Best known for their political careers, the Clinton family has amassed a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.
Bill was the 42nd president of the United States, while his wife Hillary Clinton served as the 67th US secretary of state before running unsuccessfully for president against Donald Trump in 2016. However, politics hasn't been the only source of the family's impressive bank balance.
Read on to trace the tight-knit family's rise to riches, and find out what Bill, Hillary, and their family members are believed to be worth these days. All dollar amounts are in US dollars.
Online sources vary when it comes to Bill and Hillary Clinton's combined net worth. Some claim the couple has earned $240 million since Bill left the White House in 2001. Meanwhile, others claim the pair is worth half this amount ($120 million).
One thing's for sure, though: the road to amassing their fortune has been far from smooth. At the end of Bill's presidency, the Clintons were in debt to the tune of $16 million, largely due to Bill's legal expenditures, which included sexual harassment settlement payments. So how did they make the money they lost, and how have they bolstered their bank balance since?
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham started dating in 1971 after meeting as fellow students at Yale Law School. Hillary reportedly declined Bill's first marriage proposal as she wasn't sure she wanted her future to be tied to his – but by her own admission, the young attorney and aspiring senator decided to "follow [her] heart instead of [her] head" and followed Bill to his home state of Arkansas in 1974.
Hillary took up a post as one of two female faculty members at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville while her then-boyfriend was running for a seat in the US House of Representatives.
The couple eventually got married in 1975, eschewing a traditional venue for the living room of their newly-purchased home. They relocated to Little Rock after Bill was elected Arkansas Attorney General the following year.
Bill's political career in the state went from strength to strength, and in 1978 he was elected Arkansas governor, serving for 12 years across two non-consecutive terms. During his first term, Hillary reportedly sought to boost their income by trading cattle futures contracts and, after less than a year, made nearly $100,000 on an initial investment of just $1,000.
This and other investments she made around the same time came under scrutiny in the 1990s, with some people alleging the payments represented a conflict of interests after Bill entered the White House. However, Hillary was never found guilty of any wrongdoing.
The Clinton family fortune received an extra boost in 1979, when Hillary was made a full partner at Rose Law Firm (which is headquartered in Little Rock). The promotion meant she became the main breadwinner of the couple; Bill is said to have earned $35,000 a year in Arkansas while Hillary made more than $250,000 in 1992 alone, which would be more than $550,000 today. This dynamic didn't change until Bill was elected POTUS in 1993.
The picture shows Bill and Hillary on the campaign trail in 1992.
As President of the United States from 1993 to 2001, Bill Clinton earned an annual salary of $200,000. During the early years of her husband's presidency, Hillary's personal income was practically nil – however, she published her first book It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us in 1996.
The book was a sweeping success and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, generating more than $1 million for Hillary, which has all been donated to charity.
Hillary has since published the best-selling books Living History (2003), Hard Choices (2014), and What Happened (2017). Believe it or not, she and her husband are actually two of the best-paid authors of all time.
Hillary reportedly earned a whopping $14 million advance for Hard Choices, while Bill received a $15 million advance for his 2004 autobiography My Life. That's one of the largest publishing fees ever.
And My Life wasn't Bill's only major money-maker. According to Forbes in 2016, the former president raked in $189 million by writing books, giving speeches, consulting for private companies, and advising billionaire businessman Ron Burkle after leaving the White House in 2001.
Of this total, the majority has apparently come from lucrative speaking gigs. In 2014, Bloomberg reported Bill had made $106 million by delivering 544 speeches between 2001 and 2013. This included $125,000 for giving a speech at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in New York just days after his presidency, as revealed by financial disclosures that Hillary filed in 2002.
Together, Bill and Hillary have been savvy money-makers thanks to speaking gigs, writing royalties, and investments. According to documents that were filed during Hillary's first presidential bid in 2007, the couple has previously invested in foreign organizations, oil companies, and pharmaceutical businesses, allegedly making profits of between $5 million and $25 million in the process.
Of course, this is all in addition to the more than $200,000 Bill receives as an annual pension as a former president.
Now onto Chelsea Victoria Clinton, the only child of Bill and Hillary Clinton, born on February 27, 1980, during her father's first term as governor.
Although she accompanied Bill on his gubernatorial campaign when she was just two years old, Chelsea has largely decided not to follow in her parents' political footsteps – with the exception of supporting her mother's two presidential campaigns. Instead, she has grown up to become a successful author and health advocate, having initially dreamed of studying medicine as a young child.
A graduate of Stanford, Oxford, and Columbia Universities, Chelsea joined consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York in 2003 before starting to work for the multinational investment firm Avenue Capital Group in 2006. She left her job to join the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation (now simply known as the Clinton Foundation), the family non-profit that has raised money for issues such as elephant poaching and diarrhea-related deaths in developing countries.
A few years later she swapped a corporate career for the small screen, joining NBC News as a special correspondent in 2011.
At NBC, Chelsea worked as a reporter for Nightly News and Rock Center with Brian Williams. Although she received some criticism from audiences and commenters alike, her initial contract was renewed and she remained in the post for three years, reportedly earning an annual salary of $600,000.
Following her decision to leave NBC in 2014, around the same time she was named a Glamour Women of the Year honoree thanks to her work with the Clinton Foundation, Chelsea's career briefly took a backseat while she focused on raising her family. She gave birth to her first child Charlotte that same year.
Chelsea also teamed up with her mother to write a series of books. They released The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience in 2019, in which they recount the stories of women who have inspired them, such as Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai.
The title was swiftly followed by the children's picture book Grandma’s Gardens in 2020, described by Penguin Random House as "a celebration of family, tradition and discovery, and an ode to mothers, grandmothers and the children they love."
In 2022, the mother-daughter duo worked together again on their eight-part Apple TV docuseries Gutsy. The series, a spinoff from The Book of Gutsy Women, follows Hillary and Chelsea as they interview women who inspire them, with guests ranging from journalist and activist Gloria Steinem to rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
As a result of her numerous projects and career moves, Chelsea has secured an estimated net worth of $30 million.
Marc Mezvinsky is the husband of Chelsea Clinton. Just like his wife, he grew up in a family of politicians: his father is Edward Mevinsky, an Iowa Democrat who served in the House of Representatives, and his mother is Marjorie Margolies, also a former member of the House of Representatives. Interestingly, Marjorie is reported to have cast the deciding vote in favor of Bill Clinton's 1993 budget proposal – not knowing she would become mother-in-law to his daughter 17 years later.
Marc and Chelsea met when attending a political retreat in 1993, before later attending Stanford University together. According to sources, they first went public with their relationship in 2005 and announced their engagement four years later. In 2010, they got married in an interfaith ceremony in Rhinebeck, New York; Marc is Jewish while Chelsea is Methodist.
The wealthy couple is said to have moved into a $10.5 million Manhattan apartment after their wedding, leaving behind the $4 million Gramercy Park condo they shared before their marriage.
Marc earned his personal fortune working as an investment banker for the hedge fund firm 3G Capital Management, as well as at the New York-based firm Goldman Sachs.
Mezvinsky also founded the hedge fund Eaglevale Partners with his former Goldman Sachs co-workers in 2011. However, the company closed in December 2016, six months after Marc and Chelsea welcomed their second of three children together.
Mark is currently managing director at the private equity firm TPG. As a result of his steady career in finance, he is thought to earn around $4 million a year as an investment banker.
Reports suggest that Mark has an overall net worth of around $30 million. Along with Chelsea, this means the couple has a fortune of around $60 million.
Unlike other politicians, Bill and Hillary weren't blessed with a lot of very wealthy family member; Bill's father William Jefferson Blythe Jr. was a heavy equipment salesman who was sadly killed in a car crash in May 1946, just three months before the future president was born. Bill's mom, Virginia Dell Cassidy, meanwhile, was from an equally blue-collar background as the only child of a grocer.
As a result of his father's previous marriages and Virginia's subsequent marriage, Bill has three half-siblings: Henry Leon Ritzenthaler, Sharon Lee Blythe, and Roger Clinton Jr. The estimated net worths of Sharon and Henry, who passed away in 2022 and 2009 respectively, are unknown. But his younger half-brother Roger (pictured here with Bill and his one-year-old son Tyler) has carved out something of a notable career...
Roger has made the majority of his wealth from his film and music projects. He's enjoyed minor roles in movies including Fred Claus, and has also acted in TV shows including Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Cybill.
Roger also released an album in 1993 after signing with Atlantic Records. Called Nothing Good Comes Easy, the LP sadly failed to achieve mainstream success. The actor and musician is said to be worth around $500,000.
All in all, Bill, Hillary, and their immediate family have managed to benefit greatly from their family's high-impact political status.
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