Are you wealthy? There's an easy way to gauge how you're doing financially: Calculate your net worth, then compare it with the average net worth by age. That can help you benchmark how you stack up against your peers and aid in retirement planning.
Tip: If you want total financial flexibility when you retire, make sure a good chunk of your net worth is liquid, or easy to access and convert to cash quickly. Living in a $2.5 million home and having $2.5 million invested in an illiquid private equity fund is nice, but these assets are not as handy as a checking account, ATM, or brokerage account — or so-called "liquid net worth" — when you need to pay for things. "You can't eat your house," said Ted Halpern, regional president, senior managing director at MAI Capital Management. "You need cash flow to go out to dinner."
Net worth isn't just a calculation for the wealthy. Regular folks with 401(k)s, investment portfolios, real estate holdings, boats, and expensive antiques have a net worth, too. Keeping tabs on your net worth is just as important as monitoring your IRA or 401(k).
Remind me, what is net worth?
Net worth is the difference between your assets and your liabilities. Put another way, it’s what you own minus what you owe. These twin inputs give you a more complete picture of your financial situation.
Calculating your net worth isn't just about tallying the value of assets you own, such as a 401(k), shares of SpaceX, the Porsche in your driveway, or the antique chandelier in your dining room. You must plug your debt into the equation.
For example, if you have $1 million in your 401(k), own a home worth $1.4 million, and drive a Porsche valued at $100,000, it means you have assets totaling $2.5 million.
However, if you owe $1 million on your house, $50,000 on your car, $45,000 on a personal loan, and $5,000 on a credit card, that totals $1.1 million in liabilities. When you do the math, you realize your net worth isn’t $2.5 million, but $1.4 million.
To get a sense of your own net worth, try Kiplinger's Net Worth Calculator.
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 Fed won't publish the next update until late 2026). The net worth data show both the average and the median (the midpoint, with half the values 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 upward due to folks with extremely high net worths) was $1.06 million, according to the Fed. You might want to focus on the median net worth, as it's less affected by extremely wealthy individuals.
As the table shows, older Americans tend to have higher net worth because they've had their entire lives to accumulate assets such as 401(k)s, IRAs, real estate and equity in their own businesses.
Age Range |
Average Net Worth |
Median Net Worth |
|---|---|---|
Younger than 35 |
$183,500 |
$39,000 |
35 - 44 |
$549,600 |
$135,600 |
45 - 54 |
$975,800 |
$247,200 |
55 - 64 |
$1,566,900 |
$364,500 |
65 - 74 |
$1,794,600 |
$409,900 |
75 or older |
$1,624,100 |
$335,600 |
All ages |
$1,063,700 |
$192,900 |
Source: Federal Reserve "Survey of Consumer Finances (2022) (PDF)."
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.
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 equity with each mortgage payment they make and benefit from home price appreciation.
The average net worth for those with a college degree was $1,992,900, compared with $413,300 for Americans with a high school diploma, Fed data show. Similarly, the average net worth for homeowners was $1,525,200 compared with $153,500 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 March 2026, according to the Investment Company Institute. Total U.S. retirement assets totaled $47.6 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2026, down 2.5% from the end of 2025.
Your net worth isn't a static number; it fluctuates as asset prices rise and fall. For the past year or so, both stock and real estate prices have been hitting fresh records, but recent shocks, such as the war in Iran, have fueled volatility.
At the end of the second quarter, the S&P 500 was up 21% vs a year ago, though it has been very volatile in 2026. The broad market gauge posted a 9.6% gain through the end of June, despite falling 4.6% in the first quarter. The median price of an existing home was $403,200 in March 2026, down 2.2% from the end of 2025. Hot AI chip stock Micron Technology is up 640% over the past year, but on July 7 was down 25% from its late-June 2026 closing high.
The point is bull markets skew net worth higher. However, wealth can shrink if asset prices decline.
How does net worth differ between actual age groups? To find out, we looked at proprietary data supplied by Empower. Data is through January 2026.
Age by decade |
Average net worth |
Median net worth |
20s |
$139,243 |
$6,600 |
30s |
$325,952 |
$23,093 |
40s |
$750,578 |
$68,698 |
50s |
$1,364,050 |
$180,227 |
60s |
$1,577,907 |
$274,564 |
70s |
$1,456,151 |
$220,067 |
80s |
$1,331,143 |
$220,741 |
90s |
$1,267,467 |
$205,737 |
*Anonymized user data from the Empower Personal Dashboard as of January, 2026.
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 accumulate significant amounts of assets such as stocks, 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 in the 60s, largely due to the compounding of savings over their lifetimes and the fact that they're just entering retirement and starting to withdraw from their investment accounts.
How to build your net worth
Just because you’re not one of the world’s 3,428 billionaires (according to Forbes) doesn’t mean you can’t build a sizable net worth.
Here are some tips to help build your net worth.
Wealth isn’t built overnight. Building wealth and growing your net worth is about consistent savings, investing in a diversified portfolio and staying invested over the long haul.
"Discipline and consistency is the key to accumulating wealth," says Gabe Shahin, president and CEO of Falcon Wealth Planning. "The easiest way to do that is to set it (your automatic 401(k) payroll deductions) and forget it."
Shahin advises younger workers to start saving as early as possible to benefit from compounding.
While you might make a killing by buying a hot stock or going all in on a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, you’re better off spreading your money across 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 too 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 25 corrections (drops of 10% to 19.99%), according to data from CFRA Research, a Wall Street research firm.
While the average decline was 14%, it took just four months, on average, for the market to recover all its losses, says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.
The takeaway: Staying the course is the best way to avoid locking in losses, benefit from the recovery, and not harm 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.
Outpace inflation. If you want to grow your net worth, invest in assets that earn money while you're asleep. Think stocks, bonds and real estate.
"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 through 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 2026, the 401(k) contribution limit for workers under age 50 has increased by $1,000 to $24,500. The catch-up contribution limit for workers age 50 and older is $8,000 for a total 2026 401(k) contribution limit of $32,500. Thanks to the SECURE Act 2.0, savers ages 60 to 63 can boost their catch-up contribution to $11,250, for a total contribution of $35,750, according to the IRS. This super catch-up provision should help workers near retirement make up for leaner years when they might not have contributed enough.
If you earned over $150,000 in 2025 wages, you must make your catch-up contributions to Roth accounts (after-tax) starting in 2026.
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 advisers 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."
Workers who buy the forever home with a 30-year mortgage in their prime earning years must realize they are taking on a long-term debt obligation that will still need to be paid once they stop working, says Halpern. "That asset you think you own is actually an asset of the bank," says Halpern.
Own your own business. In 2022, nearly half of families in the top decile (i.e., the top 10%) of net worth owned a privately held business, according to the Fed (PDF). Starting a business you can scale and turn profitable while others work for you is another path to a high net worth.
Learn how others crossed the $1 million line. Check out Kiplinger's interviews with real people explaining how they made their first million.
Why tracking "liquid net worth" is key
One weakness of using net worth to track financial health is that it "doesn't capture the full picture of financial well-being," Kathleen Coxwell wrote in a blog post for Boldin, a digital financial planning site.
Net worth, for example, doesn't take cash flow into account. In other words, someone with a high net worth due to holdings in illiquid assets, or those that aren't always easy to sell, such as real estate or private equity, might not have enough cash on hand each month to pay the bills.
Shahin defines so-called "liquid net worth" as the ability to access your money within seven days. "So, your house is not part of your liquid net worth," says Shahin.
Liquid net worth includes checking accounts, money markets, assets such as stocks and mutual funds held in brokerage accounts, and even money in traditional 401(k)s and IRAs that can be taken out penalty-free after age 59½.
"Liquid net worth is significantly more important (for retirees), says Robert Baird, a wealth manager at Cornerstone Financial Services.
