Do you have a net worth of less than $1 million? You’ve got a lot more company than you did last year:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The financial crisis has weighed heavily on American households, and millionaires are no exception, according to a report released Wednesday.
The number of American households with a net worth of $1 million or more, excluding the value of their primary residence, fell 27% to 6.7 million in 2008 from an all-time high of 9.2 million the year before, according to a report from market research firm Spectrem Group.
"America has a lot fewer millionaires than when this economic crisis began," said George Walper, president of Spectrem Group, in a written statement.
But don’t weep only for the 2.5 million fewer millionaires. The report, which is based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households, also showed the number of both multi-millionaires and aspiring millionaires plummeted last year.
Affluent households, defined as those with a net worth of $500,000 or more, declined 28% to 11.3 million from 15.7 million.
That’s one more hit to an already battered high-end home market. When the supply of millionaires is down, demand for millionaire digs will be down as well.
Can you imagine how much worse the drop is now since the nations economy has deteriorated so much more and deeper in the past few months compared to last year. Even the full impact from the Bernard Madoff scandal is probably not reflected fully in the Spectrem data since its effect on untold 1000s of millionaires may not have been taken into consideration in the year 2008 data but will surely be included in the 2009 millionaires wealth statistics.
i’m not in that 27%!!!! (and it’s not because i’m still a millionaire…lol)
U.S. households saw their net worth fall by $11.2 trillion, or 18%. I suspect the aging middle class Baby Boomers and retirees are taking the biggest hit. Hopes for Golden Years are turning to brass.