Net Worth by Age: Benchmarks for the US, UK and EU

The most-Googled financial question for any given age band is some version of "am I behind?". Net worth at 30. Net worth at 40. Average savings at 35. The wording varies, the underlying anxiety doesn't.

Here are the numbers. The actual figures, from named official sources, broken down by age band for the US, UK and euro area. Plus what to do with them once you have them.

First, the headline. The median US household had a net worth of $192,900 in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. The median UK household had £293,700 between April 2020 and March 2022, according to the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey. The median euro-area household ranged from around €31,000 to over €700,000 depending on which country, per the European Central Bank's Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2021 wave.

Those are all-age figures. The breakdown by age band is where the useful detail sits. For a broader treatment of what net worth actually is and how to calculate it, see our hub guide on personal net worth.

Why use the median, not the mean

Before the tables, one technical point worth dwelling on.

The mean (the arithmetic average) and the median (the middle of the distribution) tell different stories.

The US Federal Reserve's 2022 data is the clearest illustration. The median US household net worth is $192,900. The mean is $1,063,700. The mean is five and a half times the median. The reason: a small number of very wealthy households pull the mean up. The bottom 50% of US households hold less than 4% of national wealth; the top 10% hold around 67%.

The mean tells you what the total wealth divided equally would be. The median tells you what a household in the middle actually has. For "where do I stand?" questions, the median is the only relevant figure. The mean is distorted by people whose financial lives have little relation to most readers'.

Throughout this post, every figure is a median unless we explicitly say otherwise.

US net worth by age

Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 wave, published October 2023. All figures are US dollar medians.

• Under 35. $39,000
• 35 to 44. $135,600
• 45 to 54. $247,200
• 55 to 64. $364,500
• 65 to 74. $409,900 (peak)
• 75+. $335,600

The pattern is the standard wealth curve: low in the under-35 band, building through working life, peaking in the decade after retirement age, dropping slightly as retirees draw down.

A few specific observations.

The 65-74 peak. Wealth peaks in the decade after typical retirement age, not before it. Pensions and investments compound through working life and into early retirement, while spending hasn't yet outpaced appreciation. Drawdown begins to bite by 75+, which is why the figure drops.

The under-35 jump. The 2022 median for under-35s was $39,000, up from $13,900 in 2019. That's a 181% rise in three years, the largest percentage gain of any age band. The drivers were the 2020-2022 house price surge (for the subset of under-35s who managed to buy) and the equity market rally. Whether that gain holds in the next SCF wave is a different question.

Mean vs median for under-35s. Median under-35 net worth is $39,000. Mean is $183,500. The mean is 4.7 times the median, unusually skewed even by US standards. A small number of high-net-worth under-35s (founders, tech equity holders, inheritors) pull the mean up dramatically. This is why benchmarking against the mean produces unhelpful answers for most people.

Decline after 75. Median net worth drops from $409,900 to $335,600 between the 65-74 and 75+ bands. Roughly a 20% fall. This is drawdown plus mortality effects (the data is cross-sectional, so individual trajectories may differ from the cohort pattern).

UK net worth by age

Office for National Statistics Wealth and Assets Survey, Round 8, period April 2020 to March 2022, published January 2025. All figures are total household wealth medians in GBP. Total household wealth includes property (net of mortgage), private pensions, financial wealth and physical wealth.

The ONS publishes wealth figures by the age of the household reference person (HRP), the household member who owns or rents the property, or earns the most.

• HRP 16 to 24. £15,200
• HRP 65 to 74. £502,500 (peak)

The peak band holds 33 times the wealth of the youngest band. Full intermediate age-band figures are available in the published ONS data tables; the pattern is the standard wealth curve seen in other developed economies, rising steadily from the 25-34 band, accelerating through 35-54 as property and pension assets compound, and peaking around retirement age.

Two caveats worth flagging.

First, the reference period (April 2020 to March 2022) is older than 2022. UK household wealth has since faced the cost of living squeeze, interest rate rises and slower house-price growth. Current numbers may differ materially. No more recent harmonised UK wealth data has been published.

Second, the Office for Statistics Regulation suspended the "Accredited Official Statistics" status of WAS from Round 8 in June 2025, citing methodology concerns. The figures remain published and are the most recent available, but the status downgrade is a flag for users.

UK net worth by region

The regional UK breakdown is striking and worth a separate look. From the same ONS bulletin:

• South East. £489,800 (highest median)
• London. £244,800
• North East. £179,900 (lowest median)

The London figure is the counterintuitive one. Despite the highest property prices in the country, median household wealth in London is roughly half that of the South East. The reason: London has the lowest property-ownership rate of any UK region, and property accounts for 51% of London's median household wealth versus around 30% in the North East. A renter in London accumulates less wealth than an owner in the North East, even though London salaries are higher.

London is also the most wealth-unequal region in Great Britain. Its Gini coefficient for wealth is 0.70, against 0.58 for the South East. London concentrates extreme wealth and extreme renting in the same geography.

Euro area: country variance is the headline

European Central Bank Household Finance and Consumption Survey, 2021 wave, published July 2023. The euro-area picture is more heterogeneous than the UK or US, because each country has different homeownership rates, pension systems, tax structures and household formation patterns.

The published medians across the 18 surveyed euro-area countries range from approximately €31,000 (lowest, in the Baltic states) to over €700,000 (highest, in Luxembourg). The variance reflects different economic structures more than different individual wealth levels.

Two patterns are visible.

Homeownership drives the median. Countries with widespread homeownership (Spain, Italy, Greece) have higher median wealth despite lower aggregate wealth than Germany or Austria. The reverse is also true: Germany and Austria have higher mean wealth but lower median, because wealth concentrates in a smaller share of households. In countries with high homeownership, the typical household has property; in countries with low homeownership, the typical household has less wealth even though aggregate wealth is high.

The mean-median gap varies by country. In Germany, the gap between mean and median is one of the largest in the euro area. In Spain it's much narrower. The gap measures how concentrated wealth is within a country, not how wealthy the country is overall.

ECB Distributional Wealth Accounts data, which extends HFCS to a quarterly cadence, shows the top 5% of euro-area households held over 43% of net wealth as of Q2 2023, down slightly from 2016. The concentration is high but trending in the right direction at the aggregate level.

Top 1% and top 10% thresholds

For comparison purposes, the upper percentiles tell a different story.

United States (2022, Federal Reserve SCF):

• Top 10% threshold (all ages): $1,559,240 net worth or above
• Top 1% threshold (all ages): $11,640,000 net worth or above
• Top 10% of US households hold roughly 67% of total household wealth; bottom 50% hold under 4%

United Kingdom (ONS):

• Top 10% threshold: £1,200,500 net wealth or above
• Top 1% holds a share of total wealth equivalent to the bottom 50% combined
• UK wealth Gini coefficient: 0.59, against an income Gini of 0.36 (wealth is roughly 60% more unequal than income)

These thresholds are useful for two reasons. First, they show where the actual "high net worth" line sits, which is much lower than most people guess. Second, they show how compressed the top end is. The move from top 10% to top 1% requires an order-of-magnitude increase in net worth, not a few percentage points of additional saving.

What drives the gap by age

The age curve is steep. A 65-74 UK household has, on the median, more than 33 times the wealth of a 16-24 household. A US household aged 65-74 has more than 10 times the net worth of one under 35. The drivers of that gap matter more than the curve itself for interpreting your own number.

Property ownership. The single biggest driver of wealth accumulation across age bands. The transition from renter to owner unlocks the largest source of household wealth in most economies. ONS data shows property is 40% of median UK household wealth. SCF data shows housing dominates middle-class US wealth: excluding home equity, the US median net worth drops from $192,900 to roughly $57,900.

Pension contributions over time. Compound growth. A 5% contribution into a workplace pension from age 25 produces a materially different outcome by 60 than the same contribution starting at 35. The 65-74 wealth peak is largely pension and property having decades to compound.

Inheritance and intergenerational transfers. Both the US and UK are seeing inheritance become a larger share of total household wealth as the post-war generation transfers assets. This widens gaps within age bands rather than across them.

Income and savings rate. The traditional drivers, but they explain less variance than people expect. Two households with identical incomes can have wildly different net worth by 50, mostly because of homeownership timing and pension contribution history.

Debt servicing. Households that carry high credit card or buy-now-pay-later balances through their 20s and 30s often fail to make the property transition in time to catch the wealth curve. This is a major reason the under-35 median is so low: many households haven't yet started accumulating, and a meaningful share are in net negative territory.

How to read your number against the benchmark

The mistake is to compare your number to the median for your age band and conclude you're "behind" or "ahead". The benchmark is a starting point, not a verdict.

A few principles for interpreting your own figure usefully.

Compare like-for-like. A renter in central London is in a different category from a homeowner in the North East. A 30-year-old in tech with vested equity is in a different category from a 30-year-old in retail without it. The headline median pools all of those into one figure.

Mind the data lag. UK ONS data covers April 2020 to March 2022. US SCF data is from 2022. Yours is from this month. If asset prices have moved significantly since the reference period, the comparison overstates or understates your relative position.

Track your trend, not your rank. Whether you're at the 40th or 60th percentile is a fact about a moment in time. The slope of your net worth over the last twelve months is information about your trajectory. The trajectory matters more.

Adjust for life stage events. If you've just bought a house, your liquid net worth will look terrible compared to peers who haven't. That's expected. Your total net worth captures the underlying position more honestly than any liquid-only comparison.

Don't compare across countries. A €60,000 net worth in Latvia is in a very different position than €60,000 in Luxembourg. Living costs, housing markets and pension systems differ. Within-country comparisons are the only ones that mean much.

If you're below the median

This section exists because the comparison instinct is unavoidable, and people who find themselves below their age-band median tend to spiral.

Don't.

The median is a snapshot. It captures households who made specific life choices at specific times. If your trajectory is positive and your savings rate is reasonable, the position in the distribution will correct over years, not weeks.

The things that genuinely matter, in order:

• Are you accumulating, not just spending what you earn?
• Are you on track to retire at the age you want, given current savings and reasonable return assumptions?
• Is your debt under control and shrinking?
• Are you saving in tax-advantaged accounts where you can?

A 32-year-old with £25,000 of net worth and a £5,000-per-year savings rate going into a workplace pension is in a better long-term position than a 32-year-old with £80,000 of net worth and no ongoing savings to maintain it.

If you're above the median, the same logic applies in reverse. The number is not a licence to coast. The slope still matters.

What the benchmarks don't tell you

The medians are useful for one thing: anchoring. They tell you roughly where the centre of the distribution sits in your country and age band. That's it.

They don't tell you:

• Whether you're on track for your specific retirement goal
• Whether your asset mix is sensible
• Whether your debt is at a level you can sustain
• Whether your savings rate is high enough for what you want
• How your wealth holds up against your expenses (a £400,000 net worth means different things at £20,000 versus £80,000 of annual spending)

Those questions need your own data, not the population median. We cover the calculation methodology in How to calculate your net worth accurately and the connection between your net worth and a FIRE target in Your net worth and FIRE.

How Endute treats benchmark comparisons

The useful comparison is your number against your trend, not your number against a population median. The net worth report in Endute shows the trend month by month, broken down by composition (liquid investments, illiquid wealth like property and business equity, and debt). The shape of the line matters more than the absolute figure.

The comparison instinct is real, though. If you do want to see where your number sits against published medians for your country and age band, the ONS, Federal Reserve and ECB tables linked above are the sources to look at. They're updated less often than they should be, but they're the only methodologically consistent comparison data publicly available.

For a multi-country household, the comparison gets more complex. A British expat in Berlin with assets across three countries doesn't slot cleanly into any single national median. The honest answer is that no single benchmark applies; the construct of "country median" is approximate even within a single country.

The number isn't the verdict

Three things to take away.

First, use the median. The mean is a misleading number for personal comparisons. Throw it away unless you specifically want to think about wealth distribution.

Second, the age curve is steep. Wealth accumulates non-linearly. The gap between a 25-year-old and a 65-year-old median is typically 20 to 30 times. That's expected, and not a sign of personal failure at any individual age.

Third, the comparison is a tool, not a verdict. Knowing you're at the 35th percentile of your age band tells you a fact about a moment in time. It doesn't tell you what to do, what's reasonable for your circumstances, or where you'll be in five years.

The benchmark gives you a starting point. Your trajectory gives you the answer. Your own data, tracked properly over time, will tell you both.