From USA Today comes another look at the wealth of U.S. Presidents and it’s nice to see that George Washington still claims the top spot at an estimated $535 million.
Having read a lot about the founding fathers in recent years, I don’t recall coming across the first President’s salary at $25,000, some 2 percent of the U.S. budget at the time.
As a young man, Washington made a lot of money speculating on land, mostly in the Ohio River Valley (considered the “frontier” at the time), and he repeatedly benefited financially and in his political career when others died. Of course, he married into wealth and that didn’t hurt either. As a military commander, he never accepted a salary, however, he had most of his (sometimes lavish) expenses paid while leading the Continental Army.
Thomas Jeffereson is listed as number two, but there must be some creative math behind that. Like most of the Virginia Gentry, he was land rich and cash poor, so much so that he was rescued financially by selling his personal library to the Library of Congress after the War of 1812, but still managed to die in enough debt that some of his land holdings had to be auctioned off to pay his creditors.