September 26, 2005
PRETTY BIG NET:
US Household Net Worth Up 1.9% To $49.83 Trillion In 2Q (Campion Walsh, 9/21/05, Dow Jones)
U.S. households saw their total net worth rise 1.9% to a record $49.83 trillion in the second quarter of 2005, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.
Or, over four times the $11.7 Trillion GDP last year. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 26, 2005 6:14 PM
Or just shy of the GWP (gross world product)$55 Trillion...
Posted by: KRS at September 26, 2005 6:32 PMThat's about $300k per household.
Posted by: pj at September 26, 2005 7:00 PMPlug away 3%-5% of your salary into an IRA or 401K for 15-20-30 years, or so some sensible stock market investing, and there's no reason you can't retire with $2,000,000 in your accounts.
Posted by: ray at September 26, 2005 7:31 PMPJ: The census bureau says 111,278*10^3 households in 2003 (Statistacal Abstracts table 56). Let's say 1.15*10^6 now for a round number. $5*10^13 net worth/1.15^8 households = 4.35*10^5 $/household.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 26, 2005 9:31 PMOJ: that is $435,000 per household.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 26, 2005 9:56 PMRobert, he's not going to grasp it. At this point every finger and toe in the Judd household has been pressed into service; even the dog and the parakeet are trying to help; but 'tis all in vain. You should have just said it's a whole lot of money, and let it go at that.
Posted by: joe shropshire at September 27, 2005 12:14 AMThis number would appear to be driven almost entirely by inferred housing price appreciation. But don't worry, Alan Greenspan says he's going to "fix" that little statistical anomaly.
Posted by: HT at September 27, 2005 12:24 AMHT:
To the contrary, we have about as much saved in just mutual funds as the entire national debt.
Posted by: oj at September 27, 2005 7:18 AMOJ: actually, I was just taking another shot at Greenspan, who continues to infuriate me. His recent comments about homeowners mostly having enough equity to withstand his the effect of his corrections seems like the worst kind of reverse Robin Hood syndrome I've ever seen.
However, the $50 trillion number is relatively useless as an indicator without more data. Some of the things I'd like to know are: how it breaks down by asset class; how they calculate the value of pensions (e.g. NPV of estimated future benefits or total value of current assets or something else entirely?); the median and modal values; and how it overlays against a chart of family size.
Our brand alone should be worth a few trillion.
Posted by: ratbert at September 27, 2005 11:03 AMHuman capital? Orrin, I just got turned down for a big loan. They laughed at me when I offered the kids as collateral. Offered to throw in my mother, but they just laughed harder. Can you have a word with them?
Posted by: Peter B at September 27, 2005 11:40 AMPeter: I bet you forgot to list your share of BrothersJudd blog as an asset.
Posted by: David Cohen at September 27, 2005 12:43 PM