Earlier I compiled the complete list of CNN Money’s Millionaires in the Making (MITM). Over the past 5 years, these individuals and couples submitted their information to CNN Money and were profiled online and in print. The profiles followed a similar theme and contained specific personal finance nuggets, like savings account balances, annual incomes, and ages. I took all these pieces of info and built a complete database. Now I’ll share with you the compiled financial information of the 60 profiles.
Averages
Here are the average stats of the 60 profiles:
- Age*: 35
- Number of Kids: 1.00 (yes, exactly 1)
- Household Income: $121,046.15
- Retirement Savings**: $180,434.75
- Emergency Savings***: $38,569.76
- Real Estate Equity****: $210,635.42
- Business Value*****: $536,250.00
What I think we can learn from these averages is that generally speaking to be a millionaire in the making you should plan on having a pretty decent sized household income and only one kid.
*Age is based on the oldest known member of the household at the time of profiling
**Includes taxable and non-taxable accounts, as well as education accounts
***Includes cash in savings (and checking, if included) , CDs, and money market accounts
****Includes personal residence and rental properties
*****Only four profiles listed a business value
Highest
Profiles with the highest value in each category:
- Age: 52(tie) – Jeff and Leonora Claudio, Mark and Lori Gorney, Rick and Victoria Woods
- Kids: 7- George and Wendy Cicotte
- Income: $300,000- Michael and Caslyn Huck, Loan Office and Accountant
- Retirement Savings: $779,000 – Mark and Trish Crochet, Chemist and Paralegal
- Emergency Savings: $195,148 – Rick and Victoria Woods, Tennis Coach and Systems Engineer
- Real Estate Equity: $560,000- Todd French, Entrepreneur
- Business Value: $1.7M- Robert Criscuolo, Staffing Company Executive
Lowest
Profiles with the lowest value in each category (excludes profiles with zero):
- Age: 24(tie) – Douglas Whipp and Kathleen Kaiser, Justin D’Angelo
- Income: $55,000- Michael Wentzel, Military
- Retirement Savings: $12,000 – Christopher Ortega and Alicia McDonald
- Emergency Savings: $1,157- Michael and Caslyn Huck
- Real Estate Equity: $11,500- Justin D’Angelo
- Business Value: $120,000- Todd French, Entrepreneur
Age
Location
Bubble Busted?
These five profiles had at least $300,000 more in real estate equity than they did in retirement and emergency savings combined:
- Todd French, CA
- Rick and Lisa Chetram, NY
- Christopher Ortega and Alicia McDonald, CA
- James and Lisa DeLaGarza, TX
- Erk and Laura Sarman, CA
Notice the States. Four of the five are from a bubble state, and the Texan is a real estate broker. It’d be great to check in on these people to see how the real estate bust has affected their MITM status.
Well Balanced
These five profiles had less than $10,000 difference between their real estate equity and their savings (both retirement and emergency):
- Keith and Georgina Meulemans
- Brad and Lori Jarvis
- Scot and Heather Randol
- Han-Lin and Fu-Lin Lee
- Amy and Jesse Dickinson
Hopefully you enjoyed viewing these profiles and compiled information. I find all the profiles very inspiring in some way and all have helped to put some perspective on my own financial situation. Be sure and check out the other lists I’ve put together:
- CNN Money’s Extreme Savers
- CNN Money’s Tycoons in the Making
- Other MITM Profiles/Series’ (not CNN Money)
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{ 6 comments }
Interesting compilation you got there. Initially, I thought it might reveal some sort of bias as to who they chose to profile. But overall, it seems like they have a good mix going on.
Wow. That’s actually a really deep dive into it. Surprised it didn’t get more traffic. Love the input. Looks like I’m off the map with 2 kids (and the wife wants another) – I may not make it to a million as I’d planned!
This is a really neat analyzation of the MITM. I’m definitely gonna let people know about it on my blog, as I think the results are very interesting (also, makes me realize I am far from par).
For calculating the “Average” Business Value as $536,250.00 , it looks like you just averaged the four profiles that reported a business value. It would be more usual to calculate the average business for the entire cohort of 60 profiles ie. $35,750. This of course assumes that all 56 MITM that didn’t report a business value have no business…
In any case, with a sample size of only four, the average business value is severely skewed by the one high value ($1.7m). The other three reported business values only total $445,000! With such a small sample size the median value of the four would probably be a better indicator (around $180,000?)
I agree, EnoughWealth. I didn’t think to use the Median. Thanks for stopping by and digging into the stats with me.
One observation is that the MITM profiles do not list a category for ‘College Savings’.
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