What Net Worth Puts You in the Top 1%, 5%, 10% and 25%?
The net worth cutoffs for the top 25%, 10%, 5% and 1% of US households, with the same cutoffs broken out by age.
The Cutoffs Across All Ages
To be in the top 25% of US households you need a net worth of about $658,900. The top 10% starts at about $1.94 million, the top 5% at $3.78 million and the top 1% at roughly $13.7 million. These are household figures from the Federal Reserve's 2022 survey, and they count home equity and retirement accounts.
| Where you rank | Net worth needed | In plain terms |
|---|---|---|
| Top 50% (the median) | $192,900 | Half of households have more, half have less |
| Top 25% | $658,900 | One household in four has more than this |
| Top 10% | $1,940,000 | One in ten |
| Top 5% | $3,779,600 | One in twenty |
| Top 1% | $13,666,778 | One in a hundred. Treat as an approximate floor. |
- These are household numbers, not individual ones, and they include the value of your home (minus the mortgage) and your retirement accounts.
- Age changes everything. The top 10% starts at $538,750 for ages 30 to 34 and at $3,042,280 for ages 60 to 64.
- The top 1% figure is the least reliable one here. The survey leaves out the very richest Americans and has few households to measure at the top.
The gaps between the rungs get wider as you climb. Going from the median to the top 25% takes about $466,000 more. Going from the top 10% to the top 5% takes about $1.84 million more. Each step up asks for much more money than the last one.
Enter your net worth and age. You get your percentile among people your age, your percentile across the whole country, and how many dollars you are from the next step up.
Check your percentileTop 25%, 10%, 5% and 1% by Age
A single national cutoff hides the thing that matters most, which is how old you are. A 32-year-old and a 62-year-old are chasing different targets. Here are the cutoffs inside each five-year age band.
| Age | Top 25% | Top 10% | Top 5% | Top 1% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18–24 | $33,898 | $184,516 | $421,700 | $653,224 |
| 25–29 | $130,606 | $296,830 | $410,060 | $2,121,910 |
| 30–34 | $186,140 | $538,750 | $796,256 | $2,636,882 |
| 35–39 | $389,432 | $864,340 | $1,482,170 | $4,741,320 |
| 40–44 | $436,892 | $1,182,580 | $1,971,456 | $7,835,420 |
| 45–49 | $680,298 | $1,428,714 | $2,790,132 | $8,701,500 |
| 50–54 | $913,012 | $2,576,540 | $4,419,488 | $13,231,940 |
| 55–59 | $1,137,318 | $2,672,160 | $6,049,934 | $15,371,684 |
| 60–64 | $1,131,122 | $3,042,280 | $6,366,204 | $17,869,960 |
| 65–69 | $1,154,552 | $2,961,060 | $6,865,468 | $22,102,660 |
| 70–74 | $1,234,946 | $2,999,396 | $6,197,642 | $18,761,580 |
| 75–79 | $991,520 | $2,914,188 | $5,844,534 | $19,868,894 |
| 80+ | $944,334 | $2,540,500 | $5,461,280 | $16,229,800 |
Here is a comparison that puts the age effect in perspective. A household aged 30 to 34 needs $538,750 to be in the top 10% of its age group. A household aged 60 to 64 sitting at the 75th percentile, which is only the top 25%, already has $1,131,122. The younger household is ranked higher with about half the money.
If you already know your number, the quickest check is to pick the nearest round figure and see how it ranks at every age: $500,000, $1 million, $2 million, $5 million or $10 million. For the median and average at each age, see our guide to average net worth by age.
Is $1 Million Rich?
On the national table, $1 million lands at about the 81st percentile. That means roughly 19% of US households have more. So it's above most households, but it's not close to the top 10%.
Age changes that answer. For a household under 40, a million is in the top 10%, since the cutoff is $864,340 at ages 35 to 39. From 40 to 44 the top-10% bar is $1,182,580, so a million falls just short.
A million dollars that is mostly home equity is a very different thing from a million in retirement and brokerage accounts. You can't spend the equity in the house you live in without selling it or borrowing against it. If your number leans on your home, calculate your liquid net worth too. Our home equity guide shows how to count it without double-counting the mortgage.
There's no official line where "rich" starts. For most people the word really means "I don't have to worry about money," and that depends more on what you spend than on where you rank. A common rule of thumb lets you take out about 4% of a portfolio each year, which makes $1 million worth roughly $40,000 a year before tax. If you spend much more than that, a million won't feel like much. Our FI number calculator turns your actual spending into a target.
How Reliable Are These Numbers?
Reliable for most of the table, shakier at the top. The Survey of Consumer Finances is the best household wealth survey there is, but it has limits you should know about.
The very rich are mostly missing. The survey leaves out the Forbes 400 on purpose, and it has few households to measure above the 95th percentile. That's why the top 5% and top 1% figures are best read as approximate floors, not exact cutoffs.
The data is from 2022. The survey is run every three years, and 2022 is the latest published wave. House prices and stock markets have moved since then, so your true position today could differ from this table. The next wave, covering 2025, is expected in late 2026, and we'll update the numbers when it lands.
The dollars are not adjusted for inflation. The Fed publishes them as nominal 2022 dollars and so do we. Adjusting them ourselves would make our figures disagree with every other source.
All cutoffs come from the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. Age-band figures are weighted percentiles computed from the Fed's public summary dataset. The all-ages median and mean are from the Fed's published bulletin. Net worth means total assets (including the primary residence and retirement accounts) minus total debts, measured for the household.
Not sure what your number is? Add up your assets and debts by category, then bring the total back to rank it.
Calculate your net worth- 1Survey of Consumer Finances (2022) — Federal Reserve Board
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Founder and developer of We Are Calculator. No lead selling, no lender rankings, no affiliate-pulled recommendations. Every guide pairs primary sources (IRS, CFPB, Federal Reserve, CRA) with the free calculators you can run yourself.
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