You can tell a lot about somebody by the way they manage their money. So How the Obama manage their Money?
So the latest financial-disclosure details from Barack and Michelle Obama give fresh insights into the character of the world’s leading power couple.
The Obamas’ net worth is somewhere between $1.9 million and $6.9 million in 2013, according to disclosure rules that allow elected officials to report the value of their assets within a wide range, allowing for large swings in value.
Obama has readily acknowledged he’s a member of the one percent, though he’s not nearly as wealthy as other presidents were during their tenures, such as both Bushes, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.
The Obamas don’t act like fat-cats either: Their investments are mostly plain-vanilla assets that Wall Street money managers might find naively simplistic. Yet the Obamas’ portfolio does reveal a certain worldview and an outlook for the future.
Here are five takeaways from the Obamas’ disclosure forms:
In the long run, the Obamas have faith in the U.S. economy. Roughly 15 percent of the Obamas’ money is invested in S&P 500 stock index funds, which in general rise or fall along with the U.S. economy.
This money is in retirement funds, so the Obamas aren’t planning to tap it for a couple of decades at least, but by putting a large portion of their overall nest egg in U.S. stocks, the Obamas are betting that the U.S. economy will remain dominant for years to come. These funds appear to be the only direct stock investments the Obamas have.
Obama calls for new rules on managing investments. On February 2015, President Obama called Monday for new rules requiring financial advisers to put their client’s interests above their own, especially when it comes to retirement savings plans.
“There are a lot of very fine financial advisers out there, but there are also financial advisers who receive backdoor payments or hidden fees for steering people into bad retirement investments that have high fees and low returns,” Obama said.