"The 30s are a real make-or-break decade for many people."

L

lrak

Recycles dryer sheets
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
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Since I'll enter my 30's next week, I found this interesting.


http://articles.moneycentral.msn.co...CreateaPlan/Your30sWhenYouNeedToGetAhead.aspx


Median net worth $44,200
Median net worth of top 25% $128,100
Median net worth of top 10% $317,800

Reasonable.

Median income $48,263
Median total debt $86,000

Not bad considering lots of people buy their first homes in their late 20s and early 30s.

Households with a pension 20.6%

More with pensions than I expected...

401(k) or IRA 53.4%
Median value of accounts $17,000

I wonder what that distribution looks like. The optimist in me says maybe 49% of 30somethings have an extra 0 on the end of that number. The realist says "Doh!"
 
Great job Laurence. My net worth at age 32 was about $0
 
Somewhat difficult to interpret... I'm assuming most of the numbers are values for individuals, but then they have "household" sprinkled in for other numbers.

Looks like I'm above median in most respects, below median in others...

Interesting, thanks for the post. Buncha other good, random articles relating to each line too. Yay!

-CC
 
Wow, those statistics really are sad. :-[

I cant see how the average person doesnt have at least 100k by the time they are 30. Personally I'm in the top 25% and only half way to 30. If I can be at this location with never making over 35k a year then so should everyone.

Eek I am mean!

Trixs
 
Laurence said:
Hey, in the top 10% for 30 somethings at least, and I'm only 32. Yay.
Click to expand...

Is that just "your" 50% of the marital assets, or you and your wife's assets combined?
 
100k in what? Personal debt? Personal Net Worth?

-CC
 
I cant see how the average person doesnt have at least 100k by the time they are 30.

----

Use your imagination a little. 4 years of college gets paid for with student loans. You get married young, have a kid, and buy a house. It's very easy to have a negative net work at that age.

Karen - also in top 10%, but I'm 37. Would have been in top 25% at 30.
 
Whew! I don't feel so bad at all! Lower on many items, but higher on the good ones (except the income!) I agree that our 30's are crucial for retirement savings! Nice to know my adult life is not 100% backwards!
 
I had around $61K in savings/investments when I turned 30, but it wasn't an easy thing to accomplish. I made a few bad mistakes in my 20's, such as settling for a mediocre job that was close to home and not all that engaging, compared to pushing myself for something better. Also bought a condo I really couldn't afford yet, and that put a strain on me. Then I went through a bad marriage that left me about $27K in debt when I was 26. I had to work two jobs for awhile to keep from losing the shirt off my back, so it's probably a miracle that I made it as far as I did by the time I hit 30.

I think that often there's just too much going on in your 20's...trying to get through college and get it paid off, get a decent job, deciding if you want to get married and start a family, etc, that it's hard for many people to save up an appreciable amount by the time they're 30.

However, by the time you enter your 30's, things should start to smooth out, and if you make the right choices, your savings/investments should start to soar. Most likely, you're making a lot more money in your 30's than you did in your 20's, so if you put that more towards savings and less towards houses, cars, vacations, and wardrobes that are out of your reach, putting money away should come easier.

I think in the end, things turned out okay for me, but I still attribute much of it to luck. While I had trouble affording my condo at the time, I still lucked out and bought it at the bottom of a downward slump. Just a few years earlier it would've probably cost $95-100K, but I got in at $84K. And that wreck of a marriage that forced me to take on a second job also got that debt paid down in 2 1/2 years, paying it off in about half the time that CCCS originally set up for me. And after that debt was paid off, I just took the money left over and invested it. I think I also got pretty lucky because when the markets tanked back in 2000-2002, I was able to keep on investing, so a lot of my investments were made at relatively low prices. I'm sure many people would have panicked during that time, and stopped investing.
 
trixs said:
Wow, those statistics really are sad. :-[

I cant see how the average person doesnt have at least 100k by the time they are 30. Personally I'm in the top 25% and only half way to 30. If I can be at this location with never making over 35k a year then so should everyone.

Eek I am mean!

Trixs
Click to expand...

Trixs: I don't think you're mean. Just inexperienced. ;)

Being smug is no way to make friends.

In any case, good luck to you.

P.S. I had a "negative" net worth at age 40.

-hit happens, and sometimes it comes at you in buckets. ;)
 
I've looked at these numbers every time they come out, and they always seem very strange to me. Only $86k in debt for the median? Almost 70% own a home, and doesn't everyone in their 30's with a home have over $86k in debt? And the way the numbers are presented is very strange. The median of the top 10%? Isn't that usually called the 95th percentile? Only 11% of people in their 30's have negative net worth? It seems like there are a lot more people with no money and a lot of debt. I'm not sure how they are valuing consumer assets like cars and furniture.

Still, it's always interesting to look at.
 
Only $86k in debt for the median? Almost 70% own a home, and doesn't everyone in their 30's with a home have over $86k in debt?

I think some of those figures might be mutually exclusive of each other. The $86K of debt is most likely the median for ALL 30-somethings, homeowners and renters alike. Homeowners will most likely have more debt because of the mortgage, while those who are renting will probably have much less.

FWIW, I think somewhere in the article it said that the median mortgage debt was $114K.
 
Andre1969 said:
Only $86k in debt for the median? Almost 70% own a home, and doesn't everyone in their 30's with a home have over $86k in debt?

I think some of those figures might be mutually exclusive of each other. The $86K of debt is most likely the median for ALL 30-somethings, homeowners and renters alike. Homeowners will most likely have more debt because of the mortgage, while those who are renting will probably have much less.

FWIW, I think somewhere in the article it said that the median mortgage debt was $114K.
Click to expand...

$114K as a median mortgage debt at first seemed too low to me, but compared with median income it actually seems pretty reasonable.

2Cor521
 
Jay_Gatsby said:
Is that just "your" 50% of the marital assets, or you and your wife's assets combined?
Click to expand...

Good question, there was some mixing of "household" and per person statistics in this article. FWIW our "household" NW is ~$400,000 including equity in the home (which they include here) so that puts us at around 200k each, so somewhere between top 25% and top 10% if that's how it was measured. I think most of the statistics are household, though, since the median income seems to match up with household median income I've read elsewhere.
 
SecondCor521 said:
$114K as a median mortgage debt at first seemed too low to me, but compared with median income it actually seems pretty reasonable.

2Cor521
Click to expand...

There was a thread on this board a while back talking about it the easiest path to ER is live in an expensive area ( high salary, faster home appreciation) and retire someplace cheap. There are a lot of places you can get a house for this price, and I'm sure this includes condos etc. My friends in Deleware (just outside Wilmington) got their house recently for $140,000, and it's a 5 bedroom with a full basement and hardwood floors throughout.
 
trixs said:
Personally I'm in the top 25% and only half way to 30.
Click to expand...
Half way to 30 would be 15 years old. You might want to rethink that statement.
 
Jarhead* said:
-hit happens, and sometimes it comes at you in buckets. ;)
Click to expand...

I've heard a corollary question related to this one.

Question: If life deals you lemons, you make lemonade. But what happens if life deals you sh*t?

Answer: You make fertilizer.
 
trixs said:
Wow, those statistics really are sad. :-[

I cant see how the average person doesnt have at least 100k by the time they are 30. Personally I'm in the top 25% and only half way to 30. If I can be at this location with never making over 35k a year then so should everyone.

Eek I am mean!

Trixs
Click to expand...

You evidently did not get any kind of post-graduate degree. Many doctors and lawyers hit their 30s with $100K in debt. Doctors who get really specialized could rack up a whole lot more than that.
 
At 33 I was just starting my first real job, which has continued until the present.
Ne worth was 0 but I had no college debt due to research assistantships while in graduate school. Now worth considerably more than I ever ventured to dream.
I really started to get with the program at age 41. From then on the sky was/is the limit.
 
At 33 my company started a new and strange thingy called a 401k plan featuring a equally new and strange thing called a S&P 500 Index fund.

Ah the 70's.

heh heh heh heh heh
 
lrak said:
Since I'll enter my 30's next week, I found this interesting.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the club! I've been a member for the past 9 weeks...boy, does the time fly! Enjoy your last days in the 20s while you can. :)
 
I didn't mind turning 30, I just wish I stayed there. 32 isn't bad either, but no matter how I dig my heels in, the birthdays keep coming.
 
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