What is the average amount of money each person has in the US?

Answer 1

This question itself is specious in that any answer would be dis-informing about statistical reality of the population in the USA. Note that the cost of living in very large cities in the USA can be 2 or 3 times the cost of living in medium or small cities. Furthermore, within any given regional economy there is substantial variation of personal living expenses and still enjoying the standards quality of living that the USA is known for. Given the variation of personal expenditure from being relatively frugal to being a "spendthrift" (ie. expends financial resources too quickly to adhere to any sort of viable budget), relatively substantial income and savings DO NOT TRANSLATE to sustained economic health. Some Americans who were exorbitantly wealthy "went broke" (eg. Donald Trump, Michael Jackson). The annual rate of bankruptcy filing (ie. legally admitting your financial resources cannot hope to cover your debt and basic living expenses) has never been 0 in the USA, and the number of bankruptcies filed in the last 2 years has dramatically increased in proportion to the population. That being understood, as a financially educated person who has resided in several states and traveled through most states in the USA, in my estimation the annual income of "middle class" Americans (those who can afford a popular standard of living) ranges from about $25,000 per year to $100,000 per year (although the current recession is ratcheting these figures down). Until about a year an a half ago (when the recession became grossly apparent), for roughly 25 years (or longer) Americans as a whole saved very little of their income. Many Americans did not even have enough savings stored-up to cover 6 months of their basic living expenses. An economic minority of Americans, who I believe have become what now is referred to as the "investor class", did save more than about 15% of their income on a routine basis (and a higher proportion in some years). These people have been able to "retire" from a routine line of work with adequate investments to provide income sustain a middle class or upper-middle class living standard (and in a few cases really upper class), for the remainder of their lives. Of course with the financial crisis that spear-headed this recession, many middle class and upper-middle class Americans lost almost all their investment values (ie. the investment accounts now are only a small fraction of their value before September 2008). Before this recession I would guess that Americans (who were decision makers for their personal finances) had savings accounts (of all types) totaling from a few thousand dollars to 1 million dollars. Note that an American with investments totaling more than a few million dollars are upper class and actually beyond what is considered to be the "investor class" (eg. Donald Trump is a business tycoon - mogul - bigwig - magnate - whatever you call the exorbitantly rich who are personally involved in their financial decisions, not actually a member of the investment class who must work at their investing decisions in order to avoid having to resume a job for income). Remember that a majority of Americans lost the bulk of their savings (sometimes losing more than 90% of the value of their investments) in the financial crisis that entered its worst stage with the failure of the government corporations known as "Freddie Mac" and "Fannie Mae" in July 2008.