Net Worth by Age 2026: We Ran the Numbers on the New Fed Data

Most "net worth by age" pages you'll find were written off the 2022 survey, and many quote the average, which is a terrible guide to what a normal household owns. So we took the Fed's new tables and did the work: change by age, mean versus median, net worth as a multiple of income, renters versus owners, and what it would actually take each month to move from one age bracket's median to the next. The findings come first. What to do with them comes after.

Net worth by age in 2025: the new Fed table

Net worth is everything a family owns (cash, retirement accounts, home equity, cars, business stakes) minus everything it owes. The Fed surveys roughly every three years, and every figure below is already adjusted to 2025 dollars, so the 2022 and 2025 columns compare like with like.

Median net worth by age, 2025 (bar length relative to the 75+ group)

Finding 1: the under-35s went backwards, and it is not about lattes

Young families were the only big group to lose roughly a quarter of their typical wealth in three years: from $42,700 to $33,000, a drop of $9,700 in today's dollars. Meanwhile families headed by someone 75 or older jumped 37% to $504,900 and are now the wealthiest age group on the median measure. As CBS News reported on the day of release, older households were carried by retirement assets and a rising stock market.

Here is the part most write-ups skip. Median income for under-35 families barely moved, up 2% to $67,800 (Table 1 of the same report). So it is not that young people suddenly earn less. It is that they own less of the things that grew: stocks and homes. The Fed's own release shows median stock holdings among families that own stocks rose 36% to $77,400, while only 56% of families hold stocks at all, down from 58%. If you were not already in the market or on the property ladder in 2022, the gains largely passed you by.

Finding 2: the "average" net worth is four to five times the typical one

Search "average net worth by age" and you will see numbers like $1.2 million for people in their late forties. That figure is real. It is also misleading, because a small number of very wealthy families drag the mean far above what the family in the middle owns. We divided the 2025 mean by the 2025 median for each age band:

The second column is the one we find most useful, because it scales to your income. A family in its early forties earning $97,000 (the median for that age) with net worth of about 1.6 times that, around $155,000, is exactly in the middle of the pack. If you earn less, your "normal" number is smaller; if you earn more, it is bigger. Comparing yourself to a single dollar figure ignores the single biggest driver of what you can save.

Finding 3: owning a home is the dividing line

The gap that dwarfs every age difference is housing. The median homeowner family had net worth of $458,900 in 2025. The median renter family had $10,600, and that figure fell 7% since 2022. That is a ratio of about 43 to 1. Median income for owners ($108,900) is a little over twice that of renters ($50,300), so the wealth gap is roughly twenty times larger than the income gap.

That does not mean "buy a house at any price". With 30-year mortgage rates where they are, the monthly cost of buying can be brutal (we ran those numbers in what 7.4% mortgage rates cost you). It means renters have to build wealth on purpose, through accounts, because they do not get the forced saving that a mortgage provides.

Finding 4: debt is squeezing more families than at any time since 2013

Median and mean debt were unchanged from 2022, according to the Fed's release. But the share of families spending more than 40% of their income on debt payments rose to 8.6% from 6.5%, the highest since 2013. About 77% of families have some debt.

On credit cards specifically, 44.7% of families carried a balance in 2025. The typical (median) balance among them was about $3,100, but the mean jumped 19% to $8,000, which tells you a minority of families are carrying much heavier balances. If that is you, high-interest card debt is the fastest-moving drag on your net worth, and the holiday debt firewall is worth building before December.

Finding 5: retirement accounts did the heavy lifting from 45 onwards

About 65% of families participated in some kind of retirement plan in 2025. Among families with an IRA or workplace defined-contribution plan, the Fed reports these mean balances (it did not publish median balances by age, only noting that medians rose for every age group):

Once again, these are means, so treat them as "what the account-holder pool looks like", not a target. The useful signal is direction: balances grew for every group except the under-35s. If you are in your forties or fifties and feel late, the catch-up guide for women in their 40s and 50s walks through what still moves the needle, and the 2027 IRS limits tell you how much you are allowed to shelter.

What about women? The data gap, and what we do know

The 2025 Fed summary does not break net worth down by sex. That is a real blind spot, because women's wealth is shaped by the care gaps, part-time years and single-income households that a family-level survey blurs. The closest recent official-source picture comes from Census data analysed by Pew Research Center (US, 2022 data): single women without children had median wealth of $87,200, slightly above single men at $82,100. Single women with children under 18 had $10,700.

Read that again. The gap is not about being a woman. It is about raising children on one income. If you are a single mother and your number looks nothing like the table above, you are not failing; you are carrying a cost the averages hide. Your benchmark is the next step, not the median.

The Fed's separate Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025 report adds context: 63% of adults said they would cover a $400 emergency with cash or its equivalent, and only 35% of non-retirees thought their retirement savings were on track.

We ran the numbers: what it takes to move up one bracket

Suppose you are 34 with the median $33,000 and want to reach the 35–44 median of $155,600 within ten years. How much would you need to add each month? We modelled it at three steady annual growth rates. These are illustrations of the maths, not predictions of returns, and real markets do not move in straight lines.

Our calculation: future value of $33,000 plus level monthly additions over 120 months, compounded monthly. Paying down debt counts the same as saving, because net worth rises by every dollar of debt you clear.

Two things jump out. First, the difference between keeping money in cash and letting it grow is about $440 a month in this example; time does a lot of the work. Second, $583 a month is roughly 10% of the median under-35 income of $67,800. That is ambitious but not fantasy, and part of it can come from an employer match or from killing a card balance rather than from new sacrifice.

Your 15-minute net worth check (fill it in now)

If you track this once a quarter, you will learn more than any national table can tell you. That is exactly what The Matriarch Money Dashboard was built for: a Google Sheets and Excel file where your budget, debts and savings sit on one page, so the net worth line updates as you go rather than once a year in a panic. And if just opening your accounts makes your stomach drop, start smaller with the free 7-Day Money Anxiety Reset journal first; a number you are afraid to look at cannot help you.

What we would do with these numbers

Under 35: Your bracket lost ground because of what you did not own, not because of what you spent. Get into a retirement plan, at least to any employer match, and set up an emergency buffer. Our guide on how big your emergency fund should be gives a realistic number rather than a scary one.

35–54: This is the decade where the mean balloons and the median wobbles (45–54 actually fell 6%). Prioritise high-interest debt, then retirement contributions. Watch the debt-to-income ratio more closely than the net worth figure.

55 and over: Net worth is now mostly home equity and retirement accounts, which are not cash you can spend tomorrow. The question shifts from "how much do I have" to "how much income can this produce", alongside Social Security. Our breakdown of the 2027 Social Security COLA and this week's comparison of pension ages in six countries show how much of retirement income the state really covers.

For a neutral, non-commercial walkthrough of tracking assets and debts, the CFPB's consumer tools are worth a bookmark. For big decisions, such as whether to pay off a mortgage early or how to invest a lump sum, speak with a fee-only, regulated financial adviser.

Quick answers to the questions people are searching

What is a good net worth at 40? The 2025 median for families headed by someone aged 35–44 was $155,600 (Fed SCF). A more personal benchmark is about 1.6 times your annual household income, which is where the median family in that age group sits.

What is the average net worth by age? The mean ranges from $135,400 (under 35) to $1,962,200 (75 and over), but it is four to five times the median in every age group, so most families have far less than the average.

Is $100,000 a good net worth at 30? It is about three times the 2025 median for families headed by someone under 35 ($33,000), so it places you well ahead of the typical young household.

Does net worth include my house? Yes. The Fed counts home equity (value minus mortgage), which is why homeowners' medians are so much higher than renters'.

Educational content only. Not personalised financial advice.