Eleven Million Millionaire Households – a new record
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown
?Some data of interest on the state of wealth in the United States…
The number of millionaire households in the U.S. jumped by more than 700,000 last year, thanks to surging stock prices and housing values, according to a new report.
The U.S. now has more than 11 million millionaire households, according to Spectrem Group, up more than 6 percent from 2016. The number of new millionaires and the total population of millionaires set records. Spectrem defines millionaire households as those with at least $1 million in investible assets, not including primary residence.
The stock market went up 25% last year and bonds didn’t lose much value. Thanks to the President’s year-end push for a corporate tax bonanza coupled with a steady, patient central banking environment where nobody pressed particularly hard on the trigger, anywhere in the world.
Since the financial crisis, the number of millionaire households has nearly doubled…
The number of households worth $5 million to $25 million grew by 84,000, to 1.35 million households. The number of households worth more than $25 million jumped by 10 percent, increasing by 16,000 to a total of 172,000.
Meanwhile, Boomers in the US are out of the doldrums emotionally and financially – they’re buying homes in retirement communities around the country at a rapid pace.
Here’s the Wall Street Journal:
The population of federally designated retirement destination counties rose 2% last year, almost three times the rate of national population growth, according to census county population estimates for the year that ended July 1.
Almost three-quarters of a million Americans during that period moved into one of the 442 counties that the Agriculture Department tags as retiree spots.
The figures are a fresh sign that the nation’s 74 million baby boomers—those born between 1946 to 1964—have dug out from the 2007-09 recession that locked many of them in place when home and stock values plummeted.
Also via the Journal, Millennials are having babies and buying houses. It was always a lie that they wouldn’t – remaining childless, living in cities like Snake People and prioritizing hot yoga sessions and artisanal oatmeal cups.
What actually happened was that the normal course of things was simply put off a bit because of the Great Recession, student loans, the new less stable nature of careers in this economy and maybe some other factors not worth listing here.
Bottom line – people date, they get married, they come home drunk from their friends’ weddings or WrestleMania, they become pregnant, they have kids, the kids get bigger, they swap their apartments for houses, they become Republicans and then they die. Rinse and repeat as necessary, but allow for some variation on the timing from one generation to the next.
Household formation among Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) is the offset that prevents the downsizing of the Boomers from becoming a massive demographic headwind, as has been predicted by Harry Dent Jr. and other charlatans in the newsletter game. It’s good to see it taking place, even if delayed relative to prior generations.
