← BiggerPockets Money Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Today, we're sharing net worth by age to see exactly where you stack up.
- [00:03]
B
Whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s.
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A
We have the data showing whether you're behind or ahead of the north.
- [00:17]
B
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast.
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A
My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me, as always, is my worthy co host, Scott Trench.
- [00:25]
C
Thanks, Mindy. You are the top 1% of BiggerPockets Money Co hosts I've ever worked with.
- [00:32]
B
Well, thanks.
- [00:32]
C
Talking about net worth by age, including the percentiles there, the 10 percentile, the 5 percentile, and if you aspire to be like Mindy, the top 1% for net worth by age across all these different ranges here. So it's going to be a great discussion. We're going to preview the data with and without home equity. We're going to conjecture about how we think most people got into those ranges. You tell us if you agree or not, and then we're going to discuss what needs to happen. Get into the top 10%, the top 5%, or the top 1% in your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s and your 60s, and have a great discussion about it.
- [01:07]
A
I am excited to jump in. First off, Scott, let's define net worth. What does net worth mean?
- [01:15]
C
Net worth is the total value of everything you own, all your assets, minus the value of everything you owe, your liabilities. This is distinct from a fire portfolio, if you've come across that term before here on Bigger Pockets Money. This is not just talking about the assets in a financial portfolio. This is including everything which you know, for example, might include cash and savings accounts, investment accounts like stocks, bonds, and retirement funds. We have real estate, including your primary residence. We have vehicles, personal property value, and business ownership stakes and liabilities, of course, will be any debt whatsoever, which include mortgages, credit cards, student loans, car loans, personal loans, and anything else that you might owe that's your net worth. We will break out the data including and not including home equity, which is a common way to get a little bit more directionally accurate in understanding people's financial portfolios. And there's some really interesting data there, but there is no nationally syndicated database that just looks at what we refer to as a fire portfolio.
- [02:16]
A
Okay, Scott, what is your fire net worth?
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C
Buyer portfolio is any property that you own, any assets that you own that are specifically designed to be harvested to fund your future lifestyle. Typically, that's going to include investment accounts like stocks, bonds, and retirement portfolios, and then the income streams that are associated with businesses rental properties or those types of things it would exclude, for example, typically vehicles, personal property and your primary residence.
- [02:45]
A
Scott, let's take a peek at net worth by age.
- [02:50]
C
Alrighty. So now we got a really complicated big time chart here and the data is fantastic. It's based on a Fed survey that comes out every three years. The this data is from 2022 and published in 2023. The next set of data is being collected now here in 2025 and will be publicly available towards the middle or end of 2026. So this is from a few years ago. Should be actually fairly accurate given the ups and downs of where things have gone over the last couple of years in the market. Although you might expect some of the top 1% numbers to be a little higher here in 2025 than they were when the data was originally collected. But it shows the breakout for net worth. And there's also a data set around for income for each of these age brackets all the way from 18 to 80. And it's pretty cool to see the distributions here. We've got the bottom quartile, the median, the 50 50th percentile, the 75th percentile, the 90th percentile, the 95th percentile, the top 5% of wealth, and then of course the top 1% or 99th percentile for the wealthiest Americans by age.
- [03:54]
A
All right, Scott, this chart is a rather fascinating set of numbers. What are your biggest takeaways from what you see here?
- [04:01]
C
Yeah, well, I think the first thing that jumps out is there's this narrative that, you know, everybody in America has got debt or whatever and it's just not true. Right. Even in the bottom 25th percentile of wealth in this country, we've got positive net worth all the way from 18 to 80 plus. So not until you get below the 25th percentile do you begin to have the possibility of folks having negative net worths. And so people will say they've got debt, lots of people say they have debt and they do have debt, but they don't necessarily have negative net worth. They're not net in debt across this country. And while that's a big narrative out there, it's just not factually true based on the data that we have around net worth. So that's kind of one, one fascinating point I think is worth considering. The other one I think is the vast differences between the wealthiest Americans and those in the bottom 25th or 50th percentile. I mean, it's many, many, many, many, many times the amount of wealth 65 times the amount of wealth in the 18 to 24 year old range. 70 to 80 times as much wealth in the 25th percent escalates from there. So it's a pretty dramatic spread in terms of wealth across these percentiles. And then what I think is really interesting is the top 10 percentile is. And we're going to focus on that a lot today in the discussion. This makes perfect sense to me. There's nothing about the numbers in this column that conflict with what we've Learned here on BiggerPockets Money with the ability for ordinary Americans, middle class, two middle class income earners, for example, to be able to accumulate these numbers over the course of a lifetime as long as they don't make any big mistakes and they follow the basics of personal finance, saving 15 to 20% of their income. That's a really fascinating takeaway from this. To get into the, you know, top 95th percentile. Something's got to go right here. Beyond that, there's probably got to be some high income, so a little bit of luck, some really good investing. And then for the top 1% multiple things have got to go really well, right? You're probably talking about big business wins or elite income sustained for a very long period of time coupled with low spending. I do also want to observe that there's a big jump here in the 45 to kind of 65 range where you go from 8 million to 22 million. That probably has to do with the fact that this is around the age that Americans begin to really inherit wealth at larger scale. So I imagine that that's having an impact on the big jump in this particular point in time because we don't see that same bump in incomes around this time. The income growth is more around this, this, this kind of like 35 to to 50 year old range. But the net worth jump here I think is probably got something to do with, with generational wealth transfer.
- [06:35]
A
I think that's a really great point. Scott. To recap what you said at the beginning, 75% of Americans have a positive.
- [06:45]
C
Net worth right in every age bracket.
- [06:47]
A
That's fascinating.
- [06:48]
C
Much higher percentage have positive net worth just at the 18 year old range, 18, 24 year old range. Even in that category, more than 75% of them have positive net worth. At least 88 bucks to their name may not feel like much, but it's a lot better than some people. Again, going back and highlighting a couple of interesting numbers. If you're 30 to 34, you are in the median for your age Group with $88,000 in net worth, you're in the top 10% with 538,000, the top 5% with $800,000 and the top 1% with $2.6 million at age 50. And I won't go through all the other in betweens. You're going to be in the 50th percentile with $266,000, the 90th percentile with 2.5 million, the 95th percentile with 4.4, and the top 1% with $13 million. And what I think is so interesting about those numbers is I think that the top 10% stands out as being very achievable even on middle class incomes. As long as we're saving 20% or so of that income over a very long period of time and doing all the right things with our money, not making any big mistakes, getting distracted with consumer debt and just investing consistently and aggressively in retirement accounts, for example. But to get into the top 5 or 1%, we have to layer in some type of bonus here, which is probably going to be a much higher income, upper middle class or even elite income. And then to get in the top 1%, we're going to have to probably be dipping into the world of business or being world class, professional paid. And that's absolute top 1% for a long period of time in a very lucrative field.
- [08:25]
A
Yeah, I agree, Scott. This is very achievable. The median, absolutely achievable. The 75th percentile achievable. The 90th percentile at age 50, having $2.5 million to be in the 90th percentile, the top 10% of net worth by age, including your home equity. I think that's absolutely doable. And you know, the 4.4 million getting into the top 5%, that is going to take some unfair advantages, but I don't think it's not achievable by any means.
- [08:59]
C
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- [11:59]
B
Let's jump back in.
- [12:00]
C
Okay. When we exclude home equity, we have a very similar story. For the most part, every single category and up to the bottom 25th percentile still has a positive net worth in this country, as when this data was collected. And we just see a slight variation in a lot of these numbers. Right. The percentage of wealth in one's home is not really the story of American wealth and doesn't really change the dynamic very much. But it is interesting to see the data without them. And we actually have a better visualization of this right here where we can talk about the percentage of one's wealth that is in their home across these categories. And we see that as a rule, the lower the percentile that you are in. So if you're in the 25th percentile for wealth, you might have as much as half or three quarters of your wealth in your home equity in this situation. Whereas the top 1% have less than 15% of their wealth in their home equity. The 95th percentile is in this kind of 15 to 25% range. The 90th percentile is typically in this 25 to 30% range. The 75th percentile is in this 35 to 45% range. And the 50th percentile is in the 50 to 70% range. So the less net worth you have, typically the more of that as a percentage is in your home. So this reinforces everything that we've talked about for many years here on BiggerPockets Money. Housing is an expense. It is, generally speaking, a liability for the ordinary American the way that it is typically purchased. And the less housing your primary residence is as a percentage of your wealth, the higher the correlation with a elite level of net worth.
- [13:38]
A
Yeah, this is a really fun chart as well. In some instances, it would caution you to not put all of your eggs in one home equity basket.
- [13:47]
C
That's right. Yeah. And I think what the story that's really being told up to about the 50th percentile is many Americans simply do not accumulate much wealth outside of the forced savings account, which is really the home equity. Right. When you make the mortgage payment every single month for 20 years, you're building equity in there. But it's not really until you get to the 75th or 90th percentile that you really see the separation from folks who are intention building wealth every single month for years outside of that home equity and really, really thoughtful about that approach. And that separation just compounds the older people get is what the data appears to be suggesting here. One other interesting thing, this is a representation of American wealth with home equity. And the next slide here is going to be without that home equity and what we see here is that wealth typically peaks in the 65 to 69% range. That makes perfect sense to me for a lot of folks as that's when people stop working and begin to retire. Maybe they're beginning to away more assets, maybe they're beginning intergenerational wealth transfers. That makes perfect sense to me. That's when most net worth begins to peak. Earnings, I believe, peak just a few years before that for most people as well. That's kind of an interesting little tidbit there. Of course, that's the same with and without home equity here. Should we get into the good stuff of how to get in to these top deciles, Mindy?
- [15:05]
A
Yes, Scott, let's jump into how you get to this massive net worth starting in your twenties.
- [15:12]
C
Let's be clear. We are conjecturing here, right? We don't have hard data on how all of these people accumulated all of this wealth. We really only have income data and net worth data. And then of course we're supplementing that with the, the hundreds, the 10,000 hours between us, easily maybe 20,000 hours between us that we've spent, Mindy, you and I, studying personal finance, early retirement and other wealth building strategies. The hundreds of interviews. But this is what we're conjecturing here based on what we've seen over this time. And you know this. So we'll start with your 20s and I think that to get into the top 1 to 10% and begin the snowball and hopefully stay there for the duration of your life, you really just have to do a couple of basic things right in your twenties. Right? One is just be disciplined through high school and college. Work a little bit in the summers or after school, save a little bit, invest and don't accumulate debt. Don't accumulate a ton of college debt when you go to university. Pick a school that is affordable for you. If you're lucky enough to have it paid for, that's great too. But don't graduate with a ton of college with with a ton of debt and graduate with a marketable degree. Keep your expenses low and max out your retirement accounts. Check all the boxes and maybe do a side hustle or two, especially in high school or college, to supplement that income. And I think that a lot of people can get into this top 10% range by simply not making any mistakes and following that very basic playbook in their 20s.
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A
I think all four of those ideas, Scott, are absolutely doable by anybody. I will caveat that the graduate from college with a marketable degree, college is not fore everybody.
- [16:43]
B
So of course you can go and.
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A
Get a trade that is very marketable as well. There's absolutely. All four of these are doable by anybody.
- [16:51]
C
Absolutely. Right. To get in the top 5%, something else has got to go right here. Right. It's a little harder to generate $400,000 in wealth coming out of your 20s if you don't have at least a pretty high income here, if you don't start pretty early and maybe if you don't have some kind of side hustle. So I'm throwing in that the folks that get into the top 5% are either going to be these much higher earners who have really invested in a particular marketing marketable degrees and have really thrown themselves into their career in a hardcore way. Maybe some folks who are beginning to start to build a small business. We've had talked to a couple of entrepreneurs in their 20s who've been able to do that. And then I think house hacking is a huge cheat code. You can buy a house hack and you're 23, 24, maybe two or three. I mean, you should be able to easily get into these even if you don't have the elite income on the side there.
- [17:34]
A
Right. Because that 400,000 is including your home equity.
- [17:38]
C
Yeah. All these numbers that we're talking about are the ones that include home equity.
- [17:41]
A
But getting up to the top 1%, Scott, the 600,000 to 2.1 million in your 20s, having that as your net worth, even with your house hack, even with your home equity, you're going to need to be pulling some, some other levers, some big leverage here.
- [17:58]
C
And by the way, we're going to presume that you're not going to inherit, marry rich, get lucky, or win in gambling or any of those types of crazy things. This is how somebody without one of these cheat codes could potentially get into these categories. And if you don't have one of those, then it's going to be all about elite income and super high upside bets that pay off pretty quick on a relative standpoint. So you can get in this level if you go into big law, for example, you can get in this level if you go into investment banking or join one of the big consulting firms and really crush it in your 20s in those types of very high income, lucrative careers, you can get there with entrepreneurship. Perhaps if you go through one of these Y Combinator exercises and have a good valuation on a business, you can get there by joining a business that begins to take off. This is what I did in my 20s, you can get there by, you know, maybe if you have, have pretty high income, like just in the bubble of that top 1%, which by the way is like 170 grand in your 20s. So you can't really get to this, this level unless you're making that for most of your 20s and maybe serial house hacking or live in flipping in that category. And you're going to get into the low end of the top 1%. By the way, we sometimes will show ranges for these. So like the top 1% is 600 grand for a young person, their younger portion of 20s, 18 to 24. And the top 1% for wealth for someone in their older 20s is going to be about 2.1 million. That's 25 to 29.
- [19:17]
A
Well, let's look at your 30s, Scott.
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C
What do you think you need to do to be in the top 10% in your 30s?
- [19:22]
A
So I'm going to encourage you to start strategically job hopping. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the retention budget is not nearly as high for a company as their new acquisition budget. So simply moving companies is going to get you a significantly higher income than if you stay at the same company and for 10 years continuing to develop your skills. You not only want to job hop, but you want to make a lot of companies want to hire you, not just one person who's like, I guess you'll be okay. Lifestyle creep and avoiding lifestyle creep is going to be a huge factor in your 30s as well as geographic arbitrage. If you can make the same money in a far lower cost of living area or slightly less money in a far lower cost of living area, that's going to be a net win for you.
- [20:18]
C
To be in the top 10% for your early 30s, 30 to 34, you need $538,000 in personal net worth, including your home equity. And to be in the top 10% by your late 30s, 35 to 39, you need about $864,000. And what I think stands out about those numbers is if you just do the basics, you show up to a career that has reasonable long term potential, you save 20% of your, you take advantage of tax advantaged retirement accounts, you do what Mindy just said and you actually make sure you understand your market value. And you're either demanding that raise or being willing to switch jobs to get those promotions and raises. And you're not moving the goalpost. You're not, you're not continually spending all that you earn. I think that this is very achievable for the typical listener of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. The typical listener household of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I think it's, I think it's, don't make any mistakes and just keep investing. Just keep buying over that time period and you think you can get there. When you start thinking about the top 5%, which is 800 grand for somebody between ages of 30 and 34, or 1.4 million for somebody between the ages of 35 and 39. Now something else has to be layered in besides the basics of continuing to progress your financial situation and paying attention for, you know, you can't just pay attention for 10 years. Something else has got to go reasonably well to get in that top 5%. What do you think, Mindy?
- [21:41]
B
Yep.
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A
You're making calculated career risks or moves, especially in your early 30s. If you're not married, if you don't have kids, if you have very low cost of living or even just like a lower cost of living, you can take these risks. Scott, I'm going to use you as an example. Moving from a company that wasn't your jam to a startup where you believed in the company, you thought they had exponential growth opportunities and you decided to take that risk or that bet it paid off for you very well. But if it hadn't have, you could then hop to another company, try that risk again. Starting to build a real estate portfolio. Gosh, Scott, this is looking a lot like you continuing on from when we said in your 20s, you are house hacking. You are starting to create wealth in that way. Now you're continuing to create real estate wealth side hustle that is adjacent to your current career. So we're not talking about driving for Uber or you know, doing those, those smaller dollar side hustles. We're talking about cons and starting a, a business like a side business that is adjacent to the job that you're doing right now.
- [22:52]
C
I think that, you know, once we get into the, the top 1%, which is 2.6 million for 30 to 34 year olds and 4.7 million for 35 to 39 year olds, that's when big moves have to go, right? You're talking about business, you're talking about you just got promoted to managing director in your investment banking career or partner in your consulting or big law career. You're talking about, you know, owning a small business. You're having multiple income streams. You're a serial entrepreneur. You have a very sophisticated tax optimization structure. Maybe you're a real estate professional. This is where you are really more of the entrepreneur or the elite income earner. You've been at the top of the pack in your profession for a decade or more, and that's really beginning to compound into just massive, massive income generation. And on top of that income generation, you're actually conserving a good bit of that and investing it for the future. So a lot of things have to go right to be in that top 1%. And even highly skilled people who give it their best may not be able to get into that level. Something also has to go right alongside those efforts and the very strategic moves.
- [23:56]
A
And I think these moves that you're making in your 30s are compounding on the moves that you were making in your 20s. So you are still having a good savings rate, you're having a fairly close eye on your expenses, and you are continuing, continuing to max out your retirement accounts and investing continuously.
- [24:17]
C
And I think that's the theme here, right? Because when you go to the next slide here on 40s and we see that the number for the top 10% jumps to 1.18 million. And that seems like an absurd number, right? If you're, if you have 100 grand and you're 40, you're going to feel like I'm way behind. But if you are 33 and have $538,000 because you just did all the things you talked about in the 20s, then that will compound easily if historical returns continue in anything close to what they've been doing over a very long period of time to this number of 1.18 million in your early 40s, 40 to 44. Right. So it's just about continuing that trajectory, continuing to make no mistakes. This middle class couple that has accumulated, you know, individual or couple that's accumulated half a million bucks by age 33, well, they may actually do even better by the time they're in their early 40s if they just keep staying invested and keep adding to the pile by saving 10, 20% of their income. So it's really just about continuity over your 20s and 30s to get into this top 10% in your 40s.
- [25:15]
B
At this point, the difference between the.
- [25:17]
A
Top 10%, which is 1.18 to 1.42 million, and the top 5%, 1.9 million to 2.79 million. There's not that much difference between these two. You are continuing to save and invest consistently. You are maxing out your retirement accounts and taking advantage of all of these options that you have to put money away for retirement, reduce your taxable income for 15 or 20 years. You are continuing to not take on consumer debt. You're not keeping up with the Joneses. You are not buying the latest and greatest of all the things. I think it's when you move into the top 1% that these dials need to be turned up and cranked up the top 1%. We're talking about 7.84 million, up to $8.7 million building a business, investing in real estate again for 20 years. Elite income four or $500,000 a year for a decade or more. More while still not spending all of that money and while continuing to invest in these aggressive assets. Even joining a startup or one of the the that used to be a startup and is now just a really great company. The, the Fang companies come to mind. An established startup. Now what is that called?
- [26:36]
C
Scott, when I talk about joining a startup or Fang, I mean like there's a little bit of luck involved here you are an early employee or an executive or reasonably high up the ranks at a Facebook, at a Google, at a Nvidia. Like that's the kind of level here to get to $7.8 million in net worth, reasonably self made, not inheriting wealth from somebody in your early 40s. There's a business outcome that has transpired here or you've gotten very, very lucky. But for the most part this is going to be sustained elite levels of production. A little bit of luck or, or a business outcome that, that is going to, that's going to drive you here. You can get there with real estate if you're continuing to do it over and over and over again for 20 plus years, maintaining a reasonably high level of leverage. We do need some real estate investors in that category, especially if they're raising capital or managing money in those areas. But you got to do something different to get to this level here. This is not just do the basics right. This is some really serious bets have paid off that have given you a very disproportionate outcome.
- [27:32]
B
We have only hit the top 5% of this episode.
- [27:35]
A
We'll be back with more right after a short break break.
- [27:38]
B
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C
These are some of the reasons why.
- [28:45]
D
I'm excited to partner with Pine Financial Group. Their Fund 6 offers investors exposure to real estate credit, largely for construction and rehab, largely here in Colorado. With loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion in origination vault volume, 75% of their borrowers have been repeat customers over 17 years. They offer investors an 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 7030 LP GP split of everything over 10% paid annually. The lockup period is nine months with liquidity available within 90 days. After that nine month commitment, the fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund's minimum investment is typically $100,000, but Pine Financial is able to reduce that minimum for some investors and have agreed to do so for Biggerpockets Money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure I am personally invested in this fund through my self directed IRA and of course Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast. If you'd like to invest or check out their Prospectus, go to biggerpocketsmoney.com pine today that's biggerpocketsmoney.com pine Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary vary based on fund performance.
- [29:57]
B
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- [32:19]
A
Think life insurance.
- [32:20]
B
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- [33:18]
C
Thanks for sticking with us.
- [33:19]
A
Yes. I'm going to correct you on one thing, Scott. You said luck and I don't think there's luck involved in here. What is that? Luck is when preparation meets opportunity or luck is when hard work meets opportunity. I think that if you're doing this top 1% net worth by your 40s, it's because you have been working hard on these. You have been taking bets that have, have paid out. And these are going to be strategic bets. These aren't just, hey, I think this new currency is going to go through the roof. You're doing things you are doing on purpose. Yeah, there's always that one guy that mined bitcoin in college and now he's a trillionaire. But that's not the guy that we're talking about here. We're talking about people who are making educated bets on things that they truly believe in.
- [34:09]
C
Awesome. Let's move to 50s.
- [34:12]
A
What kind of money are we talking about in our 50s? In the top 10? 10% is 2.56 million to 2.67 million. So not a huge spread there, but still $2.5 million to make it into your top 10% of all net worth in age 50s is great. And again, you're doing a lot of.
- [34:32]
B
The same things that you've been doing.
- [34:34]
A
You're saving and investing consistently. You are living on 80% or less of your take home pay and you are following a consistent, consistent investment playbook in a reasonably aggressive portfolio. I think to have $2.5 million by the time you're in your 50s, you're not investing in safe investments. You're doing a little bit of risky investing. And by risky, I mean high risk, high reward investing, not gambling.
- [35:01]
C
I think what's interesting here Mindy, is if we go back and look at like the, like let's say 30 to 34 year olds had 538,000 in the top 10% that doubled almost exactly tiny bit more than doubled for the top 10% in their 40s. But then it almost multiplied by a good chunk more than that, almost two and a half, maybe 2.3 times as much here in their 50s. And what I think is happening here is it's the same concept we described to be in the top 10% in your 50s. You're continuing to just do all the basics, right? It's just that 25 years of compounding is going, this is the millionaire next door, right? They've just spent less than they've earned, taken advantage of retirement accounts, worked a middle class or maybe higher salary for that time and just continue to crank it out. But I think what also is different is these people are probably, this all includes home equity. These people, they've probably been in their home for a long period of time now. And what that means is that all the additional dollars being earned or a big bigger chunk of the additional dollars being earned between their 40s and their 50s can now go towards investments, right? All those little raises that stack up, little bonuses or whatever over the years, they can all go towards investments and they' into the early the purchase of that, that home or disproportionately to the home equity like they were maybe in the 30s and 40s. And that's why you're seeing a slightly larger increase in net worth proportional to the 20s versus 30s or the 30s versus 40s. So I think that's probably what's going on here. But again, it's very achievable for this middle class household that is consistent over a working career to be able to do this. And there you just can't make any big mistakes or have any of these big setbacks. And you gotta be consistent at following a reasonable playbook here to get into the top 5% where we got 4.4 to million moving into this kind of fat fire, chubby fire area. Now it's the same concept, the same people who are in that category in their 40s are likely to be in there in their 50s as long as they continue it. But you just have to layer in that next little bit of oomph, right? There's probably an upper middle class salary or more. I'd speculate that the folks in this category have now by now in their 50s, had a couple of really outlier years. They're not consistently earning 350k a year. But I bet you that the majority of these folks have had one year, one to two years where they have earned in that 350k plus or that top 1% probably the top 1% income for at least one of those years. And I think that they've also just done all the basics right for the majority of that that time. But I don't think that these people necessarily need to have sold a business or been entrepreneurial or had some outlier, outlier crazy thing happen with, with FAANG stock in order to get this category. I think this is approachable for a good number of people who are talented and capable and earning that upper middle class salary but are not necessarily crazy lucky or have have had that, that entrepreneurial outcome.
- [37:45]
A
Crazy. Preparation meets opportunity. Going into the top 1% 13.2 million to 15.3 million. This is when your preparation has truly met your opportunity or your hard work has truly met your opportunity. You had have built a business that has turned into a very valuable business and you are selling it or it's generating a lot of income that you are then turning into other investments. You've invested in real estate for 30 plus years and you are regularly refinancing and sustaining your leverage. You have that elite level of income. You're a doctor, lawyer, tech executive, 500,000 plus including non not spending 500,000 plus per year. So you're, you're living a nice lifestyle but you are socking away a large percentage of that income and you're investing in aggressive investments.
- [38:43]
C
You have to be truly elite or have had an outcome, an event propel you at some point in your life and then your wealth has compounded from there in order to get into this range without inheriting your wealth. Right. And by the way, again, I do think think that there is inheritance is beginning to start to be a player here in these wealth numbers that we're looking at here. $13.2 million for someone in their early 50s, $15 million for someone in their later 50s. Those are staggering numbers. And this is around the age when people do begin to inherit wealth. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is beginning to pad these numbers in a more meaningful way. Few people inherit wealth in their 20s or 30s these days. This kind of wealth, wealth and more of that is being inherited by people in their 50s and 60s.
- [39:27]
A
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think that that might even be more of a factor than we're considering in that the upper ends of that top 1%. Okay, Scott, let's look at the 60s.
- [39:39]
C
Yeah, so same thing here. This is around time when people start to retire. So I'm not surprised to see that we didn't see the top 10% double from their 50s to their 60s. That's when people are starting to probably transition to more, more drawdown style portfolios. But again, I think that this outcome of 2.9 to 3 million depending on your early or late 60s is not that far out of reach for a middle class family who has just been responsible over the course of a career and has socked away 20% of their middle or upper middle class income for the duration of a career, have maintained a professional financial plan and playbook and have just invested intelligently throughout adulthood. I think that at this point there's probably a good number of people have paid off that primary residence in there, which is, which is helping that out and making life a lot simpler and easier to plan for from a cash flow perspective. I don't think this is a ridiculously special outcome that would be unattainable to the average listener here on BiggerPockets money in today's America to have this equivalent outcome without having to do really anything creative or really earn a particularly large income over the course of a career.
- [40:40]
A
Absolutely agree. And that's just being consistently investing over the course of your adulthood will get you this top 10% net worth very easily.
- [40:52]
B
Top 5%.
- [40:54]
A
We see a pretty big jump. We're going from 2.9 to 3 in the top 10% all the way up to 6.3 to 6.8 in the top 5%. Again, you're saving and investing consistently over 30 or 40 years. You are maxing out your retirement accounts and taking advantage of all the tax advantage opportunities you have by, you know, reducing your taxable income. Instead of paying Uncle Sam, you're paying yourself. I think that's great. You probably had a couple of really high income years, but not like a sustained 300,000 a year plus career. You've just probably maxed that out near the end. The top 1%. I think that this 17.8 million to 22 million in the top 1% of net worth is coming in with your idea of inheriting some of this. But you could also very easily have had a small business that just went bonkers. You're an overnight success in just 20 short years or 40 short years. By starting this business in your 20s, you are now starting to see the exponential results of having a, a good, a well run business.
- [42:05]
C
Yeah, I mean this, this is somebody who had an enormous business outcome or truly remarkable career. Think executive of a company you've heard of or you know, professional athlete or big time author, or you has built a business, owned a business For a very long period of time that produced a very high level of income. Everybody who didn't inherit wealth into the 18 to 22 million dollars range probably had an extraordinary career and had a very sophisticated approach to managing their money across a lifetime. And that's why they're in that, that position there. You're not going to get here by earning a middle class or upper middle class salary and socking away your money in index funds. Most likely something went right at some point time in your life or maybe multiple times in your life that drastically accelerated your wealth and you've got a very, very large estate. I would surmise that in their 60s a lot of people in the fire community will find themselves in this top 5% number just because of the nature of how conservative 4% role planning is, for example. And I think that we'll see a small chunk of them make it into this top 1%. But those are the ones who really have the business or entrepreneurial itch metallic to that.
- [43:13]
A
Either that or those who have invested in aggressive high risk, high reward opportunities.
- [43:19]
C
So I mean this is a vast amount of wealth at this point that really gives you a lot of options. You can do almost anything, anything you could dream of with, with 20 million bucks, sort of buying, you know, Brad Pitt's house or whatever, you know, in Malibu, whatever. Like this is this, this is an incredible outcome and congratulations to the 1% which is quite a large number of people in their 60s who have built a 17 plus million dollar personal net worth.
- [43:45]
A
I agree with your assessment that most people will find themselves in the top 10 to top 5% of net worth.
- [43:52]
C
Yeah, most people who listen to biggerpockets money and are actively taking a proactive approach to managing their finances across a lifetime. I think that this is a very achievable goal if you start in your 20s or 30s just doing the very basics right. I think you got to layer in some kind of winning card in order to get in the top what, 5% and then you got to have a really powerful outcome at some point in your life if you ever want to break into the top 1% in these age ranges.
- [44:17]
A
Yes, I meant to say bigger pockets. Many listeners.
- [44:20]
C
Well, just a quick note for those curious. Again we talked about this earlier, but the data is based on a fed survey via dqydj.com There are 131 million households in the United States as of that 2022 survey. And then these charts were constructed by, by this person here. Thank you very much and we appreciate your work. If you have any questions or want to talk about this further, we always invite you to join us here on YouTube in the comments section or join our Facebook group @BiggerPockets Money. Just type in BiggerPockets Money and you'll find the Facebook group there. We'd love to have you join the community. So tell us how you stack up and what you're doing to get into the top 1%, top 5%, or top 10%. And tell us if you disagree or have other hypotheses about how folks made it into the categories. Thank you so much for listening and joining us today.
- [45:04]
A
All right, Scott, this was super fun, but we should hop out of here.
- [45:07]
C
Let's do it.
- [45:08]
A
That wraps up this episode of the.
- [45:09]
B
Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
- [45:11]
A
He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen saying gotta dash Cash.