How do you stack up?
How do DINKs stack up in the personal finance world?
Given our recent financial goal, to reach $400k by the end of the year, I was curious to see where we stack up against others.
Call me naive, but I never imagined that the median net worth would be as low as it is. The good news is that median net worth is on the rise, but the bad news is that the chart at the left is an improvement from where the nation was in 1998.
I also came across an interesting tidbit from the 2000 US census showing that married couples had a much higher net worth than singles of the same age. Married couples had a median net worth of $91,218, whereas single males had $24,659 and single female households had $23,028. I know that for James and I that there has definitely been a spike in what we can accomplish together rather than apart.
More applicable, I was able to find this chart on the overall nest egg savings of American households. Keep in mind that it says home equity is not included in these numbers. Thus it is a bit harder to figure out where we fit in the scale of things.
One way or another, we certainly have a passing grade. That feels like a pretty good reward for our efforts to provide ourselves with a solid financial base.
Enjoy your weekend!
Miel
Stumble It!
8 comments:
I think you also need to look at where your income is compared to the population as a whole. So as I'm for example on the edge of the top 20-25% by income I should be looking at where the edge of the 20-25% by net worth are for my age group to get a rough comparison. I'm still doing pretty good by that measure but not so spectacularly as when I compare myself to the national median.
The scary thing is I'm above the median - if barely. If I didn't have the debt I would be so much further along. The only negative thing about comparing yourself to the median is that the extremes skew the averages in my opinion.
Personally I compare myself to where I would be if I was making the same amount of money had I been debt free and saving it.
Extremes would skew the mean average -- not a median average. Hence the reason why median is almost always used over mean.
I calculated my husband's and my combined net worth, so do I just halve it to figure out my own, or should I figure out my own, individually? I guess I'm confused about if your graph is for individuals, or if couples can use it too, as a guide.
My apologies for any confusion. It is a bit tricky, as the first graph is for individuals and the second is for households.
For easy math I would just take your joint net worth and then half it for a good ball park. James and I input each of ours separately and it feeds into one summary page for joint net worth.
I also agree with previous comments on judging yourself on yourself. We look at how we are doing in comparison to our current goals. Thus even if we stack up well, we still have work to do.
Cheers,
Miel
Cool, thanks. This is the first time I've calculated our net worth, and it's been pretty refreshing. I think we're doing decent for our age groups, but since we recently paid off all our debt (except the house), it was awesome to only see the mortgage in the "liabilities" column. Now that the other debt is gone, I think we're better prepared to start looking at increasing our net worth. One more question: do you prefer to revisit the net worth every month, or is once a quarter or every six months okay?
MVP, thanks for your comment. Check out our blog tomorrow and I'll answer your question on how often to do your net worth.
Cheers!
Miel
yeah the median is pretty sad.
i guess the average person isn't well off, even if they can get a loan to buy whatever crap they feel like.
Post a Comment