Who’s Our Richest President Ever?

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The Atlantic sat down to chart out the net worth of each president, from Washington to Obama. Who was rolling in it?

America’s first president is also the richest. After adjusting for inflation, The Atlantic estimates George Washington would have had a net worth of $525 million. Why so much? In addition to his sprawling Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, Washington also piggybacked on the largess of his wife, Martha, who had substantial property holdings.

That dwarfs the net worth of current president Barack Obama, who charts with a paltry $5 million, largely from the royalties from his two books, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope. The richest president since World War II is Lyndon Johnson, with a net worth of $98 million.

But poverty does not a bad president make. At the time of his death, Abraham Lincoln had total assets of less than $1 million, not a far cry from his boyhood years spent growing up in a log cabin. (via The Atlantic)