The vice president has plenty of money, but she could be even richer if she invested wisely.

_{From Kyle Khan MullinsForbes contributor}

Update (November 4, 2024): Since Forbes first published this article on May 26, the country’s political landscape has changed. Kamala Harris, who had carried a wave of concern within the Democratic Party in early July about Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness, replaced the president on the ballot in just a few days. The move had no impact on her assets; An updated financial disclosure released in September showed there had been few changes to her personal finances in recent months. But this week America will decide whether it gets the promotion it wants. That would involve a raise – an increase in her annual salary from $235,000 as vice president to $400,000 as commander in chief – and a move from the vice president’s residence to the White House, which is certainly an upgrade. Additionally, a win would likely increase her future earning potential in the form of higher speaking fees and book advances. Regardless of whether she wins the presidency or is defeated by multi-billionaire Donald Trump, developments this year mean her millions of dollars in personal assets are under closer scrutiny than ever before.

TThanks to her decades in government and her wealthy husband, Kamala Harris has built up a sizable nest egg — and she’s only gotten richer since becoming vice president. Forbes estimates her net worth, along with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, at about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021. That’s about 20 times the average net worth of Americans in her age group.

A heartbeat from the most powerful office in the world, Harris (and Emhoff) own a multi-million dollar home in Los Angeles. The rest of their assets are mostly cash, index funds, bonds and pensions, which Harris, 59, will soon have access to. The second couple would be even richer if they had made some different decisions in recent years. Their net worth increase is due almost entirely to a jump in the value of their LA home, and the duo’s liquid investments don’t appear to have grown significantly despite the stock market’s rapid rise.

Harris was born in October 1964 in Oakland, California, to two well-educated immigrants. Her father, originally from Jamaica, worked as an economics professor at Stanford; Her mother is from southern India and researched breast cancer. The couple met at the University of California, Berkeley and after marriage had Kamala and her sister Maya. “We were not financially wealthy,” Harris writes in her 2019 memoir, “but the values ​​we internalized made for a different kind of wealth.”

Harris showed an interest in law from a young age. In 1982, she moved across the country to attend the historically black Howard University, where she debated, protested against South African apartheid, got a job at the Federal Trade Commission and another as an intern for California Senator Alan Cranston, a Democrat, whose seat she would later take over would fill. Harris graduated in 1986 and returned to the West Coast, where she earned a law degree from UC Hastings in 1989. She passed the bar exam in 1990 on her second attempt.

After school, Harris joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. The longer she stayed, the more serious crimes she was charged with, including cases of homicide and sexual abuse. In the mid-1990s, Harris also briefly dated Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California State Assembly, who appointed her to two state commissions. In 1998, she moved across the Bay to join the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and bought an apartment in the city for $299,000.

She quickly left the DA’s office, which she describes in her memoirs as “chaos” and dysfunctional, to take a job in city government, but she couldn’t stay away for long. In 2003, Harris ran for San Francisco district attorney, hoping to clean out her old office, and won, defeating a two-term incumbent.

Harris initially earned about $140,000 as San Francisco’s district attorney, a figure that increased to over $200,000 in 2010. That year, she won a narrow victory in the nomination for attorney general of California, which promised more prestige but less money, reducing her salary to $159,000. At least the pension benefits were generous: her time in local and state offices earned her two pensions Forbes They are estimated to be worth just under $1 million today.

The early 2010s shaped their finances in a different way. In 2012, after her mother’s death, Harris and her sister sold their Oakland condo for $710,000, local real estate agent Jerry Beverly confirmed. Two years later, Harris married Doug Emhoff, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer whom she met through a friend. As managing partner at Venable LLP, he brought with him both additional income and a well-funded IRA with dozens of individual stock holdings.

In 2016, Harris ran for U.S. Senate. Although she won in a landslide, she remembers election night as a somber affair as Donald Trump flipped state after state on his path to the presidency. “Each of us tried to cope in our own way,” she writes in her memoirs. “I sat on the couch with Doug and ate an entire family-sized bag of classic Doritos.”

As a new senator, Harris received a small raise to $174,000 per year. When she was sworn in, she had between $250,000 and $500,000 in a savings account and a similar amount in retirement accounts, plus her pensions. The rest of the assets in her disclosure all came from Emhoff. The couple soon purchased a two-bedroom apartment in DC for just under $1.8 million and borrowed $1.35 million. Harris, however, had her sights set on a more prominent home.

SHe announced a run for the White House in 2019. As a candidate Forbes estimated her net worth at $6 million – a figure inflated by Emhoff, who earned more than $1 million a year as a lawyer. Ultimately, Harris failed to prevail and was eliminated from Iowa, but received the ultimate consolation prize when Joe Biden chose her as his vice president in 2020. They beat Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and in January 2021, Harris received another pay raise to $235,000 as vice president. For his part, Emhoff left his lucrative legal practice and began teaching law at Georgetown University.

The second couple moved into the vice presidential residence at One Observatory Circle in DC and began liquidating assets. Harris sold her San Francisco apartment in March 2021 for $860,000, $560,000 more than she paid for it 23 years earlier. The D.C. apartment went next for $1.85 million, a hair above its 2017 purchase price. Harris has also earned more than $500,000 from books she published before taking office.

Where all the money went is unclear. Harris’ financial disclosures do not indicate an increase in cash and cash equivalents, even as the stock market has risen 37% since she took office. One possible explanation: Harris and Emhoff keep a large portion of their holdings in low-yield cash accounts. Another: Maybe they’ve gotten used to more income than they’re bringing in now and are therefore putting less away than they used to.

Thanks to the house in Los Angeles, which Emhoff bought in 2012 and transferred to a foundation that both of them will manage after their marriage, their total assets have increased anyway. As of 2021, the home’s value has increased by about $1 million to an estimated $4.4 million. The property has a $2 million mortgage taken out in 2020, with an addendum that allows them to pay interest only through 2030 and lock in their low interest rates through 2027. Harris once described such mortgages as ticking time bombs, but this keeps her housing costs currently low.

She will have more money soon. Harris, 59, will receive an estimated $8,200 in monthly payouts from her California pensions later this year, and her federal pension payments are expected to begin in 2026. So even if Harris has to leave the vice president’s estate in 2025, her finances are secure – and, like her predecessor Mike Pence, she could supplement them at any time with further books, consulting and speaking engagements.

For lawyers who go into public service, money is not the main reason anyway. Early in her career as a prosecutor, Harris recalls in her memoir, a young woman was mistakenly caught in a drug bust but was unable to pay bail on a Friday afternoon — meaning she spent the weekend at home in jail, away from her children had to. Harris helped free the woman, she writes, “and I knew what kind of work I wanted to do and who I wanted to serve.”

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