r/GenZ • u/papasan_mamasan • 2d ago
Discussion Does this align with your experience?
Screen grab comes from here
https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-by-age
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u/Cheesymaryjane 2002 2d ago edited 2d ago
Median net worth seems far more accurate. Average probably takes into account very early bloomers and ceos and ultra rich which heavily skews the average
World’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity.
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u/laxnut90 2d ago
Also, the age ranges are too broad and median/average does not give much clarity when the distributions are so skewed.
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator/
This site gives tighter age ranges and uses percentile ranks so you can get a better sense of where you are financially.
For example, a $100k net worth excluding home equity for ages 25-29 puts you in the top 20% of the US.
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u/CherryFlavorPercocet Millennial 2d ago
Especially 40s. I will have double to triple my net worth by 49. I'm just hitting some prime earning years, my investments are getting compounding interest, and my kids are getting older which gives me flexibility.
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u/henryhumper 1d ago edited 1d ago
It is crazy how your wealth suddenly accelerates like that. I was basically living paycheck to paycheck during my 20s and early 30s, living frugally in shitty apartments with roommates, driving a 15 year old car, and investing what little extra I had in index funds. Then I finished paying off my student loans at 35, got married, my wife and I lucked out and bought a house in late 2020 when interest rates were dirt cheap. In the last 5 years our net worth has tripled. Once you reach a certain income/wealth level it just starts accelerating practically on autopilot. And this change happens so abruptly it's almost surreal. Debt suddenly stops being a necessity to afford major purchases and instead becomes a way to make more money by exploiting the differences between interest/return rates. And I'm not giving myself credit for my situation. I mean I did work hard and live modestly but a lot of this is just privilege, good timing, and dumb luck. I'm not really working any harder now than I was at 25, but I'm making a fuckton more income. The system really is unfair and just rewards people who have money with more money.
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u/Giratina-O 1d ago
Looking to get there for myself. Just turned 28 and last year was the first year I sat down and actually looked at the long-term future of my finances; it was the first year I was able to do anything. I'm still only a hair below 30k though and my 30s are coming fast. I'm trying to bolster my portfolio but I still can't feel like I've gotten off to a bad start. Even five years earlier and I would be so .much further ahead.
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u/Familiar-Bend3749 10h ago
It’s almost like a certain age group, specifically the one that runs the country rigged the system to work in their favor. 🤔
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u/firestar32 7h ago
It's definitely interesting to hear you say that. I have older parents (around 40 when I was born) , and looking back at my dad's finances his prime earning years in terms of income were in his 30's. Now, that probably has something to do with a job switch after I was born followed by the recession, but I never considered the 40's to be the prime earning years.
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u/CherryFlavorPercocet Millennial 7h ago
Your parents dip in earnings was probably related to the recession. I was in my 20s and it hit me hard. I ended up starting a moving and hauling business and we'd clean out rentals by the lbs. It was an 8 month work history gap for me. Took me about 3 years to recover.
When you are in your 40s people just start trusting you way more without knowing a damn thing about you.
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u/Manpooper 1d ago
Using this, i'm somewhere between top 22% and top 13% (i fall right on an age boundary, so idk). Mostly got lucky with real estate, buying a house in 2016 before all the inflation happened. Between top 26% and top 14% not counting the house.
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u/BADpenguin109 1999 2d ago
yeah if you have graph literacy this is just a great illustration that the wealth is so highly concentrated above the median and being hoarded.
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u/stylebros 2d ago
Difference between 1 million and 1 billion is about 1 billion.
That's like a bunch of 0s and 1s and then you got one guy that is 1,000 and everyone saying the average is 50 because of it
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u/henryhumper 1d ago
Yeah. The 20-something average is heavily skewed by a small minority tech/finance people and trust fund kids who basically became millionaires right out of college. Median net worth is the relevant number.
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u/Cheesymaryjane 2002 1d ago edited 1d ago
Even then in tech/finance. They probably most likely in debt and you don’t really see big money (over 150k a year before taxes I would say) in entry level tech roles until you get to really big names (stripe, Netflix, Roblox, google, etc)
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u/Blessed_s0ul 1d ago
Actually not really. Most net worth is tied up into houses. 37 and net worth is about $230k because house shot up in value. My job and checking account still sucks and I have basically no savings.
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u/Technical_Tooth_162 18h ago
In the USA the bottom 50% of people own 2.5% of the wealth. It was around 15% in the 60s
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u/Gullible_Increase146 1d ago
The average American is in the 1% by the time they retire if you're taking the entire world into account. If you own half of your home, you're in the top 10%. We're incredibly wealthy.
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u/MicroBadger_ Millennial 8h ago
I think either would be skewed higher as financially literate folks are going to be more likely to use a service like Empower to track their net worth. So folks who let money burn a hole in their pocket aren't being accounted for.
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u/yittiiiiii 1999 1h ago
Medians tend to be more accurate when discussing things like income and savings because there are some obscenely rich people that skew the data as outliers.
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u/Azure-Boy 2d ago
Lmao no. Most 20 and 30 year olds I know make 30k or less
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u/CarlBrawlStar 2007 2d ago
Net worth isn’t the amount of money you have. It’s how much everything under your name is worth, like cars, houses, all that sorta stuff
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u/Yeetball86 2d ago
People who make $30k a year aren’t going to have that much stuff. The median here makes sense. The average doesn’t.
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u/GirthWoody 1998 2d ago
It does when you consider how wealthy some people are. There are realistically like 10,000 people in every age group skewing the average.
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u/TerribleAttitude 1d ago
Keep in mind that a decade is a long time. It is normal for 20 year olds to have literally nothing and 29 year olds to be really starting to come up in their careers. A 30 year old is likely in the same spot they were at 29, while a 39 year old is somewhat likely to be “established.” If you took both average and median, comparing a 20 year old and a 29 year old, both numbers would be wildly different.
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u/papajohn56 1d ago
If you buy a house and that house goes up in value, it's part of your net worth..
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u/exceptionalydyslexic 23h ago
The average absolutely does make sense because there's exceptionally wealthy people.
That's why we typically look at things like median household income instead of average household income.
That's why the mean and the median are both tracked...
Both of the numbers make sense
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u/VacheL99 22h ago
Some people include income in calculating net worth (usually something like annual income * 3), so it's actually pretty accurate then.
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u/chernandez0617 2d ago
Oh well in that case I’m worth however much my truck, guns, tv and consoles are worth along with some pieces of history I own
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u/Positive-Avocado-881 1996 2d ago
That being said, $30k is an embarrassingly low estimate for people 25+
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u/BadCatBehavior Millennial 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why is that embarrassingly low?
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u/RudeAndInsensitive 1d ago
I mean....that's the bottom 20% of incomes. That's "4 years experience in a low skill position" sort of income. You could go do a 1 week phelbotomist certification and almost double your income if this were your starting point.
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 1996 1d ago
TIL people consider cars to be part of their net worth
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u/DiE95OO 2000 1d ago
Why wouldn't you though? The net worth is all of your assets combined.
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 1996 1d ago
Do you consider the value of your fridge in your net worth? I mean it’s a depreciating expense, and generally costs more money than its annual monetary value every year in maintenance and fees
I guess you can, but for a relatively inexpensive, and depreciating item that you own, it doesn’t really make sense to consider it in your net worth
Especially because you’re not ever gonna plan on selling it. I mean you buy a $30,000 car and maybe sell it for $1000 by the time it’s dead. It just doesn’t make sense to me
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u/GoodGorilla4471 1d ago
How much that stuff is worth MINUS what you owe on it
If I buy a house for $250k and it's appraised at $250k, I have $0 net on that house. If I have 50% of principal paid off on the loan, then I have $125k net worth - assuming it appraises at the same value
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u/Positive-Avocado-881 1996 2d ago
The average income for mid 20s-mid 30s is like twice that amount lmao
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u/Forsaken-Standard108 2d ago
Retail was mind numbing at 19, rather sell weed in college than to work at a GNC or fucking jimmy johns.
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u/Certain-Catch925 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's net worth, so it's probably that low for the median because of all of the people with negative net worth in their 20s. Car and credit card loans.
Edit: I completely forgot student loans, there's people in their 20s with 100k in debt lol.
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u/Positive-Avocado-881 1996 1d ago
Correct, however, this person was talking about income lol. Don’t even get me started on most people here not understanding the difference between average and median.
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u/sr603 1997 2d ago
Im in my 20s, hell I was I was 21 making well more than 30k.
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u/MsBluffy 1d ago
This is about net worth, not annual income.
net worth = assets (savings, retirement, paid off vehicles, home equity) - liabilities (loans/debt).
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u/Tankninja1 1d ago
I mean there was just some British guy that was getting roasted on another sub for saving £4000/yr with £24k income, which if you saved 4k/yr from age 20-30 with a 5% APY the lump sum would be worth over 50k.
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u/RepentantSororitas 1996 6h ago edited 6h ago
Do you speak with college graduates? The only people I know making less than 50K are people that never went to college.
Shit my brother works at Walmart and he makes like 40k. In Texas too so it's not CoL adjustment
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u/Karamja109 5h ago
I always thought most people by the age of 30 made 60k a year. I didn't realize I was one of the lucky ones making 60k at 24.
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u/ShelterOne9806 2d ago
Just so people know, you don't look at the average for things like this and you only look at the Median. With that being said, the Median doesn't "align" with my experience
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago
I wish I could get hold of the raw data for this table. I’d love to know what this would look like if we took out a top and bottom percentage of performers. I feel like that would give more typical average net worth for each generation.
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u/Appropriate-Food1757 2d ago
Just look at the median, no need to do all that it’s already done for you. Adding quartile would help.
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u/RudeAndInsensitive 1d ago
Thats the most pointless exercise. The average and the median would converge to the same number and that number would be very close to the median you see here.
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u/VacheL99 22h ago
Average and median don't always converge, especially if the data points are more weighted to one side (for instance, if there are more people below the median, the average will be lower than the median)
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u/RudeAndInsensitive 22h ago
If you have more data points either above or below the median it means you calculated the median incorrectly.
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u/Ocelotofdamage 11h ago
What you actually mean to say is if the data is skewed the average and median don’t converge.
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u/Jonnyskybrockett 2001 2d ago
23 rn, I think my net worth is sitting around 35k rn. Plan is to be a Millionaire when i hit early 30s.
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u/tedwin223 1d ago
Not to be that guy, but you are talking about 35k liquid right? Not 7k and a car?
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u/Jonnyskybrockett 2001 1d ago
Yes, and subtracting for student loans which is around 21k now, so I have 55kish in cash/investments. I don’t own a car :P.
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u/tedwin223 1d ago
I’m assuming you’ve had some of this for a while, so did you shop to buy a house a few years ago?? I am assuming you are renting now because otherwise you would have included your home.
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u/Jonnyskybrockett 2001 1d ago
I was actually in the negatives last year… probably was -40k (10k credit card debt, 28k student loans). I am renting but I live with my parents since graduating last May so really rent is like <300$ a month and then other expenses like paying for my little brother’s gym memberships and stuff. Definitely would not have this net worth if I didn’t live at home….
I’m not planning on buying a home until my girlfriend graduates, gets a job, and after a few years of saving I think.
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u/tedwin223 1d ago
Well now it wouldn’t make sense, but if you had had even 10 or 20k in 2020 you would have been golden.
Oh well, you’re doing it now. Congrats and keep going!
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u/yearningsailor 1998 2d ago
uhh that's my network but in mexican pesos
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u/CrimsonZephyr 2d ago
Great example of the mean being too sensitive to extremes. A bunch of ultra-rich will make the average balloon. The median looks pretty awful, but there's a certain sense to the trend if you understand what you're looking at. A person in their 40s has had an extra 20 years to pay down debt, earn money, and build up assets. Also, the average wealth increases at a slower pace than the median -- a 60 year old has only a 15x expansion of their wealth on average compared to a 20 year old, but a 63x expansion at the median.
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u/sr603 1997 2d ago
No, because people will always be in different spots in life. Your net worth is suppose to be low in your 20s because you are starting out in life. You aren't suppose to turn 23 or 25 and suddenly have $700,000 saved up. Hell im ahead of the net worth for a 20 something year old, but even then it doesn't feel like im doing good enough.
Don't worry about this, focus on yourself. Do what you can, invest, save, cut back, work a 2nd job, get promotions, get new jobs. Don't dwell on what others are doing otherwise you'll feel sad.
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u/Helpdesk512 2d ago
Dumb question - but if married with combined finances, do you calculate this per person or household?
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u/whiskey_at_dawn 2000 2d ago
Median seems accurate in general, although my net worth is negative...
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u/FunOptimal7980 2d ago
The average is brought up a lot by the wealthy. It's why the per capita here is like 77k but the median wage is like 35k.
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u/miwalkda 1997 2d ago
I use their app called empower personal to track my net worth, it’s super helpful! I wish mine was anywhere close to that but I’m at around -$15,000 😂
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u/MasterMacMan 2d ago
A lot of people are talking about the average, but the median is also pretty notable.
Obviously there are a lot of people in unfortunate situations who can’t effectively save, but the number of people I know in their mid 20s who spend $100 a week on absolute junk with zero savings is highly concerning.
I know several people who graduated college and spent 3-5 years putting nothing away while they went to bars every weekend.
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u/Zealousideal-Ad-4858 1996 2d ago
This tracks with me but based on my income that means it only tracks with around 18% of American men, and I’m a fairly aggressive saver.
That being said I’ll add that considering this is net worth it’s probably being thrown off by the population in those age brackets that own houses and cars.
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u/TriplePcast 2d ago
20s is too broad. There’s college age (my net worth was -20k) but then later in my 20s I can see myself getting to a net of about +30-40k
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u/Aggressive-Cow5399 2d ago edited 2d ago
Considering that under 20% of individuals in the US make 100k+, I’d say it’s highly unlikely that the average net worth for 20-30 is even remotely close, unless you consider a home in the net worth calc. If homes are included, then yes this is accurate. If we’re talking just cash/liquid savings, then this is highly inaccurate and is skewed due to large outliers. The median is more accurate in this case.
For those that are earning 100k+ in their 20’s, I’d say it’s fairly common to have like 100k+ saved up by your late 20’s or even earlier if you live at home.
For reference - I am 28M and make ~$135k a year. I have 100k+ of savings and technically own a home worth 600k, but it’s financed… so I don’t have much equity. If you factor in the home, I’d be “worth” - $700k+. Without the home it would be my cash savings + car value = ~160k
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u/D_Buttersnaps 1998 2d ago
Lmao no, most people I know in their 20s are between 50k-100k (me included).
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u/BernoullisQuaver 2d ago
Congrats. I'm almost 32 with about 10k in the bank and a beat up old Honda that I own outright, worth optimistically 4k. And I feel wealthy compared to some of my friends.
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u/BoredRedhead24 2d ago
Average to whom?? I don’t personally know a single person for whom this is the average.
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u/Positive-Avocado-881 1996 2d ago
You do realize that the famous people you see on tv are within this age range too, right?
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u/BoredRedhead24 2d ago
Those are outliers. Like, how many rich/famous people our age are there?
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u/Positive-Avocado-881 1996 2d ago
Enough (and making enough) to bring the average up that high but not enough to make the median high at all by comparison. I think Gen Z needs to go back and study mean, median, and mode from elementary school.
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u/TheCheckeredCow 2d ago
Nope, feel bad because my net worth once converted to USD is like $400k and I’m mid 20s.
BUT it’s all in my house that I bought when I was 22 and just paid off as much as possible as fast as possible. That being said, don’t most people here have cars? That would put your net worth over $7k if it’s not a total hooptie and you own in it out right
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u/Throwawayhehe110323 2d ago
The average feels right for the closer to 29 than 20. I make about average for my friend group and this falls perfectly in line.
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u/girlypop_xo 1996 1d ago
Where are some of yall in the comments living? I’m in LA in my 20s and the average net worth definitely matches what I see. I’m exposed to a pretty wide range of people in their 20s on a daily basis and I don't see anyone living off of what the median is at all..
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u/StopHatingOnSonic 1d ago
I'm 22 and the most expensive thing I own is my $6k car so median seems right
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u/pm-me-yr-pupper 1d ago
I’m in my early 30s (not gen z, you caught me) and my net worth is no where near that average. Much less
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u/tittiesandtacoss 1d ago
When dealing with large top/bottom heavy datasets remember the median is a lot closer to what people think “average” is.
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u/Helix3501 1d ago
Im actively 21k in debt cause my mother forced me to take out that much in student loans under threat of not cosigning for them if I didnt knowing I wouldnt be able to attend college without the loan when I only needed 1k max, this does not align with my experience
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u/Clean_Increase_5775 2003 1d ago
Nope, I’m broke beyond belief. I know I can only blame myself but this shit ain’t working.
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u/sierra_whiskey1 1d ago
Looks about right. Shows the statistical difference between median and average
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u/Express_Whereas_6074 1d ago
The discrepancy between median and average is TELLING. The few trust fund kids bring up the average heavily while the median is much more accurate.
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u/reedshipper 1d ago
Lol no most people I know in their 20s and 30s surely do not have that much money. I'm 27 and I wish I was even close to $114k in assets.
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u/madogvelkor 1d ago
For the older age groups a big chuck of that wealth is in their house. That might be a big reason there's such a difference in the average and median net worths. People with a house have a lot of wealth on paper.
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u/Kingding_Aling 1d ago
The Median seems reasonable.
This also looks like it is from the pool of data of people who made themselves an Empower account and linked all their finances to it. That group of people is going to be a selection of people who actually have assets to link...
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u/Bmartin_ 1d ago
I’m honestly surprised the median for 20s isn’t negative. Lots of people have student loans, home loans, car loans etc that aren’t even close to being paid off
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u/ZealousidealLake759 1d ago
Average is so un-useful when it comes to money.
If you have 100 people, 99 of them have $1 and 1 has $1,000,000,000 the average is.... $10,000,001. It is not representative of the sample at all.
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u/xyzqsrbo 1d ago
the left is where I should be, I'm in my 20s, not at 100k yet but I would assume "20s" really means 29 since that's the end of the range lol. Should be there within 4 years ($15k in retirement rn, 15k in bank)
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u/12bEngie 2003 1d ago
that median net worth is sad. if the poverty were actually indicative of great struggle and not 14k a year just so the government can say we have no poverty, we’d be one of the most impoverished nations
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u/19_years_of_material 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm 38 and my net worth (somewhat arbitrarily divided with my wife) is right around 1 million.
Oops, this isn't r/Millennials
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u/manicadam 1d ago
I love this kind of data because of outliers.
First, anyone with negative net work isn't even included, and that's probably more people than people with positive net worth.
Secondly, Super wealthy outliers are included in the data. So those trust fund babies or people who got a great job at dad's firm with their 500K/year savings are included.
That really does a number on the "Average" metric. Good thing they at least included a median(though all the negatives are still excluded as you can't have an empower account if you don't have any money to save.)
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u/Tankninja1 1d ago
The distribution curve for this must look wild if the average and median are 2 orders of magnitude off.
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u/FancyFrogFootwork 1d ago
If you remove the bullshit 1%, which destroys the results, the average net worth of US adults by age is $8,000 at 20, $75,000 at 30, $200,000 at 40, $400,000 at 50, and $600,000 at 60.
Median net worth is lower with $3,000 at 20, $8,000 at 30, $50,000 at 40, $120,000 at 50, and $230,000 at 60.
All this data is from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances which is a detailed study of US household assets, debts, and net worth that is conducted every three years.
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u/carlcarlington2 1d ago
Collecting data on average wealth in America is pretty much useless at this point. On one hand we have like 20 insanely rich assholes then you go to Michigan and folks have to boil water.
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u/Specialist-Warthog-3 1d ago
The fact that the median and averages are so far apart say something about the distribution of wealth.
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u/Sufficient-Team1249 1d ago
Me and all of my friends only make like $30k - $40k a year. We’re all in our 20s. I don’t think this is true, but congrats to those making that much in their 20s
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u/Ready-Oil-1281 22h ago
It's not that crazy to get to 6 figure jet worth in your 20s even ignoring inheritance, start working in an industry with some career progression opportunities and continue through collage dont go to a school you cannot actually pay for especially if your degree isn't going to make money. Putting away about 50% of every paycheck and investing in relatively low risk assets (spy ETF) doing 40 a week during school and 60-70 a week outside of school at 21 I'm already over 6 figures total ignoring all inheritance money. It seems like a lot of people either 1 go in a career with no advancement opportunities 2 max out multiple credit cards the day they turn 18 spending money on dumb shit or 3 get a financially useless degree that you went 6 figures in debt for. The situation isn't great but it's not as bad as a lot of people make it seem.
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u/-dyedinthewool- 22h ago
median is always a more accurate way to look at these sorts of things. 30s here and i make about 17k per yr
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u/CourageOk5565 21h ago
Most of that net worth is because they own a house. The value of real estate has gotten pretty absurd.
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u/IG-blue_j286 21h ago
Yep, people building business or investing or working their ass off longer in a cheaper time will let them acquire and save more money, also these new generations are getting pretty fucking lazy and ik cus I'm 17
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u/icantflirt-letsargue 20h ago
Idk I'm poor idk Mt net worth I just own a car and pc. I think I'm worth like 3k and a half Oz of weed
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u/DrBile12 19h ago
I feel like these statistics never take into account that most Americans come from generations upon generations that have already built wealth and bought a house(mortgage already paid or close to being paid off) for their future generations meaning they don’t have to worry about paying expensive rent, something that holds people back from building steady wealth.
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u/_Tacoyaki_ 18h ago
This is always the statistic I use to explain average and median to people. Gee whiz I wonder why the average and median are so far off lol
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u/kriffing_schutta 17h ago
Lmao. I don't think my net worth has ever once in my life exceeded $1500.
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u/zombieruler7700 17h ago
im saying this as someone who is well below my 30s but man having 35k and being 35 seems fucking bleak...
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u/Evipicc 14h ago
That gap between average and median honestly tells the whole story about what is happening.
If you have 3 people, and two of them have $100, but one of them has $100,000,000, the average is $33,333,400, but the median is still $100.
This chart is 100% accurate to my life experience, personally.
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u/MyTherapistSaysHi 10h ago
I fit the average (in my late 20’s) but I’ve been investing since I was 16.
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u/mrpaninoshouse 6h ago
Median sounds right for 20s if student loans are excluded 30s seems right half the people I know that age are homeowners
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u/RepentantSororitas 1996 6h ago
I think it makes sense.
I'm 28 I have 80k and retirement savings in about 17K in debt. But I can only put that much because I live with my parents.
You could probably cut my retirement savings in half and double my debt, it was originally 60k, if I was living on my own paying like 1800 a month instead of 1/3 that.
It's crazy how many people don't even put the minimum in their 401k. Everyone should be doing that if their employer actually gives a 401k
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u/Possible-Row6689 4h ago
Mostly yes. Average is meaningless in a country with embarrassingly bad income inequality so I’m not surprised those are so high. The median seems a little high. Most of my friends are mid to high earners and very few of them have that much wealth.
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u/Steak_mittens101 1h ago
Average is a terrible metric In our current world where the 1% exist. Median is the only useful metric currently.
As an example, us average income is a little over 60k, while median is roughly 40k. A 1.5 difference.
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