Biden negative net worth: Why? Anybody know?

[Jackpine Radical]

Why is he in debt to the tune of $300K??

[rucky]

1. Running for office can do that to a person. n/t

[11 Bravo]

2. Now watch Grandpa McSame try to paint Joe as an elitist.

[spartan61]

3. Maybe because he had to take 2nd and 3rd Mortgages

on his one house to pay for his sons' college educations. McCain went to college on the government's dime.

[Frustratedlady]

4. His children's education expenses and he cares for his mother.

He also made a pledge to himself that he'd never get involved with taking money from special interests, so he doesn't have illegal funds...he pays his bills like the rest of us.

I also read an article about a reporter or someone calling the house to talk to Joe, but had to wait since Joe was mowing the yard and Jill had to call him in.

I can't stress enough how down-to-earth that family is. His sister, Valerie, is also friendly and outgoing. She was his campaign manager for the Iowa primaries, but the MSM was giving Obama and Hillary all the press coverage, so they might as well have saved their money.

Part of that negative worth might also be a carryover from the primaries.

[Thrill]

5. I think thats his net worth

[tinrobot]

6. What? He doesn't have 10 houses?

Any normal person who owns a house has similar debt.

He's normal. I think that's good.

[BklynChick]

7. he's probably in debt due to kids' college educations, mortgage, etc.

[WeDidIt]

8. Because he has a mortgage

you know, like most Americans?

[24HRrnr]

10. You might want to seek a better financial eduction

because buying a house should not create a negative net wealth. It should be exactly the opposite through increasing equity on the home.

And I strongly disagree with bankrupting myself to put my kids through college especially when most college degrees are worthless. I make more without one than most people with a degree. I'm highly respected in my field and a third or more of my clients are PhDs - I live in an area with two major univesities close by.

[Lisa0825]

11. Congrats to you, but that isn't the way it works for most folks.

I am in HR and the way I see it around here, a BD is about the same as HS/GED used to be. Due to the job market, a lot of managers can get people with BDs for secretaries and clerks. I hope once the job market starts tightening up, as the boomers age and the applicant pool decreases in size, that people won't have to struggle to pay for 4 years of school for basic admin support jobs, and once again a degree will mean something more.

[24HRrnr]

27. I know what you're saying but

by implication, you suggest that there is no other method to build a career. If a BD only qualifies you to be a clerk or secretary, then your money has been wasted. It's not the job market that is at fault. To be successful, you must become an expert in your field or be so location specific that competition is a limiting factor.

My best friend came out of college with a BD. It took him less than a year to figure out that he wasn't going anywhere because there was a glut in the market, so he went back to school (slept at friend's houses, scrounged, did whatever it takes) and added a BS in Construction Engineering. Much more profitable niche personally and professionally more rewarding (most days).

If you want to be a "well-rounded" individual and think that a degree in English Lit will do it for you, great. But don't presume that any old degree will hold value in the marketplace.

And students shouldn't think that their education stopped when they graduated. I know only a few things for sure - the older I get, the dumber I feel - but this I know: education never stops. Ever.

[Zynx]

35. The point is to play the odds. I can find exceptions, thousands of them, to every rule.

The averages suggest that without any form of college education you are screwed when it comes to income.

[24HRrnr]

39. I'll disagree to an extent.

Without skills, you're screwed in terms of income. There are many ways to acquire sufficient skills to be very successful. In my case, I have worked very diligently at gaining superior knowledge in a location specific environment that can't be out-sourced. The apprentice programs for plumbers and the like also offer relatively lucrative opportunities.

There are a world of training programs out there in sales, marketing, investment and small business operations. If you want to be CEO of a fortune 1000 company, you probably need a degree (though a large number of highly successful business people don't - they tend to be the innovators). Otherwise, a cost-benefit analysis along with some personality testing might indicate success in other venues.

I went small business because it fits temperamentally and intellectually - I have new tasks to handle daily, I'm outdoors often and the learning curve never stops. In hindsight, I should have focused sooner on the marketing and sales training to accelerate the process.

One thing I've stressed with my daughters is that their limits are what they think they are. With courage (an underrated trait), many more things are possible than most people would believe. Two of three are currently attending college. One online, to ultimately be a teacher, the other to be a physical therapist. The third is trying to survive high school without losing her mind or her joie la vive. She's a natural salesperson so she might be better off financially training with those attributes in mind.

[WeDidIt]

14. Good for you

I have a mortgage on my home, my wife has student loan debt, plus we have consumer debt,

My net worth is very similar to the good Senator's.

[Orangepeel]

23. You have a mortgage, but the home is an asset.

To figure your NET worth, you would add up the value of all of your assets, including the house, and subtract all of your debts, including the mortgage.

I think it is probably the same with Biden. The 300,000 figure is probably his debt, not his net worth.

[hlthe2b]

16. Wow, that chip on your shoulder

may shift and knock you out, if you are not careful. Have disdain for education, much? Geez...

Oh, right, better to have the putz in office that you'd like to have a beer with......... :eyes:

[24HRrnr]

26. Education, no.

The educational system, quite a bit.

People that can't tell the difference, the proof of the arguement.

[Midlodemocrat]

31. And those who can't spell or use spell check are part of the argument

in favor of education.

Oh, the irony.

[24HRrnr]

36. Spending 4 years in Australia

leaves me with some idiosyncrasies.

1. arguement
The alternate spelling of the word 'argument' in British English, as with 'judgment' and 'judgement'.

I do make a lot of judgements as well. Spell check disagrees with that as well. I've pretty well broken the habit of colour and honour, though.

Ta.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. College degrees are not just vocational training.

If all you expect to get out of your education is a job, then go to vocational school. If you want to develop your capacity for a mental life, then find a god college.

[24HRrnr]

25. Interesting comment.

Could you explain, please, the exculsionary principle behind the concept that the only method of developing my capacity for a mental life is to attend a "good" (I presume) college?

The last ten books that I read (over the last three weeks or so) are:

Influence by Robert Cialdini
Men with Sand by John Moring
Blog by Hugh Hewitt
The New Brain by Richard Restak
A case of Need by Michael Crichton
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Portier
The Battle for Skandia by John Flanagan - my daughter is reading the series and we both read them and then talk about them
Lord of Light by Roger Zelanzy
The Looming Tower by lawrence Wright (not finished, listening on audio)
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedmann (not finished, Friedmann just drags on and on and on....)
Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer

I'm also studying Italian for a trip to Italy next year (recalls the Latin I took 3 decades ago - apparently some a dead langauge stuck), the International Code Council Internaitional Energy Conservation Code and starting ashtanga yoga as soon as a burn in my foot heals. I spend days at a time in the mountains as far from people as I can get which doesn't add to my "culture" perhaps but adds indefinably to my "nature".

I listen to multiple podcasts on science and economics and listen to a variety of music - though I don't like rap or opera.

And, yes, colleges are primarily voactional in nature and, in my opinion, do not foster independent thought. Independent thought is the enemy of the military-industrial complex of yesteryear and the global commodization of labor today.

[Jackpine Radical]

38. I actually didn't say "only." I know perfectly well that it is possible

to educate yourself otherwise. But many people who do that become what I call "autosemididacts." They have great depth in some areas, but know virtually nothing about other things, which they then tend to deride in their ignorance. Again, a college education is no guarantee that a person will be well-rounded, but it helps. (I went to college & have been getting rounder ever since.)

[Midlodemocrat]

19. Bullshit. Education is very important. My company won't even look at someone

without at least a Bachelor's. Master's degrees are preferred.

[24HRrnr]

28. I own my company. eom.

[Midlodemocrat]

30. Uh, so do I. That's what I meant by my company.

459 employees at last count. None with less than a Bachelor's. Which is why it has been such a success.

[24HRrnr]

32. Well, mine is (much) smaller...

but still very successfull. The small size is a feature of the industry and a personal preference as I am not a good manager - leader yes and that is effective for small organizations. Large organizations require a different skill set at the top. Auto makers need thousands of employees and a hierachy to direct activity: specialized consultants, less vertical structure and more horizontal. I worked to my core strengths and built my company around that. There is also a multitude of methods for creating wealth that don't require large businesses (very fortunately for me!)

Congratualtions on doing so well with your firm. And that is sincere; I have a pretty good idea of what it takes.

I would bet, though, that the degrees your folks hold are less important after they arrive (unless in engineering and the sciences) than performance and that you simply use a degree as a screening technique. There is more than one method to screen for successfull people. Where you went to school (and, in many cases, if you went to school) in not important - again with an exception for engineering and the sciences. Performance is.

[Midlodemocrat]

33. Our company relies extremely heavily on the written word.

So education is very, very important. We simply could not conduct business the way we do if the employees couldn't write/speak or present well.

That's where education comes in.

[24HRrnr]

34. That you need a degreed individual

to write or speak well is a poor reflection on our secondary education system.

Unfortunately, I would agree with the assessment. My daughters think that I overstate the case that they must be competent in reading, writing and speaking before they leave high school. My eldest daughter is working on a degree now and rolls her eyes when I give her materials (the latest, a training program on giving terrific presentations) to study. Earlier in life, it was a demand that she be competent in mathematics. She did have to be a math 'whiz' but I would not accept that she could not achieve competence. The middle daughter has just started classes and is of the opposite bent - she won the science award at her high school but treats English as a second language with algebra being her first. She can, however, write well constructed sentences and paragraphs even if they are not as "artistic" as her older sister.

My sister-in-law lacks a degree but worked on developing herself through specialized training. She ran training programs on industry specific software applications, learned to sell them, managed the customer interfaces to the benefit of both parties and is now the heir-apparent when the current CEO steps down in two years.

Both of us had the advantage of a better educational system than is offered to our children.

[GoesTo11]

9. Very misleading numbers. He's not rich, but he's fine.

The open secrets site that is the basis of this meme about negative net worth is that he reports debts within a certain range and assets within a certain range. So his house is worth between 100k and 450k, and he owes between $50 and 400k on it. They calculate that his debt could be as high as 400k, and the house could be worth as little as 100k, so his net worth could be as low as 100k-400k, = negative 300k. Not realistic. If his mortgage is on the high end, in all likelihood his house is on the high end. So he's probably got a positive net worth somewhere below 250k.

But also, due to his long service in the senate, his pension when he leaves will be 80% of his salary, so something like $140k, plus soc security. He doesn't need retirement assets.

Finally, as to why he hasn't been building up wealth anyway, given the high salaries of senators, well, he's got pretty high expenses. Nice clothes, nice meals, good schools etc. He can't expense everything and when you run in circles of multi-millionaire level power, you can't just wear jeans and eat at Olive Garden. You've got to spend a good chunk just to keep in the game.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

15. excellent analysis !

[24HRrnr]

29. Nicely summed up! eom

[demo dutch]

37. According to MSNBC he's worth just a little under $300,000, wife is school teacher, I believe

[undeterred]

12. Because of his Capital One accounts.

But they'll extend his credit. No worries.

[Ilsa]

13. Medical bills? Alot of people have medical bills. nt

[DuaneBidoux]

18. Scarborough said he is worth $300,000. Imagine Romney ($200,000,000) vs. Biden ($300,000)

[GoesTo11]

20. So other than a few zeros, Biden is worth 1 more. \nt

[CharmCity]

21. He was a public servant from age 29!

Most don't make it to the Senate until they've made their millions OR married real money.
A senator's salary is chump change for most in the Senate.
And he has a mortgage (and a modest one by East Coast standards.)

[MiniMe]

24. He was a public defender before the Senate

He would have had more money if he had been in a law firm. I give him a lot of credit for that.

[Medusa]

22. That's a huge ass house

it looks like from the pics anyway.