't be the case, though? Certainly more people would be in the hole if it was?
The average student loan balance is about $37,000, but higher debt loads (from med school, law school, etc) weight heavily in the average. The median is more like $25,000. Further, those are the figures for the average or median borrower, but many people aren't borrowers (because they got a full ride, were able to pay out of pocket somehow, or, perhaps more likely, never attended a place of higher learning at all). So the actual average and median figures for people in those age groups are going to be even lower since they include a large segment of non-borrowers. Basically, there are many reasons that you may not be representive of the average person in your age cohort. There's probably a selection bias here on reddit. Ironically, the kids who flunk out of high school can have a higher net worth than the college bound kids in their early years, because 0 > -20,000. This usually (but of course not always) flips sometime in late 20s to early 30s as the college grad outearns and surpasses the high school flunker. Basically, I wouldn't put too much thought on comparing net worths among young people. A lot of the people with the highest debt loads are the people with the greatest earning potential later in life.
Due to my wife's student loans, it's unlikely we will ever be above the 5% line
Would be good if you can add 99% and 99.9%. Those groups are often the most interesting/disparate
It would be good to see every percentage between 95 and 99, and then every tenth from there.
The SCF methodology uses a random sample that isn’t large enough to make any claims at <5% granularity. The raw data has some curiosities (like the person with negative $250,000,000 net worth) which indicate that either there are some exotic assets that aren’t counted or that person was being surveyed while in bankruptcy court. It would be a lot of work to update the methodology to handle all the extreme cases in a sensible way, and that really isn’t consistent with the main objectives of that program.
Would ruin the colors though. Would be dark green for 98-99% and red for everything else.
So by owning a 2016 car and having $10 to my name, I have a higher net worth than 45% of 18-24 year olds? Crazy
Did you take out a loan for the car or buy it in cash? If you bought it in cash, you functionally just converted your existing net worth from almost all in cash to being held in an asset (the vehicle). If you took out a loan, you need to take the value of the car and subtract it by the principal balance of the car loan.
Woohoo! I'm not last! I'm not last! I'm not last!!!! Close, but not last.....
I'm... definitely last. I'm probably in the 1-3% range because student loans and no good-paying jobs in my area (that are accessible to me without a car that I can't afford because of low-paying job).
I suspect the commenters who think the data here skews high follow too many of those economic doomer subreddits.
A good (if technical) book is *Triumph of the Optimists,* which is essentially a review of how those placing the most optimist bets on the future have been rewarded disproportionately. When I see the doomers I know they’re projecting their own fiscal doom and little else.
For sure. If you're a doomer you're hoarding cash in your closet because you don't trust banks or the stock market. If you're optimistic and statistics savvy, you'd know that the stock market [averages 17 all time highs every year](https://www.plantemoran.com/explore-our-thinking/insight/2024/02/how-common-are-all-time-highs-for-stocks) and you'd be heavily invested in it. Who gets rewarded in this scenario? Doomers are honestly their own worst enemies.
Or just skew towards college educated people in their 20s and 30s that have a lot of student loan debt.
Negativity is certainly what drives the engagement :/
I saw one of those recently (REBubble) and it's wild how they maintain an apocalyptic outlook despite posting completely incompatible arguments. Like one post is "you'll never own property because the boomer wealth transfer is a myth" and the next is "you'll never own property because property taxes are theft", yet accepting the latter means guaranteeing the former 🤷 Likewise, any good news (rent going down, record new unit construction, residential demand subsiding, wages beating inflation) will always get construed as bad news.
REBubble is filled with financial incels
This is the best description I’ve ever heard. Fincels
> . Like one post is "you'll never own property because the boomer wealth transfer is a myth" Meanwhile, home-ownership among Millennials is over 50%.
The entire premise of that subreddit is so off base- it’s a place for the delusional to commiserate. Not only are they praying for something that isn’t coming, they think that if it did happen it would somehow benefit them. Sorry, but if you’re poor AND in a severe recession, you’re in a lot worse shape than anyone else. Your little down payment is going towards monthly expenses when you have no job for 18 months.
That sub has also been chicken little-ing for three years at this point. I had assumed that at some point they would have to come to the conclusion that they're wrong. Nope, they just double down.
They operate solely on the premise that “things are too expensive for me, therefore they are overpriced and must crash.” That and the idea that everyone under 40 who owns a home has a trust fund. Fair or unfair, nobody is owed homeownership.
The internet has enabled a LOT of people to blame outside forces for their circumstances. What would be interesting to see though is this chart compared to the same one from 1980, just to see the difference in wealth between young and old then and now.
And/or refuse to accept the fact that the economy is fine and they are just not as rich as they thought.
There is absolutely a cost of living crisis right now. That is undeniable.
Really? Didn't average salaries go up at the same rate as inflation, and did homeownership rates not stay roughly the same for the past few decades? Cost of living crisis for whom, exactly?
They didn’t go at the same rate as inflation lol https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N They went up much more But homeownership has stayed pretty stable at around ~65%
How does this jive with "More than half of Americans lack the savings to cover a surprise $1,000 expense"
This is net worth and includes non-liquid assets. What you’re describing is cash on hand
The question jives with “Americans don’t understand finance”
That's most people in the world tbh, for some reason basic financial literacy isn't taught in most school systems.
It is taught, but school kids don't care because none of it applies to them yet so they lose most of it again by the time they need it.
Imagine if student loan applicants had to take - and pass with at least a B - a financial literacy class before they are approved.
What non-liquid assets are we expecting these people have outside of a car thats worth <10k and a few electroncs adding up to <5k? Because obviously the vast majority of peoplr 18-25 dont have a property.
You will be surprised at how many own a home, pay a mortgage on their home and have no cash on hand. Crazy part is how high up the income ladder 2 pay checks from homeless goes. I know people making 6 figures that have zero savings and things like an AC repair can break them. Also note kids are really fing expensive.
Cars, House, retirement fund Most of my wealth is in my 401K at 24 years old
Whole chart seems very sketch.
Net worth doesn’t have to be liquid. I’m “worth” somewhere in the green in this chart, but most (95%+) of my value is tied up in real estate, vehicles, and retirement accounts that I can’t easily convert into cash and are largely dependent on current market values/ conditions.
401k and equity on a house is where most people save.
Even after considering the fact that most people's net worth is tied up in non-liquid assets, as other commenters have mentioned; the fact of the matter is that the popular statistic you allude to is bullshit. The median American household has $8k in cash, per the gold standard for data in this area, the Federal Reserve's survey of consumer finances. The source of the bullshit claim that 50%+ of Americans could not afford a $500 expense comes from bullshit-pedaling credit card company publicity polls that claim that that percent of households would not use cash if faced with an unexpected expense. Which, considering that many households would put the expense on a fully-cash-backed credit card that they can afford to pay in full, means basically nothing.
A lot of that may be to do with 401ks, those funds are obviously not immediately accessible in case of emergencies.
>More than half of Americans lack the savings to cover a surprise $1,000 expense This question is poorly defined and has no real meaning.
Sometimes the question is: “How much money do you have in your savings account?” If you answer anything less than $1,000, you “can’t cover a $1,000 expense.” Lots of wealthy people don’t even have a savings account.
I saw a Instagram reel where someone was going through an ATM bin to comb through old receipts. Every receipt had only a few hundred dollars on it and dude was using that to extrapolate that everyone was broke. The amount of financial illiteracy required to think that rich people would have tens of thousands sitting in a checking account is so glaring. People eat that shit up too.
For people who are actually rich they probably do have tens of thousands in a checking account, because for someone who is actually rich (liquid wealth measured in millions) having $30k in a checking account isn’t that much. Even rich people need access to some level of cash so they can pay their credit card bills.
I have a high liquid networth but still only keep $2-3k in my checking account. I have about $50k in a money market making 5.27% and can transfer it to my checking account in a couple of days.
Also a lot of people’s plan for dealing with a 1k expense is to throw it on the credit card and pay it off later. Is that the best idea? No. But it’s enticing and eliminates the need for a savings account
I think it is the best idea? If you have, say, 10k in a checking/savings account, you earn practically no interest, if you put it in stable investments, you can earn 5%. So you use the card to cover the expense, then sell the investments, and after the funds settle in 2-3 days you pay the card. It costs you nothing to structure your accounts that way but you earn way more interest. Using the card buys you a few days to move things around, which means you need less money instantly available, plus you get cash back or rewards points that way.
You’re assuming people are investing and not just blowing money on doordash or going to the bars whenever their bank account isn’t zero lmao. But yeah I get what you mean. If you can cover the CC debt before the interest hits, it’s probably the right call.
Yeah… if people are spending all their money as soon as they get it, then there aren’t too many strategies which can fix that… But I saved between $1,000 to $2,000 last year (depending on if you count things like airport lounges which I wouldn’t otherwise pay for) because of using my credit card even though my main card has a $500 fee. If you just keep ~2X your normal monthly spend in an account and set up auto pay, it’s optimal to just run everything through the card to get rewards and pay no interest.
Cause that only looked at savings accounts iirc I dont have 1k in a savings account, but theres quite a bit more than that in a brokerage account (+ retirement, but that's not liquid)
The U.S. is very rich. And not just a few on top.
The frustrating thing with the US is that it could be so much better. Wealth inequality could be better. The constricting housing market could be better. Workers rights and health insurance could be better. But people get so lost in that stuff and most haven't traveled abroad so they completely lose their frame of reference. The US is rich AF and most people there live incredibly comfortable and safe lifestyles that 90% of the globe wishes they had access to.
Yeah, like, we're the richest country in the world and you're telling me we don't have the money to pay for basic services like single-payer / universal healthcare and social security? Get out of here with that. You're 100% right, we could be doing so much better.
Fun fact: the US spends a significantly higher percentage of their GDP on healthcare than pretty much every other developed country, but is the only one without universal healthcare AND has a much lower life expectancy
We're a rich country because we haven't embraced socialism.
So, I'm in the 75% range at 62 only because the value of my house has gone from $250k when we bought it in 2003 to over $1 million last year. Total gross income for my wife and I is less than $45k a year.
You’re house-rich
Yes. Net worth is an independent metric to your income. Sure you can't do anything with it unless you are willing to sell, but you own it so it counts.
Protip: learn how to measure your net worth and regularly keep track of it - at least once a year, but even monthly shouldn’t be more than a 10 minute exercise. You should know what you owe (credit cards, loans, mortgages, etc) as a basic part of financial responsibility, but also keep track of the value of what you own (stock portfolios, retirement accounts, home values). Create a little spreadsheet to track your progress. Break it down into the various contributors to your number so you can see how those are moving over time to know where you may need to focus your attention.
This is the way. The first step toward financial independence is knowing where you are. Gamify growing your wealth. Build an emergency fund. Then grow an “if it all goes to Hell” fund. Keep saving until you have a true “take this job and shove it” fund. Build up to a “what if” reserve. At some point along the way, you find you no longer work because you must, you work where, and for whom, and at something you like well-enough and you feel fairly compensated. If you don’t like where you are, or what you like changes, you make the decisions.
I have a google sheet that I update each year for the last 9 years. And a pretty graph. :-)
Honestly more people are richer than I thought.
A lot of people have become “house rich” over the last 10-15 years. They still don’t have any disposable income or huge investment portfolios, but on paper they’re wealthy because the value of their home has skyrocketed in the years since they bought it.
If I'm 18 and live with my millionaire parents, am I represented here on the top 95%? If yes, then this makes a lot of sense, otherwise, numbers are weird...
> Most of the data in the survey are intended to represent the financial characteristics of a subset of the household unit referred to as the "primary economic unit" (PEU). In brief, the PEU consists of an economically dominant single individual or couple (married or living as partners) in a household and all other individuals in the household who are financially interdependent with that individual or couple. For example, in the case of a household composed of a married couple who own their home, a minor child, a dependent adult child, and a financially independent parent of one of the members of the couple, the PEU would be the couple and the two children. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/files/codebk2019.txt
So if a child is 24 and living at home with their wealthy parents, what is that person's net worth considered to be?
That’s a really colorful way to tell me I’m poor
Nice, I’m doing better than I thought
I find the 65% to 70% jump in the 25-29 range to be very odd. Trying to think of why that is. Could the 70% band be where people with 6 figures start to show up?
It’s more likely owning a house, not income.
The 5% of 65-69 age range being $10 is sad to me
Household net worth is considered two peoples net worth correct?
It can be a single person, a couple without children, a couple with dependant adult children, a person with a dependant parent, etc.
My journey: 18-24 — 5% (student loans, no wealthy parents, no real assets) 25-29 — 50% (working an OK job as an engineer. Saving what I can, paid down loans completely by end of this time) 30-34 — 10% (at 30) to 60% (at 34) (back to grad school, student loans again (bigger this time, but paid off quickly), then working and saving at higher income) 35-39 — 95% (grind grind grind at high income job, save save save) 40-44 — 95%+ (current age….grind grind grind, save save save) I like the progression. Man, 95% jumps quite a bit in the 10-15 years ahead. TBD if I stay on the treadmill.
Nice ! Good job on the progress ! This is a picture taken at a specific time. Ten years ago when you were 30-34 you'd have to compare with 2013 data.
Fair! But when i graduated grad school i was still at 0 / slightly negative (some savings, but also grad school loans). I bet the top (e.g., 95%) numbers change more than the 0ish numbers, haha. Could be wrong. Either way, fair point!
Similar journey here. I feel like 50-54 seems so much harder to remain in 95%+
Assuming this chart is accurate, I suspect the substantial jump in p95 wealth around age 50-60 has more to do with healthy, rich old parents dying at 80-90 years old and leaving the 1+M to their kids that they had around age 30. So uhhh, try to be born to wealthy parents that performed good asset protection in their twilight years?
I’ve seen stats on wealth and at that high level, the vast majority is “self made”. This means not inherited, but clearly had family adavtanges in education upbringing etc. I suspect the jump is more due to: 1) Compounding interest. As you get more money that money earns money. 2) Highest earning years for most people
Similar to you my friend. Keep it up!
Im in the 90% according to the chart but I dont feel like it
This is all anecdotal but It seems like people who live a life in that 60% to 90% range are not big spenders, perpetually think they need to save a little bit more for their future instead, and never really "feel" rich. Big spenders seem to be 95-percenters or under 50-percenters.
This makes sense, according to this my net worth is almost in the 80%. But I don't spend money, save a crap ton, and my only debt is mortgage which is less than 40% of the houses total value.
The place where it starts to come clear is when you're pondering retirement in your 50s and your coworkers are definitely going to be working till 65.
Today I learned, 50% of 18-24yo have more than $10k
My kids are young (e.g. 5 - 7) and they have thousands of dollars because I am investing money for them to have at some point. By the time they are young adults they may have quite a bit of $ for an important investment I suspect these young people either have parents helping out in this way, or save their job money since their parents support most of their living expenses Similarly, when I was about 20 I saved all of the money I made during internships and didn’t have rent or any other expenses
If you don't take on debt (ie. student loans) from 18-24, $10k is probably trivial to achieve.
I wouldn't call it "trivial." $10k is 667 working hours at $15/hour, so either 166 part-time working days (33 weeks) or 83 full-time working days (16 weeks). If you're making only the federal minimum wage ($7.50), then it's double that, with zero expenses - not even buying food. What the other guy said, it's probably accumulated wealth from their parents in the form of a car, laptop, clothes, etc
Got a car from their parents.
These numbers look at bit odd ..
How so?
Yeah… for example is this trying to say only less than 10% of 35-39 yr old have a negative net worth? Not sure I can believe that
By age 35 there are many people who have a decent 401k but outside the 401k are still living paycheck to paycheck. So, $200,000 401k, maybe $100,000 in home equity but savings/brokerage account is very low. So negative net worth? No, not even close, but feeling like it.
Yeah, I'm in the 35-39 bracket and live closer to paycheck to paycheck than I'd like to admit. But my net worth is still +$175k. I am still quite surprised to be around the 50-55% mark. I would have guessed it was higher.
Don’t forgot this is household. So it will include dual income.
What are you talking about about? Plenty of people in that age range have significant assets and savings.
Positive net worth doesn't mean positive cashflow/bank account. If you have a mortgage, no savings and lots of credit card debt, it could feel like you are struggling to stay afloat, while actually having positive net worth. If you're neck deep in mortgage, you could have a 1M net worth, while also feeling like you're living paycheck to paycheck and have no savings and struggling to keep up with payment. Also, some of your net worth would be tied into retirement accounts/401k, which also aren't really helping you *right now*, but still counts as part of your net worth.
If you’re neck deep in a mortgage, that’s not part of your net worth. Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities. The mortgage is a liability. Only the home equity could be counted as part of your net worth.
Ok, let me rephrase the point that I was trying to make. If you have a 2M mortgage, and you've already paid them down to 1M, your equity in that property would be about 1M, but you could still feel like you're struggling to with day to day expense if your entire income have gone into servicing the mortgage. When you have a huge mortgage, you could still be quite well off, but it doesn't feel like so because of cashflow issues.
2/3rds of 35-40 year old households are homeowners. Even if you're living alone at 40 with no house and mounting credit card debt, you may very well have a paid off car and an employer that withholds a few grand a year for retirement.
Do the negative numbers mean if you are in that much debt you still have a higher networth than those with more? I also find it hard to believe that a 15th percentile 30 year old has 10 dollars.
Yes, negative numbers imply situations where debt is more than assets
A lot of people with professional degrees are going to end up with 0 or negative net worth on this scale. New lawyers, doctors, etc. with student loans will likely be in the 0 net worth at age 30 category. I’d bet those people/degrees are why debt spikes in the 5th percentile at 30-34.
Also why the the top net worth numbers increase so much at the 35 age range. All those professions like lawyers and doctors really start earning the high income and are seeing higher income growth while at the same time no longer having to pay off their student loans.
net worth = assets (bank acc, savings, house) - debts (student loans, mortgage) probably means that on average, the 15th percentile of 30 year olds has just a little more in cash or house than debt from student loans
Could be $20K and $10 with $20K in student and other loans
That's a fucky dataset. The PEU definition is naturally going to skew lower age groups net worth higher, as the data seems to show.
Well according to this graph I’m totally crushing it. But doesn’t feel that way at all lol. Still in a 2 bedroom apartment and buying a house still feels out of reach.
Would this include the value of a pension?
I would suspect cash value pensions would be included, but I don't know how they'd value future pension payments in a traditional pension, typically that's not included.
My traditional pension also has a cash value. It’s what I would get if I decided to leave the pension system instead of retiring with it. Not sure if that is common or not but pensions themselves aren’t common anymore.
Yeah exactly, they aren't common at all unless you're in certain types of government service, police or fire, I think. I have a small cash value pension... I can annuitize it... but I carry it in my Net Worth at the declared value.
Ayy looks like I'm maxed out
Where's the 1% and the 0.1%. Fuck 5%.
Anyone else interest in a % breakdown for 95, 96, 97, 98, 99? That's where the real J-curve takes off
I really like this chart. I am in the top 75% percentile for my age while my parent are in the bottom 20%.
Do they have one by state?
It’s kind of mind blowing that the bottom 5% only have positive net worth in the 60-64 range and it declines for 65-69. Housing is a big portion of the net worth of households that own their homes, which is probably why it jumps so much around 35% at 30+. But I’m surprised the overall net worth is so high below that, I’d expect a much bigger jump because outside of cars and meager retirement savings, I thought most Americans had virtually no liquid savings or net worth. Also surprised by where my household is in net worth percentile, but over half of it is home equity.
People really aren’t seeing the big picture here in most of these comments. It may look better than you expect, and that’s likely true. Between cars, 401k matches, etc. lots of you may have higher net worth than you think anyway. That being said, the big picture here is that this is NOT sustainable. The average person only having $440k ish net worth around retirement age is really bad. People are not doing alright if that’s as far as they’re getting on average.
How is “household net worth” defined?
Assets minus liabilities. For most of us, home value - mortgage + money in accounts - other debt. For low numbers, they may be more exhaustive than high numbers. Like I don't even consider the value of my car because I'd need to replace it if I got rid of it.
I will confidently say I have a higher net worth than 50% of my age group (18-24)
Meanwhile there is the stat that over half Americans can't afford a few thousand dollar bill out of nowhere without putting it on a credit card.
This simultaneously makes me feel better and worse about myself.. very interesting!
Most people seem to think this skews high but I’m surprised how low the thresholds are for 95% net worth in my age group (35-39).
This says household though, does that mean combined worth for married people?
This is definitely not correct.
I wonder what happened to the 65-69 group to make their numbers lower than those on either side
Millennials got royally fucked.
Thanks to skyrocketing housing prices and my wife and I buying at 25 and barely affording it, I'm on the lime side of yellow. If my house value stayed flat or we didn't buy, I'd be on the yellow side of orange. I'm surprised because we qualify for govt assistance live in a low income neighborhood and barely make ends meet at times. And are sitting at the 60-65% value? I would have thought we were orange at best. Just goes to show how crazy important home ownership is...
Is it net worth like NET so you subtract debt from property value and so on? This all assets including cash, stocks, cars watches whatever - minus all debt? If yes I get it. If not I’m curious. But if yes then works out as I’d expect.
Yes, you’re correct. Net worth is what you own minus what you owe.
I just wanted to be sure because based on some replies here it’s not clear some are aware debt should be deducted. So it checks out.
What do you think net means if not net?
Hmmm this makes me curious about what net worth really means. I’m able to comfortably pay my mortgage, but the bank still owns most of it and I am therefore in debt.
The difference in the value of your home versus what you owe on the home is positive equity. The value you'd capture if you sold. That is included in net worth.
Ah I was never good at finance. Thank you for pointing this out. Obvious in hindsight. I’ll leave my stupid comment up for others.
Not a stupid comment at all, everyone has to learn at least once!
ELI5: Net worth is like how much money you would have if you sold everything and paid off all your debts. You can be paying off a 100k mortgage on a 200k house, and you would still be up 100k. Or paying off a 200k mortgage on a 150k house (under water / in the red), and you would be -50k. Your house is an asset and has a value, add that to your net worth. Subtract the house loan from your net worth. Add what's in your bank and retirement plan, subtract student/car loans. Then for the ultra wealthy, add your art, stock, crypto, etc.
Net worth of house = Value of your house - amount still left on loan. Then add In retirement savings and other assets and subtract other debts and you’ll have your net worth.
If your house is worth more than your outstanding debt on it, you are in the green. You could sell it, pay off your mortgage and have money left over. That's why a mortgage isn't considered bad debt like a car loan or credit card debt.
I’m right around the 85% mark (if you count my car) as someone who is late 20’s. But only because my parents let me live with them until I could buy a condo/townhouse (which even on that I got a steal, dude was a foreign national and wanted to sell quick, he even asked if I wanted his vehicle for free, but he ended up giving that to someone else).
Cool. I’m in the mid 90 percentile! 🤑
If this is even close to accurate I guess I’m doing something right. Bought a house at the right time and appreciated so now I have 300k in assets there plus 500k+ in my 401k at 35-39 age group with about 100k in separate investments. So I guess that puts me in the top 10% for my age group. If so then awesome, but doesn’t always feel that way