Millionaires In America And The Richest Person In Each State

Millionaire.  Being one still has a certain aura about it.  A million of anything is a lot for sure, but it’s not what it used to be.   

I vividly remember my science teacher in middle school running a simple program on what was surely one of the earliest home computers at the time. It was probably a Tandy or a Commodore 64.  We all watched in anticipation as he used the BASIC programming language to command the computer to print 1 million zeros across the screen. 

It took hours.  The cursor just kept going back and forth printing zeros.  At the end of the day we went back to check and it was still going.  I remember thinking, “dang, 1 million is a big-ass number…”

But having a million dollars now has prestige mostly from the legacy of the word.  Sure if you have a $1 million net worth or more you are among the richest of households in America, and compared to most of the world you’re in the stratosphere.  But it’s not like you can wipe your butt with $20’s and live like the millionaires of yore. 

What has inflation done to $1 million? The story I told above was probably from 1982 or so. 

• $1 million in 1982 is now worth $2,720,795
• $1 million in 2019 would have been the equivalent of $367,539 in 1982. 

Three-hundred and sixty-seven grand in 1982 was still a crap-ton of money, but only a little more than a third of the way to millionaire status.

 

Millionaires In America

According to Kiplingers “6.21%, or 7,698,765 U.S. households out of 123,942,960 total households, can now claim millionaire status.”  They also listed out data for the percentage of millionaires by population in each state. 

But they didn’t make maps, so they hired me. 

No, really they didn’t, I just made the maps for free because I’m a bit weird that way and enjoy unpaid labor.  (click on the map for a larger version)

 

 

I expected D.C. to be the highest because it’s a city and not a state, but no.  New Jersey takes the top spot, who would’ve thought that?  Besides Bruce, JonBon, and the cast of Jersey Shore there’s obviously some other folks banking coin in the good ole’ turnpike state. 

The Top 5:

• New Jersey – 8.95%
• Washington D.C. – 8.94%   
• Connecticut – 8.89%
• Maryland – 8.85%
• Massachusetts – 8.60% 

Total domination of the top spots by the northeast.  The brunch-belt continues to thrive.

The Bottom 5: 

• Mississippi – 3.68% 
• West Virginia – 3.84% 
• Arkansas – 3.89% 
• Kentucky – 4.38% 
• Idaho – 4.53% 

No real surprises here, except maybe Idaho. 

Now let’s get to the fun stuff.  A Forbes article lists the richest person in each state and their net worth.  Again, yours truly mapped that out. (click on the map for a larger version)

 

 

So of the richest person in each state, the poorest of the 50 is worth $300 million.  That would be Leonard Hyde and Jonathan Rubini of Alaska who are real estate tycoons. 

The richest is of course Jeff Bezos who even after his divorce is still worth $157 billion, give or take a few dollars.  I say that because that was his net worth when the Forbes article was published in June.  It obviously rises and falls a lot depending on Amazon’s stock price and he often loses or gains more money in a few hours than the GDP of many African countries. 

Only 5 states lack a billionaire – Alaska, Vermont, New Mexico, Alabama, and Delaware.  I’m sure that situation will be remedied soon.

What $1 Million Means For Financial Independence

If you’ve already reached that coveted millionaire status or have it as a target one day, does that make you financially independent? 

The default 4% rule of financial independence says you’re essentially FI if you have 25x your annual spending.  So if you’re worth $1 million that means you can spend $40,000 per year.  This is assuming you have the money invested of course and is only based on past market performance and inflation numbers. 

My annual spending is almost always below $40,000 per year, except the time spent more than that on a two week vacation.  In 2017 I spent less than $30,000, but I usually fall somewhere in the $30 – $40k range. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average expenditures “per consumer unit” for 2018 were $61,224.  So using that number, the average ‘consumer unit’ (yay we’re all robots now…) would have to accumulate $1,530,600 to be financially independent, according to the 4% rule. 

That means the average American would not be financially independent if they were worth $1 million. 

So it’s important to remember that many of those millionaire households that make up 6.2% of the American population are not financially independent, simply because of how much they spend. 

Your turn – I don’t expect you to reveal if you’re a millionaire or not, but let’s flip it around – how much do you spend per year?