Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Breaking into America's top 1% requires a level of wealth and income that few households ever reach. According to Federal Reserve data, it took a net worth of roughly $11.15 million to enter the top 1% of U.S. households by wealth, based on the latest available minimum wealth cutoff data from the third quarter of 2022 (1).
Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one A single line on your car insurance policy could be inflating your premium by up to 30% — here's what to change A record 45% of central banks plan to grow gold reserves — and many investors are following suit. Get your free gold IRA guide from Priority Gold Income is a different measure. According to SmartAsset, you need an annual income of at least $731,492 to rank among the top 1% of earners nationwide.
That figure is based on 2022 IRS data adjusted for inflation to May 2025 dollars (2). And the wealth accumulated at the top is enormous. As of the first quarter of 2026, the wealthiest 1% of Americans collectively held about $55 trillion in net worth — representing 31.6% of all household wealth (3).
Those figures may be far beyond what most Americans expect to accumulate. But you don't necessarily need to join the 1% to borrow strategies from the way wealthy investors approach their money. Rather than relying on a single investment or asset class, high-net-worth investors can spread their money across stocks, real estate and other investments.
For this reason, building a diversified portfolio can help reduce the damage any single poorly performing investment can do to your overall wealth. Here are some ways to apply that approach to your own portfolio. Stocks can be an important part of building long-term wealth, but they don't have to be the only asset in your portfolio.
Real estate and other alternative investments can provide exposure to assets that behave differently from publicly traded stocks and bonds. In fact, real estate has long been a significant part of wealthy investors' portfolios. According to Long Angle's 2026 High-Net-Worth Asset Allocation Report, which surveyed 233 investors with an average net worth of $17 million, investment real estate accounted for between 10% and 20% of portfolios depending on the investor's financial objective (4).
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