What's JD Vance's net worth?

The reliable pipeline from Ivy League law school to success and riches is well established in the U.S., and Vice President J.D. Vance is no exception. Despite the Trump administration's controversial efforts to undermine the independence and power of the country's most prestigious universities, the vice president would almost certainly not be a wealthy man one heartbeat away from the presidency without the ballast provided by his alma mater. Vance, who wrote in his bestselling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" about how his childhood in Appalachian Ohio was scarred by his mother's struggles with addiction, parlayed his coveted Yale University legal education into a successful career as an author, lawyer, investor and politician whose rapid ascent from the Senate to the vice presidency is almost without parallel in American history.

Yet unlike President Trump, a billionaire who inherited millions from his father's real estate business, Vance's wealth was self-made through book royalties, investments and employment, leaving him and his wife Usha with a fortune that, while substantial in comparison to the net worth of most ordinary Americans, will not land him on lists of the world's wealthiest individuals anytime soon. Today, the Vances' combined income and investments, including real estate and crypto, is "estimated at between $4.8 million and $11.3 million, according to federal disclosure forms filed in August" of 2024, said CBS News. Forbes estimated the couple's net worth at $10 million in November 2024.

From a difficult childhood to Yale Law School

While the exact circumstances of Vance's childhood in Middletown, Ohio, are a matter of dispute and speculation, he certainly faced trying circumstances. His mother was addicted to painkillers and "raised her own children amid violence, chaos, drugs and strange men," said The New Yorker. But despite the vice president's frequent claims that he grew up in poverty, the Vances "never had to worry about money," said The Conversation. On the contrary, his parents, despite their troubles, made good money and "at one point enjoyed a six-figure income" in addition to being able to draw upon a reservoir of family wealth from Vance's grandfather, said Rolling Stone.

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Vance attended Ohio State as an undergraduate and obtained his J.D. from prestigious Yale Law School in 2013. At Yale, he benefited from advice and guidance from "several prominent mentors who would help him move through the world of elite institutions and politics," including "Tiger Mom" author and Professor of Law Amy Chua, said The Guardian. His classmates at the renowned law school, which produced the second-largest number of current federal judges after Harvard University, also helped turn his ambitions into reality.

"In Vance's final year at Yale, he convened a reading group" to look at the lack of mobility and poor social outcomes for white working class Americans, said The Washington Post. The group was where Vance began working on the ideas that would become "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," a book that "gave a voice to millions of forgotten Americans across the heartland," said The White House.

The memoir that catapulted Vance to stardom

The book sold more than 1.6 million copies and brought in nearly $500,000 in royalties between its publication in 2016 and 2025. "Hillbilly Elegy" was "mostly a family story" whose key insights included "its challenges to the self-delusional and self-defeating aspects of hillbilly culture," and which was "not notably polemical," said Slate. Many copies were seemingly purchased by dispirited liberals hoping to understand how Donald Trump won the 2016 election. "Hillbilly Elegy" was a "compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump," said The New York Times. In 2019, Netflix "paid $45 million" to acquire the film rights to the book, "with Vance reaping some of that windfall," said Yahoo Finance. The film, directed by Ron Howard and released in 2020, was critically panned and felt "like a package of assorted chicken parts that can’t be assembled back into something approximating the shape of an actual animal," said Vulture. It currently has a critics' score of 24% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Vance's tome enjoyed another run of success and interest when he was selected to be President Trump's running mate during the summer of 2024. The book sold more than 750,000 copies just in the two weeks following Trump's decision, leading his publisher to print "hundreds of thousands of additional copies to keep up with demand," said The New York Times. The centrality of royalties to Vance's wealth is similar to the way that earnings from memoirs like "A Promised Land" are still a key part of former President Barack Obama's net worth.

How Vance's career built his fortune

After law school, Vance served as a clerk for a conservative judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in northern Kentucky. Federal clerkships are prestigious apprenticeships that typically go to high-performing graduates of top law schools and are used as a springboard to launch various kinds of legal careers. "Law clerks' salaries cannot match those of some private-sector lawyers," but they are "reasonable" and "adjusted to account for cost-of-living differences nationwide," said Cornell Law School. After the clerkship, Vance worked for Sidley Austin LLP, a law firm where "he focused on complex litigation and regulatory compliance matters, gaining exposure to high-stakes corporate legal issues," said LawFuel. Glassdoor estimates that attorneys at Sidley Austin make an average of $246,000 a year, although that figure was likely lower in 2014.

After his short tenure at Sidley Austin, Vance moved to a biotech startup and then to Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Mithril Capital, in 2015. He was reportedly rarely seen there, and one colleague "recalled sporadic sightings of Vance" but noted that Vance's "focus seemed to be promoting his book rather than engaging in the day-to-day operations of the VC firm," said Yahoo Finance. In 2017, Vance then moved to "Steve Case's Revolution venture firm," which invested "in companies outside major tech hubs," including in the Midwest, said Business Insider. Vance founded the venture capital firm Narya in 2019 and "still owns pieces of the funds that he helped advise." Narya was "one of the top 10 investors in the video platform Rumble," which "came to prominence as a haven for right-wing and conspiracy-minded users during 2020," said The Guardian.

Though he "made little mark on the tech scene," Vance's relatively brief time working in Silicon Valley "was crucial for forging connections with billionaire executives and investors" like Thiel and Elon Musk, said The New York Times. In 2022, Vance sought and got the Republican nomination for the Ohio Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Rob Portman and won both the GOP primary as well as the general election. Vance earned $174,000 a year as a U.S. Senator from 2023 to 2025. He now makes $235,100 as the vice president and, unlike President Trump, has yet to mint any meme coins or self-branded Bibles to capitalize on his new position.

In 2014, Vance married his law school classmate Usha Chilukuri (now Usha Vance), who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as well as for Brett Kavanaugh while Kavanaugh was an appellate court justice. Between 2018 and 2024, she worked as an attorney for Munger, Tolles & Olson, a San Francisco law firm specializing in "higher education, local government, entertainment and technology," said Vogue. The median pay at the firm today is $239,000, according to Glassdoor. Usha Vance resigned from her position at Munger, Tolles & Olson "to focus on caring for our family," said Vance in a statement to People.

A comfortable perch at the top for the Vances

In 2021, "taxpayers in the top 1% had adjusted gross incomes of at least $682,577," said Investopedia, meaning that the Vance's were likely among or near the top 1% of earners in the United States before he began his political career. They own two homes, one "east of the Capitol building" that is "worth about $850,000 today," as well as "a $1.4 million home in Cincinnati's left-leaning East Walnut Hills," said Forbes. The Cincinnati home is a "five-bedroom property" with "over 6,000 square feet set on 2.29 acres overlooking the Ohio River," said Business Insider.

Today, the Vances' combined income and investments, including real estate and crypto, is "estimated at between $4.8 million and $11.3 million, according to federal disclosure forms filed in August" of 2024, said CBS News. Forbes estimates the couple's net worth at $10 million.