Yet another Hacker News

Net worth for people aged 30–33 in the U.S.

182 points jpmulhausen 2 hours ago 80 comments

shoobiedoo 1 hour ago | parent

But the stock market lines keep going up...

morninglight 1 hour ago | parent

Those "stock market lines" offer an excellent prediction of future inflation, not your net worth.

gruez 1 hour ago | parent

>Those "stock market lines" offer an excellent prediction of future inflation

And that prediction would have been dead wrong for much of the past 4 decades, except for the post pandemic inflation surge, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

insane_dreamer 1 hour ago | parent

"the Dow is over 50K!"

direwolf20 1 hour ago | parent

More musically, featuring celebrity singer Pam Bondi and Autotune:

The Dow, the Dow right now

Is over fifty thou

I don't know why you're laughing

That's what we should be talking abou

The Dow, the Dow right now

S&P is almost seven thou

The American people need to know this,

Need to know, how is the Dow?

Fripplebubby 1 hour ago | parent

I find this to be an incredibly irritating way to present this data. Why the obsession with finding out where I fall in the distribution? Why prompt me to sign up for email? Do you have anything to say, or is this like a BuzzFeed quiz?

jdw64 1 hour ago | parent

If I think about why these differences show up across generations, in the end what matters seems to be whether or not you can be at the forefront of a new field in a new era's industry. In the case of today's younger generation, there simply isn't such a new industry.

But this site looks like GPT made it, doesn't it? I can see GPT's characteristic green button UI and beige color scheme. GPT 6.1 tends to use a green-toned UI.

GenerWork 1 hour ago | parent

I was going to say it was made by Claude, but only because the screenshot of the dashboard has the users name in unnecessary italics, which to me is 100% a giveaway that it's Claude.

batshit_beaver 1 hour ago | parent

What do you mean there’s no frontier industry? ML, infra, robotics, and even space all fall into this category. Not to mention medicine and biotech are starting to pick up.

insane_dreamer 1 hour ago | parent

> Not to mention medicine and biotech are starting to pick up.

no, not really

tttttbbbkufchib 1 hour ago | parent

“ai and robotics are booming” is a weird answer to young people being broke. who owns the companies, and how many people actually get paid by them?

jdw64 1 hour ago | parent

To start with, I don't really know about AI, but I have worked in robotics, so I'll speak from that. There are cases where it's ambiguous to call something an emerging business. In fact, this technology is more than 20 years old, and existing companies have already staked out the market. So, apart from space, the industries you mentioned actually have quite a long history.(To be precise, it wasn't the robotics research field—I built my career specializing in installing robots and getting them running in factories)

What I mean by an emerging industry is one that requires little capital and has few entrenched players—in the end, an industry where new entrants can compete with small initial capital. That's how I'd redefine it.

Because in the IT boom era, there were many technological opportunities. The boss who hired me was one example. But in the case of industrial robot manufacturing, the existing hardware supply chain is, by and large, the one investing.

In the end, what I want to say comes down to this: there are fewer industries open to new entrants.

Because in the IT boom and the construction boom, there were markets that needed less capital than you'd think in the early days. In subcontracting, for instance, you could enter with relatively little capital. But in today's technologically advanced industries, initial capital requirements are far higher. So in the past, even within the same category of industry, there clearly existed sub-markets you could participate in with comparatively little initial capital.

For example, in the old IT industry, my seniors 20 years ago said it took surprisingly little capital. But today's market isn't like that. I think this is a problem that arises as industries become more advanced.

There's a paper I read some time ago arguing that as an industry becomes more advanced, the knowledge and resources required to make a product increase.[1] [1]https://www.nber.org/papers/w27787

oefrha 1 hour ago | parent

This is a generic comment of course, but anyone else feeling immediate distrust when data is presented in an obvious vibe design (I have "built" sites with that exact font combo and general vibe ffs). Ideally one should distrust any data on random websites to begin with, but at least my human psychology deducted many extra points here.

wyre 1 hour ago | parent

I think data is fine, especially since the LLM will go to great lengths to site it's sources. Blog posts on the otherhand...

gruez 1 hour ago | parent

At least a blog post (potentially) contains original thought or analysis . This site on the other hand is basically rehashing the same content as the government source. It could have been replaced with a link and the only thing we would have lost was the italics and beige background

wyre 17 minutes ago | parent

Thats true. I wasn't considering that they aren't really doing anything novel with the information, just using it as way to harvest emails or relay the information..

ddeck 1 hour ago | parent

Yep. The source data is here in case it's of interest to anyone

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

rootusrootus 1 hour ago | parent

Thanks for sharing the link. What I get from all that data is that the "households under age 35 from 2022-2025" was chosen specifically for a narrative, not because it is particularly interesting on it's own. There's lots of interesting moves in the data well beyond that one narrowly focused metric.

0000000000100 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, personally I would be shocked if this wasn't like botted or something to make it onto the front-page. It's not much further from blogspam in how little effort has been put into presenting this particular page. Just head over to the home page and behold the default Claude design and ridiculous $150/yr plan haha.

And I'm not even sure where the part is on the site detailing this '23% fall' mentioned in the title is. Cause there certainly isn't any historical data provided on the page...

slopinthebag 1 hour ago | parent

the economy is essentially completely broken at this point and the youth are getting angrier and more checked-out. i think recent events in france are indicative of the future for most western nations in the next few years, especially as things continue to collapse and governments realise they cannot just keep kicking the debt-can down the road.

DaSHacka 1 hour ago | parent

The interesting thing is how unanimous it is. The zoomers on the left and right disagree on just about everything, except they both agree that radical change needs to happen. Maybe the more moderate zoomers would disagree, but I wonder how many would even identify as such by now.

I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen in the future, but I'm sure that it's going to be wildly different from the current status quo in a number of countries.

AnthonyMouse 43 minutes ago | parent

> The zoomers on the left and right disagree on just about everything, except they both agree that radical change needs to happen.

This is how the two party system evolved to sustain the status quo. When people are mad about something, divide the people into two parties and have them each demand a different solution while demonizing the solution of the other party, so that their votes cancel out and then nothing changes.

Extra points if you can get them to demand something unnecessarily polarizing, disproportionate or simplistic when there are better solutions available, because then you can get them to fight against the moderates too.

Notice also that when you point this out to a partisan, they have a tendency to violently agree and then immediately mischaracterize the problem as being that the other party is bad and wrong and the solution is to have everybody do their party's thing.

prewett 54 minutes ago | parent

Let's hope we don't get radical change. I can't think of an instance where it worked well.

The American Revolution wasn't radical change from the British system, but thoughtful improvements on it. The French Revolution, and the Communist revolutions were all disasters. The slave revolt in Haiti has produced long-term poor results compared to the Dominican Republic. The American occupation of Japan is arguable, but given that they kept the emperor and one party was in power for the next 50+ years just like before, I have some doubts.

etothepii 1 hour ago | parent

Are student loans excluded from this data? Can't imagine that the 10% line is only at -$10k in that scenario.

jeron 1 hour ago | parent

it should be, net worth is assets minus debt

cbhl 1 hour ago | parent

If the source is Fed SCF then I think it's _supposed_ to include student loans, retirement accounts, real estate, etc.

It might be worth just downloading the data from the Fed yourself and having the coding harness of your choice build whatever data visualization you want:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

eddythompson80 51 minutes ago | parent

There are these charts, studies, and articles about global wealth inequality that make the rounds every now and then. They often make the point one would expect them to make. I was nonetheless surprised to learn that because of the way assets and debt are used to calculate these numbers, the poorest people in the world aren't those surviving on $0.10 of daily income in some underdeveloped part of Africa as one might think, but rather an odd mix of med or law school graduates in the US and stock traders or gambling addicts in rich countries. One French dude alone is at the bottom with a net worth of -$8B.

robertclaus 1 hour ago | parent

Ugh. "This page is the cohort. An account puts you on it."

anubistheta 1 hour ago | parent

Households is an interesting metric to choose. If fewer people get married, then average household would have fewer people.

But I don't see data for 2022 on the page? I searched for "2022" and found nothing?

What makes it odd to me is that real median incomes for both individuals and households rose 6.2% over that period. That includes all people, but what I can find specifically on younger people is even more optimistic.

https://fortune.com/2026/09/22/gen-z-wealth-income-vs-boomer...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mehoinusa672n# https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Edit: someone linked the data below. Seems like 2022 was an outlier. All numbers in 2025 dollars. 2019 17.8k 2022 42.7k 2025 32.8k

So from 2019 to 2025, median net wealth for people under 35 increased by 84%.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...

rich_sasha 1 hour ago | parent

I suppose it’s almost exactly the right metric if you want to look at affordability of houses. Almost since a bigger household needs a bigger house/flat but only up to a point, a young couple needs barely more space than a young single person occupying their own flat.

what 1 hour ago | parent

lol. With the WFH shit a young couple needs MORE space than a single person. You can’t both work out of the one bedroom.

bwhiting2356 1 hour ago | parent

a young couple doesn't need 2x the space as a single person though

bwhiting2356 1 hour ago | parent

It's not just fewer people getting married, fewer people are even living with a partner. Living together has economies of scale.

autoexec 53 minutes ago | parent

The number of adults, and even elderly who are forced to live with roommates is hitting record highs though so some expenses are probably shared.

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/04/nx-s1-5760948/high-housing-co...

https://eyeonhousing.org/2025/04/house-sharing-is-not-just-f...

brailsafe 58 minutes ago | parent

At a glance, it looks to me like it's plausible that a good chunk of the tail end of the age group who'd have had their wealth considered for the <35 age bracket for both 2019 and 2022 would have aged into the next bracket for 2025 and taken their pandemic gains with them. Between 2022 and 2025, the 35-44 bracket continued increasing, albeit at a slower rate, so things do not look optimistic comparatively.

The pandemic created a ton of wealth for whomever would've had the most money in the market at that time and the most stability, to the point where there's basically no chance anyone else reaching those same ages after the pandemic could catch up without some miracle. Ya it's still better in real dollars than 2019 by a significant amount, but it would need to be even more significant for it to be optimistic, imo.

Edit: Looking at the The Fed chart you posted a bit further, there hasn't been a similar relative drop in any other 3 year period from 1989 onward. The closest period overall would be 2004-2010, and secondly 1995-1998. That's... pretty dramatic

jongjong 1 hour ago | parent

The median is actually surprisingly high. How did someone who is in their early 30s and has been in the workforce for only about 10 years and presumably has university debt, manage to accumulate $68k?

That's $7k per year, which they have to save from the surplus after paying their rents, groceries, healthcare, university debts and everything else.

brooke2k 1 hour ago | parent

I'm guessing car ownership counts for a lot considering how universal it is in the US

adgjlsfhk1 1 hour ago | parent

Most of that is likely retirement savings. That's 3.5k per year if you have employee match.

hn_throwaway_99 1 hour ago | parent

It's not $7k per year, because that's not how investing works. Even given that, for young people who don't have a lot of fixed expenses besides student loans it's not hard at all for people with a professional salary to save that much per year.

The US Census Bureau says 49.2% of adults 30-34 are homeowners in the US, so clearly many people are figuring out how to save and invest.

locusofself 1 hour ago | parent

That seems a bit unbelievable to me, mind linking the source? I believe the trend in home ownership at this age is downward, in any case.

NDlurker 1 hour ago | parent

I had a net worth of over $200k when I was 34 and making like ~$20/hr. Mostly from Bitcoin

jongjong 41 minutes ago | parent

That's quite lucky. A lot of people lost money on Bitcoin.

I got pretty lucky with one of the (EdTech) startups I was early employee at giving me shares and it grew from nothing to over 1 million active paid subscriptions. Also, I joined a crypto project which rose to $4 billion valuation (joined at like $300 million valuation) but I was only able to get about $30k out of that in spite of hard hustling and leading one of the most important teams. Literally I put pressure on them to get a raise for 1 year and eventually had to quit to show I was serious... Then the founders basically sabotaged me by spreading lies about me. Then 3 years later, one of the founders fled to Dubai.

I self-taught myself coding at 14 and have been working non-stop including nights and weekends and saving everything I could.

My net worth now is only $80k liquid at 36 years old. $130k if you include my illiquid retirement fund. So to me, $70k at 33 on a median income looks incredible. I'm not based in the US though. Maybe it's easier over there.

xlayn 1 hour ago | parent

I found sad, that someone on their early 30, on the pinacle of their capabilities and the pinacle of their "I'll grind until I get <insert capitalism goal here>" and then burnout have "only" $68k to know figure out what to do... in the usa... if you don't have a place to live but you have a car you can still do things, the other way around you can't, 95% of the time you need a car... and if you have a health issue you will start bleeding money really fast... there is no safety net...

And I say only because it's a lot of money, and it's not a lot of money... if you have to pay rent, or mortgage payments, or car payments... car will be reposesed, credit score will go south really fast, and everything is tied to the credit score, so they know how low they can drop the ball and you will still accept because you are in need.

I want you to remember, the american dream... one person working as a mail man can bring food to the table, pay the mortgage while the wife raise the kids and kids go to school, you retire 40 years later with social security giving you enough for the basics...

Then this is for someone with university debt... so this is the case for someone with a title... what's the situation for the other unlucky 95% of america?

bonoboTP 56 minutes ago | parent

The situation is super good, objectively. Much better than most of Western Europe except a few outliers like Switzerland maybe. And infinitely better than Eastern Europe and the even poorer countries. You have no idea how good you have it. Maybe not as good as some fake idealized back in the day, but very good. It's just that reality can't keep up with growing expectations. Okay there was like a brief window after ww2 when the US did exceptionally well because it was shielded from the war by two oceans while the rest of the developed world was in rubbles. But that state of things couldn't last.

theoldlove 44 minutes ago | parent

"Super good" is overstating the situation. The US trails most of Western Europe in average lifespan. Obviously the US is a great place to be rich (maybe the best place in the world?), but most of us aren't rich.

bonoboTP 4 minutes ago | parent

It's true that being very poor or uneducated is harder in the US. If you're an educated professional, the US is way ahead in terms of opportunity, savings etc. over the rest of the world. Yes, you have college debt, but the salaries are much much higher than places like Germany or France, so even with paying that, you're way ahead. How many people move to the US from Europe and how many vice versa? Sure you find the odd example but it's not a real trend.

autoexec 28 minutes ago | parent

> Much better than most of Western Europe

I doubt most of Western Europe would agree with you. They seem to feel a lot happier and healthier. They have better social mobility, and less household debt.

I don't think the problem is growing expectations. Being able to own a home and affordably raise a family are extremely old expectations. If anything, people seem to be forced into compromising more and more.

bonoboTP 1 minute ago | parent

The kind of home people seem to want and the kind of level of lifestyle is out of control and never ever was possible anytime anyplace as a default.

ianm218 1 hour ago | parent

The median wage for an adult 24-35 who has a college degree is $84k-91k [1] and around 40% of 30 year old have college degrees. If your making 90k you can even save 7k a year in HCOL places like NYC and Boston if you live well below your means. I.e. lots of people would just use that disposable income on traveling/ eating out/ concerts etc but if your a homebody and live with an SO or don't mind commuting and cooking most of your food 90k goes quite far with no kids.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/median-weekly-earnings-by-...

xlayn 1 hour ago | parent

if you grind... live well below... not below, not without extravagancies... well below..., don't travel, don't eat, no avocado toasts, have two works, no wife, no kids... burn the eff out....

THEN it will go quite far

quite far to teach you you have been played out of your youth and now you are poor

consensus1 1 hour ago | parent

I don't see the headline claim in the linked page. Also seems implausible that net worth would drop that much over a 3 year period when stock markets are rising.

NDlurker 1 hour ago | parent

Some of us put money into Terra, Atom, and other blockchains that either failed spectacularly or just kind of faded into irrelevance.

jethro_tell 1 hour ago | parent

Most young people don't have much in the way of stocks, so, that's not relevant to them?

irjustin 1 hour ago | parent

One thing it doens't do is account for cost of living for a given city. Sure it looks nice that NYC, SF is higher than everyone else but I'm sure there's a very large group living in LCL areas that have far less stress compared to the bigger cities when it comes to budgeting.

bad_haircut72 1 hour ago | parent

There is a small group of people who might benefit from being in a LCL area, its people with remote jobs and no kids. If you need to find work locally LCL doesn't help and is actually worse, and if you have kids the schools in these areas inevitably push you back to HCL sooner or later.

qdog 1 hour ago | parent

Growing up in a LCL area, there are few jobs, and young people tend to leave for opportunities. The ones doing ok are retired or working a government job.

subtextminer 1 hour ago | parent

I'm in Austin and money goes seriously far compared to the seven cities above it. There's a 2015-built home on Zillow for $199,000 1346 sq ft just 2 miles from the Tesla factory.

MarsZebra 1 hour ago | parent

Can you smell the AI furnaces upwind?

dataflow 1 hour ago | parent

I imagine there must be a reason or two that not everyone wants to move there?

ph4rsikal 1 hour ago | parent

I suppose that's what happens if demand goes up for external reasons while supply doesn't follow.

thatonehack 39 minutes ago | parent

“Kids these days” are lazy and entitled. Can’t blame them; they grew up with a screen in front of their face all the time. Their attention span is limited and their critical thinking skills are lacking. However, even with these major disadvantages, I still believe a young’n could make a great living if they just put their head dow, gain a skill, become knowledgeable (no short cuts) and then try hard. Great recipe but most don’t want to actually do work.