Trending searches: how much money did trump inherit
so for a long time people have speculated and for many years they've gotten it wrong saying that trump would have been richer if he had just invested his inheritance into the s p 500 and not bothered with any of the real estate stuff that he's been up to for the last several decades and for a long time that wasn't true he actually had outperformed the market debt and a couple of smart deals and a couple of lucky deals meant that he'd done better than the s p 500 but all that changed in the middle of the pandemic so we currently estimate that donald trump is worth two and a half billion dollars if he had done nothing other than just take his father's money and put it all in the s p 500 and watch it grow for decades he would now be worth about 2.9 billion dollars so he'd be 400 million dollars richer than he is today in order to know whether trump has outperformed or underperformed the s p 500 over his life you have to be able to answer three questions the first is how much money did he receive from his father the second is when did he get that money and the third is what's he actually worth and for a long time no one could answer the first two of those questions but a few years ago we got that information answered in a story by the new york times where they explained that as of october 2nd 2018 if trump had invested his father's money into the s p 500 he would have been worth 1.96 billion dollars what we can do is then take that number and then move it as the s p 500 has moved over time and compare it to trump's net worth so we now have a day-by-day calculation that we can do saying did trump make more money making the investments that he made or would he have been richer if he just sat back lived a quiet life and stuck it all in the s p 500 so the real estate market has changed a lot during the pandemic all across the country and in most places it's done pretty well but one place that it hasn't done as well is in manhattan in new york city and that's where donald trump's holdings are focused so if you think about what he owns you know a lot of office space in a big city and also a lot of storefronts in a big city people weren't going to those storefronts anymore they were buying things on amazon that means that future tenants are going to be less likely to want to pay huge rents to the owner of that building donald trump for companies that are looking to lease office space they might not need as much office space anymore that means that they are going to be leasing less it's just a supply and demand thing therefore the office space that is currently built will be worth less so both of those two factors have hurt donald trump's net worth during the pandemic in addition to that you also have residential real estate that he owns in new york city and unlike a lot of other markets new york city residential real estate hasn't held up nearly as well comparing donald trump's performance to the s p 500 is admittedly a very nerdy thing to do and it's just an academic exercise you have to understand that by living the life that he did live he not only got to have a lot of fun building a lot of buildings and uh having fun in atlantic city sometimes not so much fun in atlantic city doing all sorts of things going on the apprentice buying yachts buying the plaza hotel all this crazy stuff all of which donald trump has loved he's loved doing all these business ventures he's loved being a famous person there's no way that he would have been president if he hadn't done what he did if he hadn't done all those business ventures if he just stuck his inheritance into the s p 500 sat back and done nothing nobody would even know who donald trump is instead what he's left with is this really exciting life but ultimately he's 400 million dollars poorer than he would be if he'd just taken it the easy way