BiggerPockets Money Podcast - Net Worth By Age In 2025 (Are You Above Average?)

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Let's talk about the average net worth by every age, and how to make sure you save and invest enough money to stay on track. In this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench break down actual data to reveal the net worth benchmarks for the median, top 10%, top 5%, and top 1% of every age. If that isn’t enough they then highlight specific strategies that work at each age to hit those benchmarks—from aggressive wealth-building tactics in your 20s and 30s to business ownership and real estate scaling in your 40s, to preservation strategies in your 50s and 60s. Whether you're behind and need to catch up or ahead and want to optimize, this episode gives you the roadmap for your decade so you can hit your financial independence goals. 00:00 Net Worth by Age - Are You on Track? 01:09 Defining Net Worth and FIRE Portfolio 02:44 Analyzing Net Worth by Age 03:58 Key Takeaways from Net Worth Data 12:03 How to Be in The Top 1-10% in Your 20s 16:17 How to Be in The Top 1-10% in Your 30s 21:17 How to Be in The Top 1-10% in Your 40s 25:22 How to Be in The Top 1-10% in Your 50s 30:51 How to Be in The Top 1-10% in Your 60s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. And welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me as always is my worthy co-hosts, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. You're are the top 1% of Bigger Pockets Money co-hosts I've ever worked with. Well, thanks. 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 percent 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 percent, the top 5 percent, or the top 1 percent, with your 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, and your 60s. and have a great discussion about it. I am excited to jump in. First off, Scott, let's define net worth.

What does net worth mean? Networth 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, 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 directional. 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. Okay, Scott, what is your fire net worth?

Fire 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 stream, 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.

And 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 2020. 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 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 in about five-year increments all the way from 18 to 80. And it's pretty cool to see the distributions here. We've got the bottomed quartile, the median, the 50th percentile, the 75th percentile, the 90th percentile, the 95th percentile, the 95th percentile, the top 5 percentile, and then, of course, the top 1 percent or 99th percentile for the wealthiest Americans by age. 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, America's 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. 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 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 of much wealth in the 25th percentile, and it really escalates from there. So it's a pretty dramatic spread in terms of wealth.

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 Bigger Pockets 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% and 20% of their income. That's a really fascinating takeaway from this. To get into the top 95th percentile, something's got to go right here beyond that. There's probably got to be

some high income, 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 we 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 this is, 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 kind of like 35 to 50-year-old range. But the net worth jump here, I think, is probably got something to do with generational wealth transfer. 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 mean, I 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 five or one percent, 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. 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 percent 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 percent, 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. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact.

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country as a 22 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. 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 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. 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. 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 really really thoughtful about that approach. And that separation just compounds the older people get 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 will 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. 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? 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. And, you know, this, so we'll start with your 20s, and I think that to get into the top 1 to 10% 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 call it 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. 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. 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 the particularly marketable degrees and have really thrown themselves into their career in a hardcore way. Maybe some folks

who have been 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. 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 Mary 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 can 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 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 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 pretty high income, like a 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 level unless you're making that for most of your 20s and maybe cereal 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 in their younger portion of 20s, 1824. 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. 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. 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 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 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 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. Something else has got to go reasonably well to get in that top 5%. What do you think, Mindy?

Yep. 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. 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 smaller dollar side hustles. We're talking about consulting and starting a business, like a side business that is adjacent to the job that you're doing right now. I think that, you know, once we get into the top 1%, which is two, $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 a 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're 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. 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 to max out your retirement accounts and investing continuously. And I think that's the theme here, right? Because we go to the next slide here in our 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 continuing 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, 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 at this point. The difference between the top 10%, which is 1.18 to 1.42 million, and the top 5%, 1.5%, 1.4%. 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, $400,000 a year for a decade or 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, that used to be a startup and is now just a really great company. The Fang companies come to mind an established startup now. What is that called, 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. Yeah, 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 a business outcome. That is 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 reasonable high level of leverage. We do some real estate investors in that category, especially if they're raising capital or managing money in those areas. But you've 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. We have only hit the top 5% of this episode. We'll be back with more right after a short break. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if

like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on

achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code Pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates It's fast. Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just. got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com

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and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. Thanks for sticking with us. 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 one percent net worth by your 40s, it's because you have been working hard on these. You have been taking bets that 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 betrillionaire. 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. Awesome. Let's move to 50s. What kind of money are we talking about in our 50s in the top 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 the same things that you've been doing. You're saving and investing consistently. You are living on 80% or less of your take home pay.

And you are following a 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. 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, a little bit more than, tiny bit more than doubled for the top 10% in their 40s. But then it almost multiplied by a good chunk more than that, right? Almost like almost two and a half, maybe like 2.3 times as much here in their 50s. And what I think is happening here is

it's the same concept we described, right? 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 where. 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 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're not going into the early, the purchase of 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 30 to 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 you just can't make any big mistakes or have any of these big setbacks.

And you've got to be consistent following a reasonable playbook here. To get into the top 5%, where we got 4.4 to 6 million moving into this kind of fat fire or chubby fire area. Now, it's the same concept, the same people who are in that category and the 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 oom, 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%

for a 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 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 happened with Fang stock in order to get this category. I think this is approachable for a good number of people who are talented and capable in earning that upper middle class salary, but are not necessarily crazy lucky or have had that entrepreneurial outcome. 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 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 not spending 500,000 plus per year. So you're living a nice lifestyle, but you are stocking away a large percentage of that income. And you're investing in aggressive investments. 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 that there is, inheritance is a 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, and more of that as being inherited by people in their 50s and 60s. 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. 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. Some people are starting to probably transition to more drawdown style portfolios. But again, I think that this outcome of 2.9 to 3 million, depending on earlier 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-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 who have paid off that primary residence in there, 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 Bigger Pockets 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. 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. Top 5% 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 max 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 good, a well-run business. Yeah. I mean, this is somebody who had an enormous business outcome or truly remarkable career. I think an executive of a company you've heard of or, you know, professional athlete or big time author or, you know, 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 and $22 million 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 position there. You're not going to get here by earning a middle class or upper middle class salary in socking away your money and index funds most likely. Something went right at some 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% rule 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 it attached to that. that or those who have invested in aggressive high risk, high reward opportunities. 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 20 million bucks, sort of by and, you know, Brad Pitt's house or whatever, you know, in Malibu, whatever.

Like, 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 personal net worth. I agree with your assessment that most people will find themselves in the top 10 to top 5% of net worth. Yeah, most people who listen to bigger pockets 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 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. Yes, I meant to say, bigger pockets, money listeners. Well, just a quick note for those curious, again, we talked about us 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 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 comment section or join our Facebook group at Bigger Pockets Money. Just type in Bigger Pockets 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 these categories. Thank you so much for listening and joining us today. All right, Scott, this was super fun, but we should hop out of here. Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench.

I am Mindy Jensen saying got to dash cash.