Common Millionaire Household

One million dollars is a lot of money, and for most people, it can seem so far out of reach it might as well be impossible. However, a lot of households have at least that in financial assets, which doesn’t count the value of non-financial assets like a house or car.

Shown in the chart below, based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, 1 in 11 households were millionaires in 2022.

Household Financial Assets

Millionaire status is maybe not as rare as it seems.

When you go off net worth, which counts non-financial assets (and debt), the percentage of millionaire households increases. About 1 in 6 households were millionaires, which seems surprising.

Net Worth and Financial Assets

How much you have depends on how you count.

Before you start to lament about your own net worth, it’s probably best to consider that a high percentage of the 1 in 11 (or 1 in 6, depending on how you count) are older and had more time to save and to earn a higher income. As we’ve seen, age matters. I am sure geography also plays a part.

That said, knowing that millionaire status isn’t impossible and actually achieved by many, maybe it’s something worth striving for.

Notes

The data comes from the Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve Board. They put out numbers every two years. Analysis and the charts were done in R, with editing in Illustrator.