How Often Does This Happen?

Scroll through social media long enough, and you might think everyone’s a millionaire by 30. Most aren’t. Not even close.

Data from the Federal Reserve reveals that reaching millionaire status that young is rare, even as social media feeds can suggest otherwise.

If you’re comparing your financial milestones to those of millionaires under 30, you’re measuring yourself against the wrong benchmark. Social media filters out the boring majority. Trust the data.

The 1.4% Club

If we define “millionaire” as $1 million-plus net worth (total assets minus debts), few people under 30 come close.

The numbers vary sharply even within this age range, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). (The last data available is from 2022, with an update due later this year.)

About 2% of households headed by someone aged 25 to 29 clear the million-dollar mark, while for those 18 to 24, the share drops below 1%. Blended across the full 18-to-29 group, about 1.4% are millionaires.

The SCF measures households, not individuals. There are about 13.9 million households headed by someone under 30. At about 1.4% of the population, that translates to fewer than 200,000 millionaire households.

The typical under-30 household isn’t anywhere near seven figures. For households headed by someone aged 18 to 24, the median net worth is just $10,222. The average, pulled up by a small number of wealthy outliers, is $112,104. For households headed by someone 25 to 29, the median rises to $31,470 and the average to $120,183.

A significant share of both groups carry negative net worth, meaning they have more debt than assets. 

A Million Dollars in What, Exactly?

Even within this already-small group, “millionaire” can mean very different things. And who has it is often shaped by opportunities, access and plain luck.

• Inheritance/windfall: Family money—gifts, trusts, insurance payouts—can push net worth past $1 million well before income alone would. Lottery winners count here, too, but you already know those odds.
• Paper wealth: Equity and stock options from a startup, or concentrated holdings that could be worth $1 million-plus today (or $0 tomorrow if things don’t go well).
• Self-made: The smallest group, their wealth has accumulated through earning a lot, saving aggressively, and sometimes riding a rising market.

Social Media Algorithms Love Outliers

Social media can make outliers sound like anything but when everybody is talking about them.

A 28-year-old who patiently contributes to a 401(k) likely won’t go viral. A 28-year-old turning $200 in crypto into seven figures? That’s the one you’ll see.

Survivorship bias also makes it easy to mistake “uncommon” for “average”. Most startups fail—we just never hear about them.

And since most aren’t in the fortunate millionaire bucket, latching on to success stories can warp expectations—especially if you start treating them like a blueprint instead of what they really are: highlights from extreme rarities.

It also blurs the meaning of being a “millionaire”. Plenty of people who claim the label are “paper millionaires,” whose net worth is locked up in startup shares they can’t sell easily, a highly volatile crypto token, or a property whose value depends on a hot market staying hot.

That can look impressive on a screenshot, but it doesn’t translate into durable, spendable wealth.

Millionaires Are Mostly Older

Building wealth early gives you more choices: flexibility around work, a cushion against setbacks, and time for compounding to do its work.

But early wealth doesn’t guarantee happiness, stability or staying on track.

Many households don’t start building real wealth until their 40s or 50s, once rising income, steady saving, and compounding start working together. While just 1.4% of households under 30 are millionaires, compared with about 25% of those in their 50s, and more than 27% of those in their 60s. The median age of a millionaire household in America is 62.

So if you’re not a millionaire at 30, does that mean you’re falling behind? Of course not. The most dramatic outcomes get the most attention and start to seem normal. That pushes people toward high-risk paths, but often without the same timing, access or safety nets.

A healthier takeaway is to treat early-millionaire stories like lottery winners: interesting, sometimes instructive, but not the only blueprint to follow.