Money

The 10 Richest Counties in America Will Surprise You

Published

9 years ago

March 5, 2015

Jeff Desjardins

The 10 Richest Counties in America Will Surprise You

The richest counties in America by median income are not located near Silicon Valley or adjacent to Wall Street. They are not in oil rich Texas either.

If you guessed that they are surrounding the D.C. Metro Area, you are correct. Six of ten of the richest counties by median income are based just outside of Washington D.C.: five in Virginia, and one in Maryland. This includes the number one ranked county in all of the United States, Falls Church City in Virginia, which has a median income of $121,250 and where half of homeowners own houses worth more than $500k. In case you are wondering, Falls Church City is less than a 10 mile commute from the nation’s capital.

Two counties that made the top ten richest counties list are in New Jersey: Hunterdon (#6) and Somerset (#10) Counties, respectively. Both are about an hour and change away from Manhattan by car.

Rounding out the list, we go west. Los Alamos County (#3) in New Mexico is 30 miles out of Sante Fe, and Douglas County (#8) in Colorado is on the south side of Denver. Interestingly Los Alamos is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which gets $2.2 billion of government funding and has 9,000 employees.

Original graphic by: Timothy Sykes

Related Topics:money wealth America richest counties washington dc

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Charted: Who Has Savings in This Economy?

Older, better-educated adults are winning the savings game, reveals a January survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Published

1 day ago

April 23, 2024

Pallavi Rao

A cropped chart visualizing the percentage of respondents to the statement “I have money leftover at the end of the month” categorized by sentiment, age, and education qualifications.

Who Has Savings in This Economy?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Two full years of inflation have taken their toll on American households. In 2023, the country’s collective credit card debt crossed $1 trillion for the first time. So who is managing to save money in the current economic environment?

We visualize the percentage of respondents to the statement “I have money leftover at the end of the month” categorized by age and education qualifications. Data is sourced from a National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) report, published last month.

The survey for NEFE was conducted from January 12-14, 2024, by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It involved 1,222 adults aged 18+ and aimed to be representative of the U.S. population.

Older Americans Save More Than Their Younger Counterparts

General trends from this dataset indicate that as respondents get older, a higher percentage of them are able to save.

Age	Always/Often	Sometimes	Rarely/Never
18–29	29%	33%	38%
30–44	36%	27%	37%
45–59	39%	23%	38%
Above 60	49%	28%	23%
All Adults	39%	33%	27%

Note: Percentages are rounded and may not sum to 100.

Perhaps not surprisingly, those aged 60+ are the age group with the highest percentage saying they have leftover money at the end of the month. This age group spent the most time making peak earnings in their careers, are more likely to have investments, and are more likely to have paid off major expenses like a mortgage or raising a family.

The Impact of Higher Education on Earnings and Savings

Based on this survey, higher education dramatically improves one’s ability to save. Shown in the table below, those with a bachelor’s degree or higher are three times more likely to have leftover money than those without a high school diploma.

Education	Always/Often	Sometimes	Rarely/Never
No HS Diploma	18%	26%	56%
HS Diploma	28%	33%	39%
Associate Degree	33%	31%	36%
Bachelor/Higher Degree	59%	21%	20%
All Adults	39%	33%	27%

Note: Percentages are rounded and may not sum to 100.

As the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes, earnings improve with every level of education completed.

For example, those with a high school diploma made 25% more than those without in 2022. And as the qualifications increase, the effects keep stacking.

Meanwhile, a Federal Reserve study also found that those with more education tended to make financial decisions that contributed to building wealth, of which the first step is to save.