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A chart that was recently posted to X put a striking number on a familiar story: since 2009, Jared Kushner’s estimated net worth has grown about 1,440% — from around $65 million to more than $1 billion (1).
Over the same period, the post notes, the average American household’s net worth grew by about 160%.
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The comparison, shared by prominent financial commentator Steve Rattner, is about the specific mechanisms that allowed one person’s fortune to compound at nine times the rate of the broader population. Understanding those mechanisms is, in many ways, a lesson in how the wealthiest Americans operate on a much different scale.
Where Kushner started and how he grew
By 2009, Kushner had already been running Kushner Companies for several years, having taken over after his father, Charles Kushner, was convicted on criminal charges (2), including tax evasion and witness tampering. Under Jared’s leadership, the firm has acquired nearly $7 billion in property (3).
While Kushner’s net worth at the time is difficult to pin down from public records, the approximate $65 million starting figure comes from the analysis that prompted this comparison (1).
Over the following decade, that foundation compounded steadily.
According to The Tradable, Kushner’s White House financial disclosures showed he and wife Ivanka Trump held combined assets of between $240 million and $740 million during that period, with Westminster Management alone generating $1.5 million in annual personal income (4) from its portfolio of 20,000 apartment units. Then, when Kushner sold his share of real estate startup Cadre, his payout was between $25 million and $50 million.
But the more dramatic acceleration came after he left Washington.
In 2021, Kushner founded Affinity Partners in Miami. According to NoonPost English, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund committed $2 billion to the firm (5) — a cornerstone investment, along with another $1.5 billion from Qatari and Emirati funds.
This transformed Affinity from an untested player into a credible global operation. By the end of 2023, Affinity’s assets went from $1.3 billion to $4.8 billion.
And by September 2025, Forbes officially placed Kushner in the billionaire club — his net worth sliding past $1 billion, a figure NoonPost English reports was up from $900 million the prior year.
Affinity Partners now manages more than $5.4 billion in assets (6).
The 160% comparison figure for American household wealth growth since 2009 comes from Rattner’s post on X (1), and the Federal Reserve’s reporting tells a consistent story.
Total household net worth rose from approximately $61.5 trillion in Q4 2009 to $182.9 trillion in Q4 2025 — roughly three times the amount (7). The 2010 recorded median family net worth was $77,300 (8), while 2022’s put it at $192,900 (9) — a nominal gain of roughly 149% over that period.
But a 2022 report from the Federal Reserve notes that although gains in income and wealth were experienced broadly across families, they were largest toward the top of the distribution (9), which was “consistent with some increase in income inequality over this period.”
What drove the gap and where it leaves Americans
The distance between Kushner’s trajectory and that of the typical American household reveals the compounding advantages of starting wealthy, owning appreciating assets and, crucially, gaining access to capital that most Americans don’t.
Private equity and sovereign wealth fund capital flows represent a category of wealth-building unavailable to ordinary investors. According to The Tradable, Kushner leveraged relationships he made as a senior White House advisor and when playing a role in Middle East policy to grow Affinity Partners into what it is today (4).
But for the typical household, the path was slower and more incremental.
The Federal Reserve notes that rising home values were a primary driver of wealth gains in recent years. The median net housing value rose from $139,100 in 2019 to $201,000 in 2022 (9), as home values increased while mortgage debt held relatively flat.
That’s a meaningful gain, but one that compounds far slower than the sovereign wealth fund capital and private equity flow powering Kushner’s journey. Gains were broad-based but largest at the top — a pattern that has defined American wealth accumulation for decades.
How to invest like the ultra-wealthy
Jared Kushner’s net worth places him in one of the world’s most exclusive financial clubs. Fewer than 1,000 Americans have reached billionaire status (10), and like many members of that group, he hasn’t built his fortune by relying on a single investment.
Instead, his wealth is spread across multiple asset classes and businesses. Through Affinity Partners, Kushner has backed more than two dozen companies across a wide range of industries — from the corporate fitness company EGYM to the gaming giant Electronic Arts. That diversified approach has reportedly helped the firm generate an internal rate of return of roughly 25% since inception (11).
The lesson? Rather than betting everything on a single company or sector, wealthy investors tend to build portfolios that can benefit from different economic trends.
While few people have billionaire-sized portfolios, anyone can diversify across multiple investments instead of concentrating too heavily in just one.
Building wealth isn’t just about maximizing returns — it’s also about protecting the gains you’ve already made.
Gold has long filled that role. Unlike stocks, which can be heavily influenced by earnings expectations and investor sentiment, gold often attracts buyers when markets become volatile or when inflation heats up. Gold prices have more than doubled over the past five years, hitting multiple record highs along the way and outpacing the S&P 500 over the same period.
A gold IRA allows you to directly invest in physical gold or gold-related assets within your retirement portfolio, pairing the tax advantages of an IRA with gold’s track record as a long-term store of value. You can open a gold IRA with the help of Goldco.
Real estate has also played a central role in building Jared Kushner’s fortune. His family business, Kushner Companies, owns a large portfolio of residential, commercial, retail and hospitality properties, with the firm valued at roughly $2.9 billion (12). Kushner himself reportedly owns about a 20% stake worth an estimated $580 million (13).
Property has long been a favorite asset among the ultra-wealthy. Real estate can generate recurring rental income while also benefiting from long-term property appreciation. Because housing prices don’t always move in tandem with the stock market, they can also provide valuable diversification.
Of course, buying apartment buildings or commercial properties isn’t realistic for most investors. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean real estate is off the table — and you can even do it without taking on a mortgage.
You can invest in shares of rental properties across the country with Arrived. And you can get started with as little as $100.
Backed by world-class investors like Jeff Bezos, Arrived’s team handles all the necessary work — from securing properties to finding and managing tenants — so you can sit back and become a landlord without having to do any legwork.
Even better, Arrived distributes any rental income generated by properties to investors monthly, allowing you to potentially set up a passive income stream.
For those with more capital on hand, there are other options, too.
Accredited investors can now tap into this opportunity through platforms such as Lightstone DIRECT, which gives accredited investors access to single-asset multifamily and industrial deals.
Lightstone DIRECT’s direct-to-investor model ensures a high degree of alignment between individual investors and a vertically-integrated, institutional owner-operator — a sophisticated and streamlined option for individual investors looking to diversify into private-market real estate.
Like most billionaires, Jared Kushner hasn’t built his wealth around a single type of investment. While real estate and private businesses make up a large share of his portfolio, the broader playbook followed by many ultra-wealthy investors often includes alternative assets that don’t rise and fall with the stock market.
One increasingly popular alternative is post-war and contemporary art. From 1995 through 2025, fine art has outperformed the S&P 500 by roughly 15% while maintaining near-zero correlation with traditional equities.
Until recently, this world was off-limits to most everyday investors. Now, with Masterworks, you can buy fractional shares in multimillion-dollar works by icons like Banksy, Picasso and Basquiat. While art can be illiquid and typically requires a long-term hold, it offers unique portfolio diversification.
Masterworks has sold 27 artworks so far, yielding net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6% and 17.8%.
Moneywise readers can get priority access to diversify with art: Skip the waitlist here.
Note that past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investing involves risk. See important Regulation A disclosures atMasterworks.com/cd.
— With files from Emma Caplan-Fisher
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Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see ourethics and guidelines.
@SteveRattner/ X (1); New York Times (2); Bloomberg (3), (11); The Tradable (4); NoonPost English (5); Iconic Billionaires (6); Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (7); Federal Reserve (8), (9); Forbes (10), (12); Investopedia (13)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
