Net Worth By Age In 2025 (Are You Above Average?)

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2:37Mindy Jensen:Today, we're sharing net worth by age to see exactly where you stack up. Whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s, we have the data showing whether you're behind or ahead of the North.

2:54Mindy Jensen:Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my worthy co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. You are the top 1 % of BiggerPocketsMoney co-hosts I've ever worked with. Well, thanks. Talking about net worth by age, including the percentiles there, the 10 percentile, the five 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.

3:31You can tell us if you agree or not. And then we're going to discuss what needs to happen to 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.

3:45Mindy Jensen:I am excited to jump in. First off, Scott, let's define net worth. What does net worth mean? 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 BiggerPocketsMoney, this is not just talking about the assets in a financial portfolio. This is including everything, which, for example, might include cash and savings accounts, investment accounts like stocks, bonds, and retirement funds. We have real estate, including your primary residence.

4:20We 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.

4:54Mindy Jensen:OK, Scott, what is your FIRE net worth? A 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. Scott, let's take a peek at net worth by age. All righty. So now we got a really complicated big time chart here.

5:33And the data is fantastic. It's based on a Fed survey that comes out every three years. The Fed is 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 data set around for income, for each of these age brackets in about five-year increments all the way from 18 to 80.

6:14And it's pretty cool to see the distributions here. We've got the bottom quartile, the median, the 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.

6:31Mindy Jensen:All right, Scott, this chart is a rather fascinating set of numbers. What are your biggest takeaways from what you see here? 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 worths 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.

7:06They'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 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 and 24-year-old range, 70 to 80 times as much wealth in the 25th percentile. And it really escalates from there. So it's a pretty dramatic spread in terms of wealth across these percentiles.

7:44And 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 BiggerPocketsMoney 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.

8:17To get into the 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.

8:54So 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. Income growth is more around this kind of like 35 to 50-year-old range. But the net worth jump here, I think, has probably got something to do with generational wealth transfer.

9:12Mindy Jensen:I think that's a really great point, Scott. To recap what you said at the beginning, 75 % of Americans have a positive net worth. Right, in every age bracket. That's fascinating. 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. I 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.

9:50You'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 in the 50th percentile with$266 ,000, the 90th percentile with$2.5 million, the 95th percentile with$4.4 million, 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.

10:41But to get into the top five 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 an absolute top 1 % for a long period of time in a very lucrative field.

11:03Mindy Jensen: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. What do you need to do to be in the top 1 % to 10 % in your 20s? We'll be breaking it down after a quick ad break.

11:48Let's jump back in. 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 of 2022 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. It 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.

12:23And 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.

13:05So this reinforces everything that we've talked about for many years here on Bigger Pockets 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.

13:26Mindy Jensen: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. 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 intentionally building wealth every single month for years outside of that home equity and are really, really thoughtful about that approach.

14:08Mindy Jensen: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, is that's when people stop working and begin to retire. Maybe they're beginning to give 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.

14:39Earnings, 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 into these top deciles, Mindy?

14:53Mindy Jensen:Yes, Scott. Let's jump into how you get to this massive net worth starting in your 20s. 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 well. We really only have income data and net worth data. And then, of course, we're supplementing that with 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.

15:28And 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 20s, 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 debt and graduate with a marketable degree.

16:02Keep 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.

16:21Mindy Jensen: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 for everybody. So of course, you can go and get a trade that is very marketable as well. There's absolutely all four of these are doable by anybody. 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.

16:55So 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 the particularly 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 talked to a couple of entrepreneurs in their 20s who have been able to do that. And then I think house hacking is a huge cheat code. You can buy a house hack in your 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.

17:23Mindy Jensen:Right. Because that$400 ,000 is including your home equity. Yeah. All these numbers that we're talking about are the ones that include home equity. Yep. 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 other levers, some big levers here. 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.

17:59And 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 quickly on a relative standpoint. So you can get to this level if you go into big law, for example, you can get into this level if you go into investment banking or join one of the big consulting firms and really crush it in your twenties 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.

18:30This is what I did in my twenties. You can get there by, you know, maybe if you have pretty high income, like just in the bubble of that top 1%, which by the way is like 170 grand in your twenties. So you can't really get to this level unless you're making that for most of your twenties and maybe serial house hacking or living 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 twenties, 18, 24, and the top 1 % for wealth for someone in their older 20s is going to be about 2.1 million.

19:04That's 25 to 29.

19:05Mindy Jensen:Well, let's look at your 30s, Scott. What do you think you need to do to be in the top 10 % in your 30s? 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 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.

19:46Mindy Jensen: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. 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 income, you take advantage of tax advantage retirement accounts, you do what Mindy just said, and you actually make sure you understand your market value.

20:40And you're either demanding that raise or being willing to switch jobs to get those promotions and raises. And you're not moving the goalposts. You're not continually spending all that you earn. I think that this is very achievable for the typical listener of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast, the typical listener household of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. 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 started 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.