Love, Money + Real Estate #48
Some Big News from Ilyce (Hint: I Just Sold Something!) and How Many Millionaires Did The U.S. Mint Last Year?
Greetings.
Before we get into just how many millionaires the U.S. minted last year, I wanted to give you a little news from my personal life.
Here goes: This spring, I sold Best Money Moves, my financial wellness technology company!
Maybe you didn’t know I had another life other than financial journalism. Well, I’ve been the founder and CEO of a fintech called Best Money Moves. Here’s a little bit about how I started the company.
Ten years ago, as I watched newspapers continue to fade away, I thought there had to be a better way to deliver life-changing financial information to people. It was 2015, and I had just sold my third company, The Medicare Newsgroup, to my partner. I was hunting around for something new to do and realized that while I was writing a ton of award-winning content for my newspaper syndicate and CBS News (as part of the founding group of bloggers for Moneywatch), lots of people needed more help than I could provide in a weekly column. They needed personal help to solve their own particular problems.
Given that The Medicare Newsgroup was a cloud-based one-stop shop for all things related to Medicare and Medicare Advantage, I realized the cloud could be leveraged to deliver personalized information, driven by advanced algorithms (which later morphed into AI). And, then I asked a question: How can you measure financial stress?
It turns out, you can measure anything - if you chop it up into small enough bites. Which is exactly what we did. Best Money Moves took the concept of financial stress and broke it down into its component pieces, then had users measure their level of financial stress from 1 to 10. Once we had that piece, we used our technology to send users the right information at their point of pain. Worked like a charm.
The Anchor Group, a venture ecosystem based in Midlothian, VA, bought Best Money Moves, adding it to a growing portfolio of companies that provides everything a gig worker, entrepreneur, solopreneur or micro-business owner needs to power their business, including building business and personal credit with eCredable and earning more by leveraging your relationships through our affiliate marketing company, MyGig. Think of it as a business-in-a-box. You come up with the idea and we’ll help you build a business.
So, what’s next for me? I’ve accepted a job with The Anchor Group as Chief Communications Officer (CCO) for the corporation. I’ll still be writing this newsletter and, for a time, my nationally-syndicated column. I’ll also be taking on some new topics, writing about ways gig workers can earn more, manage their business and personal finances optimally, and build wildly successful businesses. After all, most of my 30+ year career has been spent as a gig worker. I’ve got loads of stories, successes and failures to share — and I’ll be starting a podcast featuring some of the amazing entrepreneurs and gig workers I’ve known over the years.
More to come — including a big press release that will be issued later today, so watch for it. But given the time you put into reading this newsletter, I wanted you to be the first to know.
If you’d like to know more about what The Anchor Group has to offer, watch this space. I’ll be talking about it from time to time, so please subscribe below if you haven’t already. And, if you’re interested in earning more money (and who isn’t??) visit MyGig.world.
Just how many millionaires are there?
Now, let’s get to the good stuff. How many millionaires do you think were made in the U.S. in 2024?
According to the UBS 2025 Global Wealth Report, the U.S. minted 1,000 new millionaires every day during 2024. The big story is the rise of EMILLI, also known as the Everyday MILLIonaire.
This year’s report highlights a growing, yet often overlooked, category of investor. EMILLIs, or Everyday Millionaires represent those with assets of one to five million US dollars. As our analysis shows, the number of EMILLIs in the world has more than quadrupled since 2000 to around 52 million. At the end of 2024, EMILLIs accounted for around USD 107 trillion of total wealth. That’s more than four times the amount seen at the end of the year 2000, equivalent to over 2.5 times in real terms. It’s also close to the USD 119 trillion owned by people with more than USD 5 million in wealth. - UBS 2025 Global Wealth Report
What’s interesting about wealth is who owns it:
35% of global wealth is owned by those living in the U.S.
39% of the world’s millionaires are living in the U.S.
Global wealth is rising and the poorest band (with USD 10,000 or less) continues to shrink (although buying power has shrunk due to inflation)
Another 680,000 millionaires will be minted by 2029
Per capita, the highest density of millionaires is found in Switzerland and Luxembourg
The U.S. has more millionaires than mainland China and Europe combined.
While the U.S. grew its millionaire population by 1,000 per day last year, China’s millionaire population only increased by around 380 per day.
The study found that Switzerland and the United States lead in average wealth per adult, followed by Hong Kong SAR and Luxembourg. However, in median wealth per adult, Luxembourg comes out top, followed by Australia and Belgium.
Of course, Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) control the most wealth, by far: $83 trillion. Millennials control about half as much ($42.5 trillion), followed by those born in 1981 or later, with $17 trillion, which is still a significant amount. UBS estimates some $83 trillion will be passed down over the next 20 to 25 years.
What do you think about the great wealth transfer? Feedback welcome, as always:
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to check out my sister newsletter: Love, Money + Relationships. I’ll type to you again, soon.
Ilyce