The survey defines the top one percent as "Net worth of $13,390,060 or more," which sounds greatly skewed versus what I assume is a lower median net worth at the 99th percentile. I don't think 1 in 100 Americans have over $13 million in assets.
Not sure what "a lower median net worth at the 99th percentile" means (median is net worth level at the 50th percentile), but 1 in 100 American households (not individuals) indeed have over $13 million net worth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBL99T999309
This threshold has about doubled since 2010, which should not be too surprising as house prices more than doubled and the S&P500 increased six fold in the last 15 years.
~"Minimum Wealth Cutoff for the 99th to 99.9th Wealth Percentiles" in that link reads to me as 1 in 1,000 households have a net worth over $13 million, not 1 in 100.~
No, that would be the the maximum cutoff, not the mimumum. That maximum, which is also the minimum cutoff to enter the 99.9 percentile (the 0.1%, or 1 in 1000) is almost 50 million dollars: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLTP1311
That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Any middle-class boomer who was planning to retire and paid off their mortgage can expect to be in the 7 digits of net worth.
Net worth is a weird number for many people to interpret because it is pretty intangible -- most can't cash it out.
A lot of boomers are sitting on 7 figure homes that they refuse to downsize from that’s adding to their “net worth”. Most of these homes are in disrepair and need six figure upgrades before they are even up to code, but on paper they’re all millionaires.
