US billionaires got $1.5T richer in 2025 as 24% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. How to invest like the wealthy

In the third quarter of last year, America’s top 1%, which includes millionaires, owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth, the biggest share recorded since the Fed started tracking this data in 1989 (6). That translates to roughly $55 trillion in assets — about the same amount held by the bottom 90% combined.Wealth gains in 2025 were far from evenly distributed. Although markets rose overall, a larger share of those gains went to households at the very top — deepening an already pronounced concentration of wealth.As ...