UK vs US Median Wealth By Age – Richer Than Others Your Age?

UK vs US Median Wealth By Age

Do you know if you’re wealthier or poorer than the typical person of your age?

In the UK and the US, the numbers are in and they might surprise you.

Today, we’re breaking down exactly how much people actually have in wealth by age group and what that means for you.

Read this all the way through, and by the end, you’ll know exactly where you stand and what to do next.

If you are new here, we run this blog as husband and wife with a small team.

We achieved Financial Independence at 34, including mortgage-free in 7 years while raising two children in the UK.

Ken: I’m a Chartered Accountant, a Financial Coach and Business Coach and a former Chief Financial Officer.

Mary: I’m an Entrepreneur and former E-business Analyst.

Together, we’re the founders of The Humble Penny and Financial Joy Academy.

In addition, we are Sunday Times Bestselling Authors of Financial Joy, a 10-week Plan to help you Banish Debt, Grow Your Money and Unlock Financial Freedom.

Please jump in the comments and react to the stats as you read from anywhere in the world.

Why We Published This Post on Wealth By Age

The goal of this post is not to make you feel like you’re behind in life.

Instead, the goal is to educate us all, give you a space to pause and reflect on your own personal finances and beyond that, feel empowered to take action.

I started economically poor when I moved to the UK with my family in 1998, and every single one of us is thriving financially today. I know it is possible for you, too.

The stats are not your destiny. If I had only looked at the stats 5 or 10 or 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have achieved anything.

You have it within you to choose a path that leads to financial security and, over time, financial freedom.

It’s not easy or overnight, but it starts with belief and action.

Money is only one dimension of wealth. True wealth is also your health, community, relationships, time with loved ones, heritage, etc.

So, although you might be financially behind, you’re rich in life in many other ways.

This is ultimately about your own journey rather than comparison to others.

If that sounds good, please take a moment to share this post with a loved one on WhatsApp, email, etc.

Let’s jump straight in.

Part 1: UK Wealth and How It Is Split By Asset and Location

Throughout this post, we’ll be using Median rather than Average as a measure.

Looking at the median, or the midpoint value, is a more accurate representation of the everyday person, rather than Average, which is skewed by numbers from the super rich.

Median is the middle number in a set of wealth values when those values are arranged from smallest to largest.

So, what is wealth in the UK?

Wealth in the UK is made up of 4 components:

• Net property wealth: the value of all properties minus mortgage debt. Net property wealth can be negative.
• Net financial wealth: the value of savings or investments minus financial liabilities (financial debt). Net financial wealth can be negative. 
• Physical wealth: the value of vehicles, collectables, and household contents.
• Private pension wealth: the value of occupational and personal pensions already accrued.

According to the Office for National Statistic (ONS) latest research on Household total wealth in Great Britain:

from April 2020 to March 2022 (published in 2025) Median household wealth in Great Britain was £293,700.

This is slightly higher in real terms than in April 2018 to March 2020.

The increase was due to an increase in pension wealth: excluding private pensions, household wealth fell slightly.

Here is what UK Median Household Wealth looks like by region:

The South East leads In Median Household wealth, but it’s interesting to see that Median Household Wealth in London is lower than in Wales, East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire and so on.

This is likely driven by a much higher cost of living in London; even though Londoners earn more, they’re keeping less of it.

So what makes up this Median Household Wealth?

The research shows that:

• Property wealth makes up 40%
• Pension wealth makes up 35%
• Financial wealth makes up 14%
• Physical wealth makes up 10%

That adds up to 99% but when you factor in rounding differences, it will add to 100%.

Let’s look at these individually.

1. Property Wealth

62% of households owned their main residence (including 33% who owned outright and 29% who had a mortgage), and 11% of households owned other property.

2. Pension Wealth
Here is what Median pension wealth looks like in the UK by age for individuals:

Notice that 70% of individuals do not hold a pension. For those with a pension, the amounts are smaller than we expected.

3. Financial Wealth
Again, here is a snapshot of financial wealth in Great Britain.

Around 20% of households had negative net financial wealth (they had more financial debt than savings or other financial assets).

This was especially sad to see as it’s one area of wealth that one can easily fall into a negative on.

There are many reasons why one might have negative financial wealth.

Some are within one's control (e.g. habits and behaviours, lifestyle choices, etc) and some outside their control (e.g. job loss, rising cost of living, higher taxes, etc.)

But we also like to flip that script here and see it as an opportunity to help people turn the state of their finances around.

Just because you have negative financial wealth today doesn’t mean that is where you’re doomed to remain. It can and will improve.

Recommended: To grow your financial wealth, we recommend reading Financial Joy as a starting point. More on habits for building wealth soon.

The data also showed that 17% of households had net financial wealth of £100,000 or more, which was inspiring to see.

4. Physical Wealth

Looking at this one, we were pretty amazed by how much physical wealth people have.

Remember this is the value of cars, collectables and household contents.

Here is the summary of physical wealth.

It is clear that some people will have more in physical assets than they might have in Financial or Pension wealth, which speaks to the culture of keeping up with the Joneses.

Looking at this table, a total of 48% of households have physical assets worth £40,000 or more. Wow!

18% have physical wealth worth more than £80,000!

If this includes appreciating assets like art, gold and so on, then great.

Otherwise, we’d much rather see that wealth in easily accessible financial wealth, where it is invested and compounding.

If you are enjoying this post, take a moment to share it with friends or family.

Part 2: Wealth Inequality and How Wealth Differs for Different Groups, e.g. the Top 10% and Top 1%

Wealth inequality remains a very popular topic, but what does the data actually say?

Let’s look at what the research says over the last 30 years. I’ll put this up on the screen.

Pause for a moment and react in the comments. Does this surprise you?

I was surprised to see that the share of wealth by the top 10% was 57% and compares fo 56% in 1980! I expected a much bigger gap.

The research went on to say:

“As discussed in section 3.5, wealth inequality between age groups has increased, but a fall in wealth inequality within older age groups meant that headline figures were unaffected.”

Here is what it says in section 3.5 about intergenerational wealth inequality:

Reading the last paragraph might make you think, property is the most unequally distributed type of wealth in the UK, but it isn’t.

Before I share more on that, let’s talk briefly about how wealth inequality is measured.

They use what’s called the Gini Coefficient:

• A Gini of 0 means everyone has the same household wealth.
• Gini of 1 means one person has all the household wealth.
• The higher the Gini score, the more wealth inequality there is.

In March 2020 to April 2022, the Gini coefficient for total household wealth in Great Britain was 0.59. More on this shortly.

Financial wealth (not property) was the most unequally distributed component of wealth, followed by Private Pension Wealth, then Net Property Wealth in 3rd place and then physical wealth was the least unequal.

Here is what it looks like by wealth component. Did this surprise you? Jump in the comments and let us know:

The Top 1%. How much UK wealth do they have?

According to the Wealth and Assets Survey, in April 2020 to March 2022, here it is:

The wealthiest 1% of households held 10% of all household wealth in Great Britain; the same as the proportion held by the least wealthy 50% of households combined.

Wow!

At first, I thought, 1% owns 10%, that’s not as high as I expected.

But then, when they say it is equivalent to the proportion held by the least 50% of households combined, it’s even clearer that we have a problem at the extreme ends of the wealth curve.

Having some wealth is not the problem. Everyone wants some wealth to enjoy a good standard of living and have a comfortable retirement.

The system has been designed to make very, very extreme wealth possible and, as a result, puts power and control in the hands of very few people.

Some have more wealth than they can even need or spend, while others are struggling to pay their bills and remain in debt. It is clearly unsustainable.

While this remains a problem with various potential solutions (including the suggestion of wealth taxes), the data also tells us that this is not a new problem or a problem that is unique to the UK.

I’ll share stats on wealth inequality in other countries shortly, so you can see where the UK sits compared to the US and other OECD nations.

The information on the Top 1% went on to say:

Part 3: How UK Wealth Inequality Compares to Other Countries

In case you’re wondering, how unequal the wealth in the UK is compared to the other OECD countries, the research is available.

The UK is in the bottom half of OECD countries and has around the same Gini coefficient (between 0.72 and 0.74) as 13 other OECD countries.

At the top of the list are countries like the USA, Chile, Ireland, Greece and so on.

The US is way worse than the UK in terms of wealth inequality.

We’d welcome some comments from Americans who are reading this post.

Again, it was a surprise to see the facts on how the UK compares to these other countries.

Part 4: UK Median Wealth By Age

Ok, let’s now look at what UK wealth looks like by Age.

We’ll be looking at the Median as it’s a more accurate reflection of what the wealth of a typical person is by age rather than looking at the average.

Here is the UK wealth by age. Remember, these numbers include property wealth:

The median UK Wealth by age per household (not individual), including property equity:

• 16 to 24 it is £15,200
• 25 to 34 it is £109,800
• 35 to 44 it is £209,600
• 45 to 54 it is £301,900
• 55 to 64 it is £496,500
• 65 to 74 it is £502,500
• 75 and over, it is £373,100

My first reaction to these numbers is that they are smaller than I would have expected, and bear in mind, these numbers include property equity.

If you were looking at Average rather than Median, some of these numbers would be over £1m, and that’s because they’d be skewed by the Super Rich.

Jump in the comments and let me know how you feel your net worth compares for your age group.

Are you ahead or behind the government figures for a typical person of your age?

To calculate your number, it is the same as working out your Financial Networth:

Add up the value of all your assets to get one number in total, and do the same for the value of your liabilities.

Then, take the value of your liabilities from the total of your assets to get one number. That is your net worth.

Networth = Total Assets less Total Liabilities.

Feel free to watch this video: How to 

But note that as mentioned before UK Median Household Wealth includes property.

Here is an estimate of UK Median Wealth By Age without Property equity:

We were told that Property makes up 40% of Median Wealth, so we’ve stripped that out so that you can see an estimate on the right-hand side in the yellow block.

Someone aged 16 to 24 won’t likely have property wealth, so it’s likely most of their wealth is in Net Financial or Physical wealth.

My table does a straight allocation to all age groups for Property, Financial, Physical and Pension wealth, hence why the column in yellow is an estimate.

Where you live in the UK will dictate the split of your wealth across Property, Financial, Pension and Physical Wealth.

People in London, for example, typically have 51% of their wealth in property, 15% in Financial Wealth, 7% in Physical wealth and 28% Pension wealth.

Here is a split by location:

Part 5: US Median Wealth By Age

To get the median Net Worth of households in America, I looked at the latest publication of the Evidence from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) published in October 2023 for the period 2019 to 2022:

• Under 35: $39k (143% rise)
• 35 to 44: $135,600 (28% rise)
• 45 to 54: $247,200 (27% rise)
• 55 to 64: $364,500 (48% rise)
• 65 to 74: $409,900 (33% rise)
• Over 75: $335,600 (14% rise)

This over-75 group will likely have care costs, etc, but we're surprised their net worth still increased.

Here on the screen is the same information in a bar chart format. Note that these numbers like the UK numbers includes property!

The numbers will be smaller of course without property equity.

Overall, Median household wealth in the USA was $192,900 as at the 2022 report (same period as the UK).

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) report says that:

“Between 2019 and 2022, real median net worth surged 37 percent, and real mean net worth increased 23 percent. These patterns imply some narrowing of the wealth distribution between surveys. Indeed, the 2019–22 growth in median net worth was the largest three-year increase over the history of the modern SCF, more than double the next-largest one on record.”

So it would appear that Americans experienced better economic times in those years.

Part 6: Wealth By Ethnicities – UK vs US

You notice very interesting patterns when you dig a bit deeper to see which Ethnicities have the largest net worths in America:

You can see that by far, the most financially wealthy ethnic group in the USA are the Asians, which, interestingly, is the same in the UK.

Asians had a median net worth of $536,000, which is almost twice that of $285,000 by White non-hispanic. Wow!

Although Black or African American non-hispanic had a 60% increase in their net worth (the highest percentage change) in the 3 years, they have by far the lowest net worth.

Again, this is sad to see because it points to many years of systemic racism among other things, which means a lot of black households in America remain massively behind.

In fact, looking at those numbers, the Median Asian net worth is 11.9X that of a Black or African American non-hispanic.

Wow! This is absolutely shocking!

We welcome your reactions in the comments, no matter your ethnicity or location.

Please comment respectfully, as we're reading published official numbers here.

Why are these wealth gaps so massive? What have the Asians done to have such a massive net worth?

Please drop comments that we can all learn from below.

For the UK wealth by ethnicity numbers, here is the latest ONS release. Focus on the median:

Here are the specific numbers for UK median household wealth by ethnicity:

• Black African – £34,300
• Any other ethnic group – £35,000
• Bangladeshi – £65,600
• Chinese – £77,300
• Black Caribbean – £85,900
• Other White – £118,000
• Mixed/Multiple – £162,000
• Other Asian background – £162,100
• Pakistani – £224,500
• Great Britain – £286,600
• Indian – £313,200
• White British – £313,900

White British and Indians are pretty much at the same wealth level, although I suspect the latter will be ahead on recent numbers (unpublished yet).

Why are these wealth gaps by ethnicity so vast? 

We are Black African (the lowest wealth group), yet we've defied the odds to surpass multiple times all the numbers above. 

This isn't a show off at all, we're sharing for context.

On a personal level, it confirms what we know: you can build wealth if you want to, and your ethnicity (although challenging for some) isn't what's going to stop you.

Part 7: UK vs US Wealth Side By Side

Here is the comparison between UK and US Median household net worth based on the latest figures reported as at 2022:

Although we're doing a comparison here, it’s more for illustration purposes only and the UK and US can’t be a direct comparison for a number of reasons we'll explain shortly.

It’s also worth noting that although the data for both relate to the same period up to 2022, UK numbers were published in January 2025 and US numbers in October 2023.

So there are also inflation adjustments to consider.

Part 8: Differences in UK vs US Wealth

Here up on the screen is a difference between the UK and US Median Networth numbers.

The key difference is that:

• Pensions: The US do not include Defined Benefit pensions but the UK do.
• Student Loans: The US does include student loans but the UK does not.
• Business: The US numbers include business equity but the UK numbers do not.
• Cryptocurrency: This is not included in the UK wealth numbers, however, this asset class is included in the US numbers.
• Employment-related stock options: Neither the UK nor the US include these in their numbers.

Part 9: How to Build Your Wealth Intentionally, Starting Now

Rather than just comparing yourself to the national median, ask yourself these 3 questions:

1) Are you improving your net worth year-on-year?

This way, you’re focusing on your own journey.

2) Is your liquid net worth (cash + investments – debt) increasing?

The focus here is on Financial Wealth e.g. your ISAs in the UK or Roth IRAs in the US.

I think liquidity and access to your money will be a massive area of focus in the next 5 years.

Of course, still keep growing your pension wealth where you can but the order of your investing will matter massively depending on your goals.

i.e. ISA vs Pension/SIPP/401k vs GIA for Employed vs Self-employed

Read pages 288 -292 of Financial Joy for more details.

3) Are you developing the right mindset, skillset and toolsets?

Mindset Example:

Believing you're not “behind” — you’re just starting from a different place.

Many people see these net worth stats and immediately feel shame.

But someone who owns their story and decides, “I can still close the gap,” is already shifting from scarcity to growth.

It’s not about beating everyone else — it’s about becoming the best financial version of you.

Skillset Example:

Learning how to track your net worth monthly and actually doing it.

This isn’t something most people are taught. But knowing your number and seeing it go up even by £500 or £500 — builds confidence and long-term discipline.

Toolset Example (Money Habits)

Automating £50/month into a SIPP or Stocks and Shares ISA or Roth IRA and never missing a payment

This tiny habit, even if you start late, compounds massively over time. It’s less about the amount and more about building the habit of paying your future self first.

We cover all this and more in our book, Financial Joy.

In addition, you can connect and learn from us directly and our community daily via our global learning platform at Financial Joy Academy.

There, we offer you coaching, classes on investing, how to create multiple income streams, a daily Lunch Time Club, Accountability, Mastermind and in-person meetups.

Part 10: Conclusion

There are two important conclusions we want to make. First,

Wealth is more than money.

Wealth is health, it’s your community, your relationships and social connections, it’s time with your lived ones, etc.

Money is only one dimension of wealth.

So although you might be behind financially, you’re rich in life in different ways.

Here is the second conclusion.

There isn’t only one pie out there that we are all fighting over.

This is borne out of a scarcity mindset.

To build wealth, you need an abundance mindset. More pies can be made, and more opportunities can be created or discovered.

Overall, stay positive and keep enjoying your life one day at a time.

If you enjoyed today’s post, please take a moment to share it with others.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments:

What aspect of today’s post surprised you the most? Did the UK or US wealth by age surprise?

Or was it the wealth inequality stats in the UK and around the world? Or was it something else?

Comment below.

Don’t go anywhere—check out these next posts to help your wealth building journey:

• ISA Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built £1M Tax-Free – And How You Can Too!
• You Are Trained To Be Poor. 10 Shocking Money Traps
• ESCAPE PLAN: How to Stop Living Paycheck To Paycheck

Watch the full video on wealth by age here:

 

AS ALWAYS, IN ALL THINGS, BE THANKFUL AND SEEK JOY!