Have you ever wondered about the average net worth by age? Today it is going to be all about how you can go about calculating your net worth and comparing it to other people that are around your age.
Now the average net worth by age will probably shock you, hopefully in a good way. And the average wealth by age between somebody who’s like 20, or someone who’s 30 or 40, there’s a huge gap, especially in this day and age where nearly everybody is in debt, it’s great to see where you’re at compared to other people who are around your age.
This is most important if you’re a millennial, or you’re a young person reading this, because you’re just going to be shocked at what the average net worth is for your country, for your gender, for your age.
I’m also going to compare it to other countries, and so you can get a really good perspective of where you’re at in the world and how lucky you really are if you’re reading this from a first world country.
It is important to note that this information is based on the United States. So it’s not Canada, it’s not Australia, it’s not anywhere else. It’s the United States, so do keep that in mind.
This is information from wallethacks.com.
| Age of Household | Median Net Worth |
| Under 35 years old | $6,900 |
| 35 to 44 years old | $45,740 |
| 45 to 54 years old | $100, 404 |
| 55 to 64 years old | $164, 498 |
| 65 to 69 years old | $193,833 |
| 70 to 74 years old | $225,390 |
| 65+ years old | $202, 950 |
| 75+ years old | $197,758 |
This is also calculated based off of households. So, the median net worth for everybody under the age of 35 is $6,900. So this is everybody grouped together.
So 18 through 35, all of those grouped together and then you take the median of all that, it’s $6,900. So it’s not very high.
This could be due to several factors, I think a lot of it has to do with how much debt people are in, I mean, even people who become doctors under the age of 35, probably have a negative total net worth ’cause they have to pay like $100,000 to get their doctorate.
But it also could be due to just making poor choices. So for instance, buying an expensive car that you can’t afford, going into debt for that, taking out a payday loan, not saving, not investing your money, not keeping a budget, spending way more than you need to on things like food.
All of these things contribute to this low $6,900 median net worth.
Now moving up to the 35 to 44-year-old age bracket, it seems like this is the age where people kind of start to get their stuff together, they’ve got a steady job, they’re saving money, they’re starting to invest, maybe think about retirement. And so their net worth jumps up to about $45,000, 46,000 almost.
Moving on to the 45 to 54-year-old age bracket, they’ve finally hit $100,000 median net worth, so probably around like 49-50 years old, and people hit that $100,000 median net worth.
Now I will go ahead and skip to the very last age bracket here, the 75 plus. So generally, you see that the net worth actually goes down a little bit and your highest net worth is between 70 to 74 years old.
I think the reason for that is because people tend to retire around 65 to 70. And, their peak net worth is probably around the time that they retire, just because after they retire, they’re going be living off of their retirement savings.
Now, it’s a little scary to think that most people in this age bracket only have $225,000 saved, because that’s simply not enough to retire on.
A lot of people within this age also might have a pension. That’s something that was very common back in the day, and it’s becoming less and less common. So it’s something that we can’t really rely upon anymore.
And then, of course, they also have social security to help them, which is something that may not be around forever. There’s a lot of people saying it’s going to be over within the next 10 to 20 years. So don’t rely on that either.
It’s a little bit scary to see that people are actually living off of $225,000 a year net worth, and chances are you won’t be able to do that by the time you get that age. So it’s very, very important that you start saving and investing as soon as you can.
The big take away from assessing average net worth by age is to start investing early.
The data on this next one was gathered by thecollegeinvestor.com. It’s a really good study they did.
This actually looks year by year at the average millennial net worth. At the bottom here, at the age of 18, you have a net worth of negative $8893. Because a lot of people at the age of 18, they take out college loans, and they have to pay for that. You don’t get to a positive net worth until the age of 31.
If you’re reading this, and you’re under 30 years old, and you have a negative net worth, you probably are very upset about that. But guess what? Almost everybody else under 30 years old, also is in the negative. So if you’re under 30 years old, and you have a net worth of $100, you are better off than most people.
Now do keep in mind, this is the average and not the median. They’re calculated a little bit differently. So you can’t compare this one to the first study above.
The interesting thing to note here is like I mentioned earlier, past generations had other things that they could count on for when they got older.
For instance, baby boomers had pensions, and they had social security as well as other programs that would help them out when they got older.
Generations before the baby boomers, they relied completely on their family. So, when you got old, your family would take care of you. That doesn’t always happen in this day and age just because a lot more people rely on the state.
Another thing I want you to notice here is once they actually get back to that point where they have a positive net worth, their net worth starts going up extremely quickly, it starts compounding, and the reason for that it’s probably because they’re starting to invest and they’re starting to go into retirement accounts and savings account.
The thing is most people don’t start doing this until around 30 to 35 years old. So, if you just start doing this at a younger age, you’ll have a huge jump start on everybody else, and I talk about this in a lot of my writing.
The difference in just a few years like 3 years, 5 years, 10 years can make an absolutely huge difference in the long run when it comes to the power of compound interest, and how your investments and savings can be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars higher than other people if you just start investing the same amount, just a little bit earlier.
I also wanted to go into your average net worth by gender a little bit.
So earnest.com did a study where basically they compared a lot of different things, but the most interesting one was gender.
As you can see here, the male gender has $12,188 net worth, whereas females have $5,541 net worth. So that’s about a 6 to $7,000 difference, and there’s a lot of reasons for that.
But the biggest reason they found, if you go to the bottom here, the biggest difference here if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the study was investments and retirement savings.
Men had $17,000 almost in their retirement savings and $10,000 in their investment savings, at the same age as women. Whereas women only had $12,000 and about $7000. So that makes up the majority of that $6,000 to $7,000 difference right there.
For some reason, men are deciding to invest and save for retirement at an earlier age than women.
This write-up on the average net worth by age would not be complete if I didn’t also go over average salary by age. From the age of 20 to 24, the average salary is somewhere around $29,000 a year for people who are working full time, as you get a little bit older, it increases quite a bit to about $41,000 a year almost $42,000 from the age of 25 to 34.
At age 35 to 44, it jumps quite a bit again about $51,000, that’s another $10,000 jump, that’s pretty significant.
But this is where it gets interesting, right here guys, from 45 to 54, it only raises to about $52,000. That’s only a $1,000 jump.
So as you can see, the increase from ages 35 to 44, to 45 to 54. That 10 year difference does not make much of a difference, and I’m not sure what the reasons for that are, there could be a million different reasons.
The first thing that comes to mind is companies do tend to try and hire younger people, probably because they don’t have to pay as much for health insurance and that sort of thing, I don’t know though, I honestly don’t know.
However, it is something to keep in mind if you’re someone who’s thinking about trying to retire early, maybe retire by the age of 45 or so. Which is absolutely possible if you start investing early and you make really good choices like budgeting and making good career choices.
Read: How to Make 100k a Year Without a College Degree
If you do want to compare yourself to other people that are the same age, there is a really good site to do that. It’s called stackmeup.com. If you haven’t done it already, you should head over there and just check it out just to see where you’re at compared to all of your peers.
I want to state again that this average net worth by age is compared to your peers in the United States of America.
So let’s just quickly go over and check how the rest of the world is doing.
I wasn’t able to find any really good research by age or gender or anything like that, but overall, adults in the United States of America have a $65,000 net worth, and that’s median. And then for mean, it’s about $391,000 net worth, and this is by far the highest of anywhere in the world.
The next one would be Europe, China, and then Latin America, and then the rest of the world. So if you live in the United States or another first world country, you have a ton of opportunity.
When they break it down by country, Iceland has the highest median wealth per adult, then Australia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Singapore, Spain, Norway, Italy, Taiwan, Malta, Ireland, South Korea, Austria, and then the United States.
So even if you’re kind of struggling a little bit in the United States, you’re somewhere in the middle, or maybe you’re below average, you’re still doing pretty well compared to the rest of the world. That’s just something to keep in mind.
I think business is moving towards being a little bit more international than just advertising to the United States. So skills that you gain in the United States you can probably take and then use arbitrage, make a lot more money somewhere else while you’re living there, and then have a much lower cost of living.
This is a really big opportunity that you could take advantage of in the next 10 to 20 years. I hope this writing on the average net worth by age was insightful.
What is a good net worth by age according to you?