What will happen politically for Vice President Kamala Harris after the election defeat is uncertain. However, she doesn’t have to worry about her finances.
It wasn’t enough for Vice President Kamala Harris. On Wednesday afternoon German time it was clear: she had lost the race for the US presidency and would not be the country’s first female president. While politicians and business representatives around the world are worried about the effects of another term in office for Harris’ opponent Donald Trump, the Democrat at least doesn’t have to worry about her own economic situation for the time being.
According to estimates by the business magazine Forbes, Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff have a fortune of around eight million US dollars. Harris didn’t earn this sum in politics alone.
Before her political career, Harris worked for years as a lawyer. She was San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2010. According to Forbes, at the end of her term in office she earned around $200,000 a year in this job.
In 2016, Harris was elected senator. She held this position until 2020, earning $174,000 annually. As running mate of incumbent President Joe Biden, Harris was elected Vice President of the United States in 2020. As vice president, Harris currently earns $235,100 a year. The vice president’s salary actually now amounts to $284,000, but the amount was frozen during Trump’s first term in office and only increased minimally thereafter.
Harris also earned significant sums from her books. The books “Smart on Crime”, the children’s book “Superheroes are Everywhere” and her memoirs “The Truths We Hold” are said to have earned a total of $500,000 in royalties.
the couple is in good shape. But the assets of Trump and his deputy JD Vance are significantly higher. Trump recently ranked at number 500 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with assets of $5.7 billion. Vance reported a net worth between $4.3 million and $10.7 million in his most recent disclosure.
In addition to the publicly known salaries in Harris’ previous jobs, as vice president she also had to regularly disclose her other income and assets to the Office of Government Ethics. The most recent report is from 2023. This shows that Harris prefers a passive style of investing and keeps her money in managed index funds.
In total, the report lists eight funds and several pension plans. According to Forbes, the total value of these investments is less than a million dollars. Harris herself stated in her statement that she had securities investments worth between $800,000 and $1.75 million and cash holdings of between $550,000 and $1.1 million. The form only asks for ranges and not exact amounts. The report also shows that Harris and Emhoff set up a family trust.
An analysis by the business newspaper “Barron’s” puts the couple’s assets, including retirement accounts, cash and investments, at between $2.9 million and $6.6 million. Then there is the couple’s shared house in Los Angeles. The property is worth more than $4 million, according to Forbes.
Accordingly, she and her husband received tickets for the singer Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s concert worth $1,655.92. The singer recently supported Harris in the election campaign with her song “Freedom”. Harris also received tickets from ESPN for a football game between Florida A&M University and her alma mater, Howard University, worth $1,890.