Are you rich? The average net worth by age can help you benchmark your financial success against your peers and aid in retirement planning. But when most people hear the term net worth, their thoughts turn to the world’s richest people — billionaires like investor Warren Buffett or superstar singer and songwriter Taylor Swift. However, regular folks with 401(k)s, investment portfolios, and real estate holdings have a net worth, too. There’s a lot you can learn about your financial strength by calculating your net worth and seeing where you stack up versus others around the same age or stage of life. Think of your net worth as a scorecard.
Net worth isn’t just about tallying up assets you own, such as a retirement savings account, shares of a publicly traded stock, the Ferrari parked in your driveway or the Andy Warhol painting hanging in your den. You must plug your debt into the equation. Net worth is the difference between your assets and your liabilities. Put another way, it’s what you own minus what you owe. Both inputs give you a more complete picture of your financial situation.
For example, if you have $500,000 in your 401(k), own a home worth $500,000, and drive a BMW worth $100,000, it means you have assets totaling $1,100,000. But if you owe $400,000 on your house, $50,000 on your car, and $10,000 on your credit card, that adds up to $460,000 in total liabilities. When you do the math, you realize your net worth isn’t $1.1 million, but rather $640,000.
Average net worth by age stats
Below, we highlight net worth statistics through 2022 from the Federal Reserve’s “Survey of Consumer Finances” (the most current data available; the next update won’t be published by the Fed until late 2026). “This survey (which is conducted every three years) is an important source of information on the financial well-being of American families, Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a letter to prospective survey participants.. The net worth data show both average as well as median (a midpoint with half higher and half lower).
Let’s start with the big picture. The median net worth of all Americans in 2022 was $192,900. The average net worth (which skews to the upside due to folks with extremely high net worths) was $1.06 million, according to the Fed. You may want to focus on the median net worth number, as it is less affected by those who are extremely rich.
As the table shows, older Americans tend to have higher net worth, as they have had their entire lives to accumulate assets, such as 401(k)s, IRAs, real estate, and equity in their own business.
Source: Source: Federal Reserve “Survey of Consumer Finances (2022).”
Knowing your net worth can offer valuable insights into your money habits and future goals, says Tim Steffen, director of advanced planning at Baird Private Wealth Management. Net worth offers a window into your investments and the assets you own and also highlights all the financial liabilities, such as money owed on mortgages, student loans and credit cards.
“Knowing how all your assets and liabilities fit together is a big part of understanding your net worth,” says Steffen.
Not only can knowing your net worth help you budget better, but it can also help you better estimate when you’ll be able to retire.
“You may have a good handle on what you spend every year, what kind of lifestyle you want to live, but you have to know if you have the resources available to support that during your retirement years,” says Steffen.
Key factors that impact net worth include education level and whether households own their home or rent. Homeowners can build home equity with each mortgage payment they make and benefit from price appreciation. The average net worth for holders of a college degree was $2,003,400 versus $413,300 for Americans with a high school diploma, Fed data show. Similarly, the average net worth for homeowners was $1,530,900 compared to $154,900 for renters.
Retirement savings are also a key component of Americans’ net worth. Retirement assets accounted for a third (34%) of all household financial assets in the U.S. at the end of December 2024, according to the Investment Company Institute. Total U.S. retirement assets totaled $44.1 trillion at year-end 2024.
What makes up net worth?
As you can see from Kiplinger's Net Worth Calculator, your net worth is comprised of various financial assets and liabilities.
Assets may include the following:
- Cash (checking and savings accounts, CDs, savings bonds)
- Retirement accounts (IRAs, 401(k)s, Keoughs and Pensions)
- Life insurance
- Investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.)
- Home (market value of any homes you own)
- Property (cars, jewelry and other collectibles)
Liabilities. On the other side of the ledger, liabilities include money owed on mortgages, home equity loans or home equity lines of credit, credit cards, and installment loans, such as money you borrow to buy a car or pay for college tuition.
So, how does net worth differ between actual age groups? To find out, we looked at proprietary data supplied by Empower.
*Anonymized user data from the Empower Personal Dashboard a/o Nov. 4, 2024.
It’s no surprise that younger people have a lower net worth. They’re just starting their careers, typically don’t earn as much as older workers, and have yet to start accumulating assets such as stocks and bonds or real estate. Net worth tends to swell when people hit their 40s and 50s, as they’re more apt to be moving into their peak earning years and are starting to benefit from the appreciation of assets in their workplace retirement accounts, their homes, and other investments. Net worth tends to peak when people hit their 60s, largely due to the compounding of savings over their lifetimes and the fact that they are just reaching retirement and just starting to take withdrawals from their investment accounts.
How to build your net worth
Not everybody can become a billionaire trading stocks and buying companies like Buffett. Or scale a business as large as Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. Nor does everybody have the capital to become a real estate investor or possess the entrepreneurial skills to become their own boss.
But just because you’re not one of the world’s 3,028 billionaires, according to Forbes, doesn’t mean you can’t build a sizable net worth.
Here’s some tips to help build your net worth.
Wealth isn’t built overnight. For most people, “slow and steady wins the race,” said Steffen. Building wealth and growing your net worth is about consistent savings, investing in a diversified portfolio, and staying invested over the long haul. And while you might make a killing by buying a single hot stock or going all-in on a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, you’re better off spreading your money out among several investments. “A big part of growing net worth is having a diversified portfolio,” says Steffen. “Putting all your eggs in one basket can be a great way to create wealth if you can hit a home run. But it’s a horrible way to keep wealth because that home run can turn into a strikeout the next day.”
Buy assets that appreciate in value. You can’t build wealth by playing it safe and hiding your money under the mattress, earning a zero return. “Your money’s not going anywhere, but it doesn’t do anything for you, either,” says Steffen. “The first part (of growing your net worth) is you’ve got to save your money. The second part is you have to invest your money. The third part is you have to stay invested.”
Keep calm in rough markets. Staying the course is particularly important when stocks hit a rough patch and the benchmark S&P 500 suffers a correction, defined as a loss of 10% or more from a recent high. Since World War II, the broad market gauge has suffered 24 corrections (drops of 10% to 19.99%), excluding the March slump, according to data from CFRA Research, a Wall Street research firm. And while the average decline was 14%, it took just four months, on average, for the market to recover and get back to breakeven, says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. The takeaway: staying the course is the best way to avoid locking in losses, benefitting from the recovery and not doing harm to your net worth.
“I like to say that stock market history can serve as ‘virtual Valium,’ since it can help you sleep better when you know how quickly the market tends to get back to breakeven from declines,” Stovall said.
If you want to grow your net worth, invest in things that make money for you when you are sound asleep. Think stocks, bonds, real estate. Make sure your money is working hard for you. “Finding assets that appreciate is really the key to building wealth,” says Tara Lawson, a senior wealth planner at US Bank Private Wealth Management. “It’s that compounding interest, that compounding growth. You’ve got to outpace inflation. Whatever your risk tolerance is, make sure your money is performing for you.”
Take advantage of workplace retirement plans. Your 401(k) can quietly build your net worth over time. The winning game plan of consistent savings from payroll deductions, the benefits of growth, taking advantage of employer matching contributions, and benefiting from the tax-advantaged perks of retirement plans can’t be overemphasized. “It’s not a sexy strategy, but investing for the long term works,” says Lawson.
For 2025, the 401(k) contribution limit for workers under 50 has increased by $500 to $23,500. The catch-up contribution limit for workers over 50 remains unchanged at $7,500 for a total 2025 401(k) contribution limit of $31,000. Starting in 2025, thanks to the Secure Act 2.0, savers ages 60-63 can boost their catch-up contribution to $11,250, according to the IRS. This super catch-up provision should help workers near retirement make up for leaner years when they may not have contributed enough.
Don’t load up on debt. Since debt is subtracted from your assets to determine your net worth, the less debt you have, the better, notes Steffen. “I often get calls from advisors who say that they have a really high-net-worth client with X millions of dollars, and they’re going to be fine for retirement,” says Steffen. “I counter, ‘Well, how do we know that?’ Maybe they have a lot of money, but maybe they spend a lot, too.” Net worth is not just about what you have, but what you owe, he stresses,
Own your own business. In 2022, nearly half of the families in the top decile of net worth owned a privately held business, according to the Fed. Not everybody, of course, will be as successful as Elon Musk. But starting a business that you can scale and make money while others work for you is another path to a high net worth.
Average net worth in the U.K.: how does the U.S. compare?
According to Kiplinger’s sister site MoneyWeek, the average net worth across the pond in the U.K. is £305,000 (currently equivalent to $407,607) when taking into account all ages, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (collected between 2018 and 2020 and published in September 2023).
This figure is, like in the U.S., skewed by the extreme wealth held by top earners in the country.
For a more representative understanding of net worth distribution in the U.K., it is best to use the median net worth, which stands at £125,000 ($167,052 in U.S. dollars).
This is lower than the USA’s median household net worth of $192,900, which includes all age groups, according to the Federal Reserve's 2022 “Survey of Consumer Finances,” the most recent data available. On the bright side, the cost of living in Britain tends to be lower than in the U.S.. Furthermore, the latest available data in the U.S. was from 2022, rather than 2016-2020 in the U.K.
As in the U.S., there is also a wide disparity in average net worth among different age groups in the U.K.
In the U.K., the median net worth of those between the ages of 25 to 34 is £109,800, while it swells to £502,500 for those aged 65 to 74; this is, in part, due to retirement accounts and assets growing over time.
