The all-American working man demeanor of Tim Walz—Kamala Harris’s new running mate—looks like it’s not just an act.
Financial disclosures show Tim Walz barely has any assets to his name. No stocks, bonds, or even property to call his own. Together with his wife, Gwen, his net worth is $330,000, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing financial disclosures from 2019, the year after he became Minnesota governor.
With that kind of meager nest egg, he would be more or less in line with the median figure for Americans his age (he’s 60), and even poorer than the average. One in 15 Americans is a millionaire, a recent UBS wealth report discovered.
Meanwhile, the gross annual income of Walz and his wife, Gwen, amounted to $166,719 before tax in 2022, according to their joint return filed that same year. Walz is even entitled to earn more than the $127,629 salary he receives as state governor, but he has elected not to receive the roughly $22,000 difference.
“Walz represents the stable middle class,” tax lawyer Megan Gorman, who authored a book on the personal finances of U.S. presidents, told the paper.
1 in 15 Americans is a millionaire?
Presses X to doubt
A millionaire doesn’t mean “Has $1 million in cash sitting in a checking account”. It just means your networth is at least $1 million. So like if you bought a shitty rundown starter home you’re half way there. A 401k you can touch for another 20-30 years could get you the rest of the way.
The last time I looked up the stats, around 2015, 10% of US households (not individuals) had $1M, and 1% of households had $10M. The symmetry made it very memorable.
According to the census bureau ( https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p70br-183.pdf ) entry into the top 10% now requires $1.6M, which means that substantially more than 1-in-10 are millionaires. They’re mostly going to be married couples over 55.
Dual income homeowners with healthy retirement funds. The fucked up thing is 1 million dollars isn’t that impressive anymore – you can easily spend that in retirement living a middle class lifestyle in the USA. Particularly when you factor in age related medical expenses and elder care.
It’s not like our retirement, healthcare, and elder care systems are catastrophically broken or anything.
