Net Worth by Age Calculator

A small share of families hold a large share of the wealth: the top 10% of families by net worth had an average of $7,810,500 in 2022 (Table 2). That lifts the average (mean) a long way above the median. For all families in 2022, the mean of $1,063,700 was 5.5 times the median of $192,900. By age group it ranges from 3.9 times for families aged 45 to 54 to 4.8 times for families aged 75 or older.

So the median, the net worth of the family in the middle, is the better benchmark for a typical family, and the percentiles show how wide the range is: among families aged 55 to 64, the 25th percentile is $81,800 and the 75th is $1,122,200.

Net worth is the difference between a family's assets and its debts. The calculator groups the Fed's categories as follows:

• Cash and savings: checking, savings and money market accounts, certificates of deposit and prepaid cards. The Fed also counts health savings accounts and 529 education accounts here.
• Retirement accounts: IRAs, Keoghs, and 401(k), 403(b), thrift and similar accounts from current or past jobs.
• Other investments: stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other pooled funds held directly, savings bonds, the cash value of life insurance, annuities and trusts, and other financial assets such as cryptocurrency and loans made to others.
• Home, vehicles and other assets: the primary residence, vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, RVs, boats and aircraft), other real estate, and business equity.
• Debts: mortgages, home equity loans and lines of credit on the home, loans on other residential property, other lines of credit, education and vehicle loans, other installment loans (including buy now, pay later balances), credit card balances left after the last payment, loans against pensions or life insurance, and margin loans.

Some things are left out. Social Security and traditional (defined benefit) pensions are not counted, since their value depends on assumptions about the future; neither are employee stock options. Debt owed by a family business or on nonresidential real estate is subtracted from that asset instead of being counted as a debt, so enter a business or such property at its value net of its own debts.

The Federal Reserve Board has run the SCF every three years since 1989. For 2022 it interviewed 4,602 families, including an extra sample of wealthy families drawn from tax records, and weighted the answers to represent 131.3 million U.S. families. Balance sheets are measured at the interview: most took place between May and December 2022, and 25% between January and April 2023.

An SCF family is close to what the Census Bureau calls a household: the economically dominant single person or couple and anyone who shares finances with them. Its reference person is that single person, or in a couple the man in a mixed-sex couple or the older partner in a same-sex couple, and the age groups use that person's age. People on the Forbes 400 list are excluded from the sample.

If you are working toward financial independence, the FIRE calculator turns your savings into a target and a date, and retirement savings by age compares just your retirement accounts with the SCF.