The Wealthometer Is An Easy Way To See How Wealthy You Are Compared To The Rest Of America

Written by C. James on July 19, 2021 updated December 5, 2024

It is always a good time to sit back and take stock of your life. And while most of us aren’t in the one-percent (like Bezos, Musk and the rest of the wealthiest billionaires), we live in the land of opportunity so we can’t be doing that bad, can we?

The Wealthometer is here to tell you that answer. You might not like what it has to say, but it will at least give you an honest look at how you stack up against your fellow American’s in terms of personal finances.

Created by Harvard University economist Maximilian Kasy, the Wealthometer is a simple tool that uses a few variables to almost instantly tell you how your finances compare to the rest of the country.

Before you start entering your financial information, the Wealthometer asks you to guess where you think you will land on the spectrum of wealth. This is likely for you to see just how aware you are with the reality of your own financial situation.

Now on to the inputs!

All you need for this is to know what county you live in (if you can’t do that, you have bigger issues), an overall value of all your physical assets (real estate, cars, expensive jewelry, etc), an overall value of all your financial assets (401K, IRAs, investment accounts, savings accounts, etc), and all the debts you have (mortgage, car payments, student loans, etc). If you don’t know exact numbers, you can just use a mostly accurate ballpark figure. If you don’t know a ballpark figure, leave the Wealthometer immediately and get your finances in order.

After you enter everything, just hit the calculate button and then you can see where you fall. It’s that easy.

Go ahead, give it a try. It’s fun. Especially if you’re in the 90%!