US Household Net Worths and Incomes Drop - Time for a New Calculator!

A federal report was released last week telling how the median US household has gone down in both income and net worth from 2001 to 2010. The median household is down from a net worth of $106,100 and an income of $48,900 in 2001 to a worth of $77,300 and an income of $45,800 in 2010. Net worth had actually been increasing well through 2007 ($126,400 median net worth then) primarily due to the increase in housing prices, but with the housing price bubble popping along with the decline in the financial markets net worth is down from that peak.

 What does this all mean? It means that it is time for a new online calculator! I saw another nicely written article on Scott Burn's AssetBuilder web site which included a nice table of percentiles, so I wrote up a new calculator so anyone can find your own percentile ranking in both 2001 and 2011. It uses linear interpolation to calculate all the percentiles between 0, 20, 40, 50, 60, 80 and 90 for income, and from 0, 25, 50, 75 and 90 for net worth. Once you are above the 90 percentile point for either income or net worth that is as high as it goes. Sorry, the article did not have the 99th percentile levels for each one (i.e. the Top 1 percenters.) I would need the income and net worth 99th percentile numbers for both 2001 and 2010, and I could not find those available. In any case it is interesting to compare the different percentiles for both dates to see how your own situation changed over the past decade.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
Read more