Until 2019, Joe Biden was perhaps unknown to most people, but in his successful running to become the 47th President of the United States, suddenly the world knew his name. But with Trump being so rich and infamous, one question everyone was asking was how Joe Biden was worth.
According to Forbes, in 2019, Joe Biden has a net worth of around $9 million. This was figured out since Biden publicly released his financial records as he started his 2020 presidential campaign to prove he was a legitimate and honest candidate.
But where did Joe Biden get $9 million from, and how was he able to amass such a small fortune? In today’s post, we’re going to break it down, so you have everything you need to know.
How Joe Biden Made His Money
Let’s take a look at the facts.
According to the publicly available Senate records, which are available here, we can work out that Biden would have started around $42.500 per year, and with the pay rises he earned during his time in service, would have made it up to around $174,000 per year.
Again, when he was promoted to being the Vice President, he would have been on a paycheck around the $230,000 mark. It’s important to note that most of his wealth had come from the most recent years up to 2021, when he became more prevalent in the public eye.
A CBS article reportedly states that as of November 2009, Biden was probably only worth around $30,000 or less, but moving up to his role as Obama’s right-hand man meant a lot of money came with it.
However, fast forward to 2019 when Bide released his financial records during his bid to become the President of the United States; the records show that he and his wife, Jill Biden, made a jaw-dropping $15 million in the years 2017 to 2018. That’s a lot of money, and it came from places you might not expect.
It seems as though the main chunk of money here came from a book deal with Flatiron Books that comes in around $8 million, as reported by Publisher’s Weekly. Additionally, the American Press shows that getting Biden to speak at a public speaking event would cost around $100,000 a time, but this is average.
The report shows that sometimes he would charge $40,000, but this price could also be as high as $190,000 in some cases. However, there were some unpaid events Biden spoke at during this time. And he’s a good speaker. Here he is delivering his first major speech as the US President in February 2021.
What’s more, Biden is also known for being a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which earned him around $540,000.
Damn. That’s a lot more money, and when you start adding it all up, it’s easy to see how his net worth would sit around the $9 million mark.
The Additional Income of Biden
While we’ve covered the main contenders to where Biden gets his money and wealth from, we haven’t covered everything. It turns out that Biden has a rather sustainable real estate portfolio that will also go into his grand total.
According to the same Forbes report that analyzed his public documents, it seems like Biden owns two homes in Delaware, which come together to provide around $4 million worth of wealth to his estates. On top of this, you’ll want to add on the ‘cash and investments’ he has, which adds another estimated $4 million to his estate, plus the $1 million pension he’ll get for working for the government.
Finally, since moving up to becoming the US president, throughout his term, Biden will be sitting on a paycheck of around $400,000 per year for his services to the United States. His wife, Jill, says she will be keeping her day job as a teacher in a community college, so she’ll continue to earn through that.
All in all, it becomes very clear that Biden and his family are rather financially secure, but it’s positive to see that his finances and wealth have come from his hard work and his career, not from controversial opinions like Trump had, a presidency that was riddled with corruption, tax evasion and so on.
Hats off to Biden for taking the honest approach. Let’s see where it leads.