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**Andrew** (0:00)
On this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, How do your finances compare by age?
What's up, everybody, and welcome to The Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on The Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into how do your finances compare by age. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join The Master Money Newsletter by going to mastermoney.co. slash newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now today, we are going to dive into, how do your finances compare by age? And we're going to go through a number of different categories so that you can see what the average is. We're going to look through the salary of the average person in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. And we're going to look at debt, net worth, credit, and home. And so this is going to be a really fun episode that I think we can look into some of the stats and see how they change over time. So at the end of this year, the new data from the US government and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they are going to be releasing a lot of the new financial data. It's supposed to happen right around November of this year. So I can't wait to see how some of this stuff changes over time as we start to look into this. And so we took the information from the Federal Reserve's data so that we could look deeper into each person's finances. And so we're going to go through how your finances compare by age. And then for each decade, I'm going to tell you in each one of these categories, how to improve those if you are in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s or your 50s. Then at the end of the episode, we're also going to be answering a few of your questions. So this is an action-packed episode. So without further ado, let's get into it.
So first, let's talk about the 20s. Now the 20s is a wonderful time to build wealth because you have so much time and opportunity for your money to grow and for your money to compound. But it is also the time where you potentially are making less than any other decade out there. And so we need to understand some of the things that we can do in our 20s in order to make sure that we come out on top. So first, let's look at the data and see exactly where folks in their 20s stand. So first, let's look at salary for individuals. So typically we do this for individuals. If there are two folks in your household, you want to double some of these numbers. But the median salary is what I want to look at for an individual is $50,000 for someone in their 20s. Now, you may hear that number and say, well, I'm making a little more than that. I'm doing well. Or maybe you're making less than that. But this is the starting salary. When I was in my 20s, I was making about $31,000 per year at my entry level job and then increase my income over time there. So this is the median for folks in their 20s. Their net worth is $6,600.
Again, this is the median. And so we want to make sure this isn't overly skewed to the averages, this is going to be right smack in the middle. It's going to be more accurate data for most of you. The median credit score, and this is going to be really interesting, is 678 So some folks are starting off, typically on the wrong foot, with a 678 credit score. Debt on average is 34,328. And typically we know that is because of student loan debt for most folks in their 20s, but they also could have a little credit card debt, maybe some personal loans from buy now, pay later. And 37.9%, this was a surprising number, actually own a home. And so when we look at some of these numbers, I want to see what are some of these things that stand out to you. Let me know in the comments below. If you're watching on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube, I want to hear what you guys have or what you think is actually standing out to you as we go through this. Now, here's what stands out to me is number one, salary is right on par with where I thought it would be at $50,000.