Ranking Every U.S. President By Net Worth

There’s no doubt about it: being the U.S. president is a hard and often thankless job. Richard Nixon famously said, “Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.”
But being president also has amazing perks (Air Force One!), and most presidents have been financially well-off. In fact, the average net worth of a U.S. president ($62 million) is more than 200 times the average net worth of a U.S. adult ($301,000). It pays to be president.
Using the most recent data from 24/7 Wall St., InsideGov ranked every U.S. president by net worth, from lowest to highest. 24/7 Wall St. relied primarily on historical records to value each president’s assets and adjusted all numbers for inflation. They included factors such as land and property, income, inheritance, and book royalties in their calculation.
Overall, presidential wealth has gone through several notable trends. Many of the earlier presidents made their fortunes before entering the White House, largely through land speculation. In contrast, many of the modern presidents came into office modestly wealthy, but significantly boosted their finances through subsequent book deals and public speaking.
*Note: the rankings are 1-43 because Grover Cleveland was president twice. All values are expressed in 2010 dollars and adjusted for inflation.

The Poorest Presidents: #43-35

Net Worth: <$1 million

• James Buchanan
• Abraham Lincoln
• Andrew Johnson
• Ulysses S. Grant
• James Garfield
• Chester A. Arthur
• Woodrow Wilson
• Calvin Coolidge
• Harry S. Truman

This group of nine won the presidency but never found significant wealth. Interestingly, six of these poorest presidents served in the period between 1857-1881. Clearly, the years before and after the Civil War were a tough time to be Commander-in-Chief.

Warren G. Harding #34

Net Worth: $1 million
Harding’s tenure as president ended abruptly when he died from heart failure during his second year of office. Before that, he had earned income primarily from a local newspaper he owned.

William McKinley #33

Net Worth: $1 million
With the exception of his presidential salary, McKinley had no other significant sources of income. McKinley’s presidency took a tragic turn on September 14th, 1901 when he was assassinated–he served in office for 4.5 years.

Franklin Pierce #32

Net Worth: $2 million
Outside his presidency, Pierce had success as an attorney and owned land in New Hampshire. Compared to others on this list, though, Pierce’s net worth and political record are rather unexceptional.

William Howard Taft #31

Net Worth: $3 million
Taft might have been the heaviest U.S. president–he allegedly got stuck in the bathtub–but his net worth was one of the lightest. “Big Bill” gained most his wealth from a long career in law.

Rutherford B. Hayes #30

Net Worth: $3 million
President Hayes doesn’t have a particularly impressive legacy, but he did own a majestic estate in Ohio. Like many other U.S. presidents of his time, Hayes also had success as an attorney.

Millard Fillmore #29

Net Worth: $4 million
Fillmore has the distinction of being the last president from the Whig Party. His main financial asset was his estate in New York.

Benjamin Harrison #28

Net Worth: $5 million
Outside his presidency, Harrison was an esteemed lawyer, who owned valuable property in Indiana. Some of his wealth was also passed down from his grandfather, President William Henry Harrison.

William Henry Harrison #27

Net Worth: $5 million
The older Harrison may have the same net worth as his grandson, but his presidency was far more abrupt. After delivering his inaugural speech in freezing rain, Harrison succumbed to pneumonia. His 23-day presidency is the shortest in U.S. history. Harrison’s fortune primarily comes from the estate of his wife’s family.

Zachary Taylor #26

Net Worth: $6 million
Before Taylor could make much of an impact as president, he died suddenly of gastroenteritis. He served in office for just over a year. Despite his untimely end, Taylor had amassed a small fortune from land speculation.

Jimmy Carter #25

Net Worth: $7 million
Before his presidency, Carter was a respected peanut farmer. But his real wealth came after his presidency in the form of lucrative book deals.

Gerald Ford #24

Net Worth: $7 million
Ford had the challenging task of taking over the White House after President Nixon resigned. Like Carter, Ford made most of his fortune from book deals after his presidency.

Barack Obama #23

Net Worth: $7 million
The leader of the free world currently makes $400,000 a year–about as much as a high-level banker. While he can enjoy his salary until 2016, Obama has made most of his money from his two best-selling books.

Dwight Eisenhower #22

Net Worth: $8 million
In addition to his eight years as president, Eisenhower was a celebrated military commander and president of Columbia University. His largest financial asset was his large estate in Pennsylvania.

James K. Polk #21

Net Worth: $10 million
Polk’s accomplishments as president are often overlooked, but the one-term wonder successfully led the nation to victory in the Mexican-American War, restored the Treasury, and reduced tariffs. His landholdings were similarly impressive.

Ronald Reagan #20

Net Worth: $13 million
A successful Hollywood actor, Reagan starred in over fifty movies before his presidency and served as spokesman for GE. Post-presidency, Reagan found further success with a lucrative book deal.

Richard Nixon #19

Net Worth: $15 million
Though the Watergate scandal tarnished Nixon’s legacy, it also led to some high-paying book deals and interviews. In fact, British talk-show host David Frost paid $600,000 for a series of interviews with “Tricky Dick.”

John Adams #18

Net Worth: $19 million
The second Commander-in-Chief had a rocky presidency. Losing his reelection to rival Thomas Jefferson was a major defeat for Adams. Nevertheless, Adams was a renowned attorney and married into a wealthy family.

George W. Bush #17

Net Worth: $20 million
Before entering politics, Bush had success in the oil industry and as a co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush currently makes revenue from his books and public speaking engagements.

John Quincy Adams #16

Net Worth: $21 million
As the son of John Adams, Quincy Adams had big shoes to fill. Like his father, Quincy Adams was a controversial president and lost reelection. He inherited most of his fortune, but also had success as a lawyer.

George H. W. Bush #15

Net Worth: $23 million
Like his son, Bush Sr. worked in the oil industry before entering the White House. He also owns significant property in Maine.

Grover Cleveland #14

Net Worth: $25 million
Grover Cleveland has the distinction of being the only U.S. president to serve two terms out of sequence. Known as the “Veto President,” Cleveland vetoed 414 bills, more than any other president at the time. Unsurprisingly, Cleveland had a formidable career in law and also had successful real estate investments.

Martin Van Buren #13

Net Worth: $26 million
Van Buren’s legendary sideburns were complemented by a similarly impressive career in law. He also owned substantial property in New York.

James Monroe #12

Net Worth: $27 million
Monroe presided over the “Era of Good Feelings” in the U.S. and was the last Founding Father to serve as president. Before his presidency, Monroe amassed wealth as a lawyer, farmer, and planter.

John Tyler #11

Net Worth: $51 million
Sometimes referred to as “His Accidency,” Tyler abruptly assumed office when President William Henry Harrison died 23 days into his term. In addition to inheriting the White House, Tyler also inherited a massive tobacco plantation and married into a rich family.

Bill Clinton #10

Net Worth: $55 million
Although Clinton had a successful law career before entering politics, his real wealth came after he left the White House. Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, has sold over 2.2 million copies. Additionally, Clinton has made a sizeable fortune from public speaking alone.

Franklin D. Roosevelt #9

Net Worth: $60 million
FDR was the longest-serving president in U.S. history, with over 12 years in the White House. He inherited significant wealth from his family and his marriage to Eleanor, but was never able to match the fortune of his older cousin Teddy.

Herbert Hoover #8

Net Worth: $75 million
Unlike many of the presidents on this list, Hoover did not inherit any wealth. In fact, Hoover was an orphan who made his fortune in the mining industry. Unfortunately, his business savvy couldn’t stop the onset of the Great Depression.

Lyndon B. Johnson #7

Net Worth: $98 million
Following JFK’s assassination, Johnson assumed office under tragic circumstances, but quickly reinvigorated the nation with his War on Poverty. Johnson’s fortune primarily came from his large landholdings in Texas.

James Madison #6

Net Worth: $101 million
Known as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison earned substantial income as both president and secretary of state. However, his real wealth came from his 4,000+ acre plantation in Virginia, named Montpelier.

Andrew Jackson #5

Net Worth: $119 million
For a self-proclaimed populist who dismantled the Federal Bank, Jackson had a surprisingly high net worth. His fortune primarily came from substantial landholdings and his military career.

Theodore Roosevelt #4

Net Worth: $125 million
Although the Roosevelts were a wealthy New York family, Theodore struggled financially in his earlier years. However, he gained wealth as a prolific author, writing over 40 books throughout his life. His most valuable asset was his Sagamore Hill estate on Long Island.

Thomas Jefferson #3

Net Worth: $212 million
A true Renaissance man, Jefferson had several successful business endeavors. But like many of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson’s real fortune came from property. Jefferson’s large Virginia estate Monticello remains an architectural wonder today.

George Washington #2

Net Worth: $525 million
Washington’s massive net worth can be summarized in one word: land. The Washington family was one of the most successful land speculators in Virginia, and their Mount Vernon estate consisted of more than 8,000 acres.

John F. Kennedy #1

Net Worth: $1 billion
JFK’s father Joe Kennedy built his fortune through several successful business endeavors, including banking, stock trading, selling liquor (not always legally), and producing movies. Technically, Kennedy was never a billionaire himself–he was assassinated before he could inherit his family’s wealth. But while he held office, he had access to his family’s large trust fund and numerous real estate holdings.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) German philosopher

Friedrich Engels,  (born Nov. 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died Aug. 5, 1895, London, Eng.), German socialist philosopher, the closest collaborator of Karl Marx in the foundation of modern communism. They coauthored The Communist Manifesto (1848), and Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx’s death.

Early life

Engels grew up in the environment of a family marked by moderately liberal political views, a steadfast loyalty to Prussia, and a pronounced Protestant faith. His father was the owner of a textile factory in Barmen and also a partner in the Ermen & Engels cotton plant in Manchester, Eng. Even after Engels openly pursued the revolutionary goals that threatened the traditional values of the family, he usually could count on financial aid from home. The influence of his mother, to whom he was devoted, may have been a factor in preserving the tie between father and son.

Aside from such disciplinary actions as the father considered necessary in rearing a gifted but somewhat rebellious son, the only instance in which his father forced his will on Engels was in deciding upon a career for him. Engels did attend a Gymnasium (secondary school), but he dropped out a year before graduation, probably because his father felt that his plans for the future were too undefined. Engels showed some skill in writing poetry, but his father insisted that he go to work in the expanding business. Engels, accordingly, spent the next three years (1838–41) in Bremen acquiring practical business experience in the offices of an export firm.

In Bremen, Engels began to show the capacity for living the double life that characterized his middle years. During regular hours, he operated effectively as a business apprentice. An outgoing person, he joined a choral society, frequented the famed Ratskeller tavern, became an expert swimmer, and practiced fencing and riding (he outrode most Englishmen in the fox hunts). Engels also cultivated his capacity for learning languages; he boasted to his sister that he knew 24. In private, however, he developed an interest in liberal and revolutionary works, notably the banned writings of “Young German” authors such as Ludwig Börne, Karl Gutzkow, and Heinrich Heine. But he soon rejected them as undisciplined and inconclusive in favour of the more systematic and all embracing philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel as expounded by the “Young Hegelians,” a group of leftist intellectuals, including the theologian and historian Bruno Bauer and the anarchist Max Stirner. They accepted the Hegelian dialectic—basically that rational progress and historical change result from the conflict of opposing views, ending in a new synthesis. The Young Hegelians were bent on accelerating the process by criticizing all that they considered irrational, outmoded, and repressive. As their first assault was directed against the foundations of Christianity, they helped convert an agnostic Engels into a militant atheist, a relatively easy task since by this time Engels’s revolutionary convictions made him ready to strike out in almost any direction.

In Bremen, Engels also demonstrated his talent for journalism by publishing articles under the pseudonym of Friedrich Oswald, perhaps to spare the feelings of his family. He possessed pungent critical abilities and a clear style, qualities that were utilized later by Marx in articulating their revolutionary goals.

After returning to Barmen in 1841, the question of a future career was shelved temporarily when Engels enlisted as a one-year volunteer in an artillery regiment in Berlin. No antimilitarist disposition prevented him from serving commendably as a recruit; in fact, military matters later became one of his specialties. In the future, friends would often address him as “the general.” Military service allowed Engels time for more compelling interests in Berlin. Though he lacked the formal requirements, he attended lectures at the university. His Friedrich Oswald articles gained him entrée into the Young Hegelian circle of The Free, formerly the Doctors Club frequented by Karl Marx. There he gained recognition as a formidable protagonist in philosophical battles, mainly directed against religion.

Conversion to communism

After his discharge in 1842, Engels met Moses Hess, the man who converted him to communism. Hess, the son of wealthy Jewish parents and a promoter of radical causes and publications, demonstrated to Engels that the logical consequence of the Hegelian philosophy and dialectic was communism. Hess also stressed the role that England, with its advanced industry, burgeoning proletariat, and portents of class conflict, was destined to play in future upheavals. Engels eagerly seized the opportunity to go to England, ostensibly to continue his business training in the family firm in Manchester.

In England (1842–44), Engels again functioned successfully as a businessman. After business hours, however, he pursued his real interests: writing articles on communism for continental and English journals, reading books and parliamentary reports on economic and political conditions in England, mingling with workers, meeting radical leaders, and gathering materials for a projected history of England that would stress the rise of industry and the wretched position of the workers.

In Manchester, Engels established an enduring attachment to Mary Burns, an uneducated Irish working girl, and, though he rejected the institution of marriage, they lived together as husband and wife. In fact, the one serious strain in the Marx-Engels friendship occurred when Mary died in 1863 and Engels thought that Marx responded a little too casually to the news of her death. In the future, however, Marx made a point of being more considerate, and, when Engels later lived with Mary’s sister Lizzy, on similar terms, Marx always carefully closed his letters with greetings to “Mrs. Lizzy” or “Mrs. Burns.” Engels finally married Lizzy, but only as a deathbed concession to her.

In 1844 Engels contributed two articles to the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Yearbooks”), which were edited by Marx in Paris. In them Engels put forth an early version of the principles of scientific socialism. He revealed what he regarded as the contradictions in liberal economic doctrine and set out to prove that the existing system based on private property was leading to a world made up of “millionaires and paupers.” The revolution that would follow would lead to the elimination of private property and to a “reconciliation of humanity with nature and itself.”

Partnership with Marx

On his way to Barmen, Engels went to Paris for a 10-day visit with Marx, whom he had earlier met in Cologne. This visit resulted in a permanent partnership to promote the socialist movement. Back in Barmen, Engels published Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1845; The Condition of the Working Class in England), a classic in a field that later became Marx’s specialty. Their first major joint work was Die deutsche Ideologie (1845; The German Ideology), which, however, was not published until more than 80 years later. It was a highly polemical critique that denounced and ridiculed certain of their earlier Young Hegelian associates and then proceeded to attack various German socialists who rejected the need for revolution. Marx’s and Engels’s own constructive ideas were inserted here and there, always in a fragmentary manner and only as corrective responses to the views they were condemning.

Upon rejoining Marx in Brussels in 1845, Engels endorsed his newly formulated economic, or materialistic, interpretation of history, which assumed an eventual communist triumph. That summer he escorted Marx on a tour of England. Thereafter he spent much time in Paris, where his social engagements did not interfere significantly with his major purpose, that of attempting to convert various émigré German worker groups—among them a socialist secret society, the League of the Just—as well as leading French socialists to his and Marx’s views. When the league held its first congress in London in June 1847, Engels helped bring about its transformation into the Communist League.

Marx and he together persuaded a second Communist Congress in London to adopt their views. The two men were authorized to draft a statement of communist principles and policies, which appeared in 1848 as the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (commonly called the Communist Manifesto). It included much of the preliminary definition of views prepared earlier by Engels in the Grundsätze des Kommunismus (1847; Principles of Communism) but was primarily the work of Marx.

The Revolutions of 1848, which were precipitated by the attempt of the German states to throw off an authoritarian, almost feudal, political system and replace it with a constitutional, representative form of government, was a momentous event in the lives of Marx and Engels. It was their only opportunity to participate directly in a revolution and to demonstrate their flexibility as revolutionary tacticians with the aim of turning the revolution into a communist victory. Their major tool was the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which Marx edited in Cologne with the able assistance of Engels. Such a party organ, then appearing in a democratic guise, was of prime importance for their purposes; with it they could furnish daily guidelines and incitement in the face of shifting events, together with a sustained criticism of governments, parties, policies, and politicians.

After the failure of the revolution, Engels and Marx were reunited in London, where they reorganized the Communist League and drafted tactical directives for the communists in the belief that another revolution would soon take place. But how to replace his depleted income soon became Engels’s main problem. To support both himself and Marx, he accepted a subordinate position in the offices of Ermen & Engels in Manchester, eventually becoming a full-fledged partner in the concern. He again functioned successfully as a businessman, never allowing his communist principles and criticism of capitalist ways to interfere with the profitable operations of his firm. Hence he was able to send money to Marx constantly, often in the form of £5 notes, but later in far higher figures. When Engels sold his partnership in the business in 1869, he received enough to live comfortably until his death in 1895 and to provide Marx with an annual grant of £350, with the promise of more to cover all contingencies.

Engels, who was forced to live in Manchester, corresponded constantly with Marx in London and frequently wrote newspaper articles for him; he wrote the articles that appeared in the New York Tribune (1851–52) under Marx’s name and that were later published under Engels’s name as Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany in 1848 (1896). In the informal division of labour that the two protagonists of communism had established, Engels was the specialist in nationality questions, military matters, to some extent in international affairs, and in the sciences. Marx also turned to him repeatedly for clarification of economic questions, notably for information on business practices and industrial operations.

Marx’s Das Kapital (Capital), his most important work, bears in part a made-in-Manchester stamp. Marx similarly called on Engels’s writing facility to help “popularize” their joint views. While Marx was the brilliant theoretician of the pair, it was Engels, as the apt salesman of Marxism directing attention to Das Kapital through his reviews of the book, who implanted the thought that it was their “bible.” Engels almost alone wrote Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (1878; Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, better known as Anti-Dühring), the book that probably did most to promote Marxian thought. It destroyed the influence of Karl Eugen Dühring, a Berlin professor who threatened to supplant Marx’s position among German social democrats.

Last years

After Marx’s death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on Marx and Marxism. Aside from occasional writings on a variety of subjects and introductions to new editions of Marx’s works, Engels completed volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital (1885 and 1894) on the basis of Marx’s uncompleted manuscripts and rough notes. Engels’s other two late publications were the books Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (1884; The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) and Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1888; Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy). All the while he corresponded extensively with German social democrats and followers everywhere, so as to perpetuate the image of Marx and to foster some degree of conformity among the “faithful.” His work was interrupted when he was stricken with cancer; he died of the disease not long after.

During his lifetime, Engels experienced, in a milder form, the same attacks and veneration that fell upon Marx. An urbane individual with the demeanour of an English gentleman, Engels customarily was a gay and witty associate with a great zest for living. He had a code of honour that responded quickly to an insult, even to the point of violence. As the hatchetman of the “partnership,” he could be most offensive and ruthless, so much so that in 1848 various friends attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Marx to disavow him.

Except in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, where Engels received due recognition, posterity has generally lumped him together with Marx without adequately clarifying Engels’s significant role. The attention Engels does receive is likely to be in the form of a close scrutiny of his works to discover what differences existed between him and Marx. As a result, some scholars have concluded that Engels’s writings and influence are responsible for certain deviations from, or distortions of, “true Marxism” as they see it. Yet scholars in general acknowledge that Marx himself apparently was unaware of any essential divergence of ideas and opinions. The Marx-Engels correspondence, which reveals a close cooperation in formulating Marxist policies, bears out that view.

Oscar J. Hammen