Trump Becomes America’s Richest President, Pushing Out George Washington

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 18, 10:08AM EDT · Published Feb 4, 8:45AM EST

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Trump Becomes America’s Richest President, Pushing Out George Washington — © Thinkstock

George Washington has been America’s richest president, as well as its first. According to the ongoing 24/7 Wall St. study of the net worth of presidents, Washington’s fortune peaked at $580 million. Donald Trump’s is well above that, which moves him into first place. His net worth has been conservatively estimated at $2.9 billion, and as high as $10 billion.

Washington and Trump share one thing in common. Each made his fortune on real estate. The 24/7 Wall St. analysis of Washington shows:

His Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, consisted of five separate farms on 8,000 acres of prime farmland.

Much of the balance of his net worth was because he owned people. He owned 300 slaves.

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Our analysis shows Trump’s net worth has been the cause of a great deal of dispute:

Even at the lowest estimate, and when adjusting for inflation, Donald Trump is far and away the wealthiest person to ever be elected president. His precise net worth, however, is difficult to gauge, as media estimates, his FEC financial disclosure, and statements from his own campaign vary widely. Bloomberg and Forbes estimated Trump’s net worth at $2.9 billion and $4 billion, respectively. Trump, meanwhile, claimed a net worth of $10 billion. Trump appeared capable of funding his entire campaign himself.

Our methodology:

For comparison purposes, we provided net worth figures for each president in 2016 dollars. Because a number of presidents, particularly in the early 19th century, made and lost huge fortunes in a matter of a few years, we only provided each president’s net worth at its peak.

In the case of each president we have taken into account hard assets such as land, estimated lifetime savings based on work history, inheritance, homes, and money paid for services, including such diverse incomes as salary as collector of customs at the Port of New York to Fortune 500 board memberships. We have also taken into account royalties on books, along with ownership of companies and yields from family estates.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.