00:00Today on Forbes, here's how much Kamala Harris is worth.
00:05Forbes originally published an article on Vice President Harris' net worth in May.
00:10Since then, the ground has shifted under the Democratic Party.
00:13On Sunday, President Biden announced that he would suspend his re-election campaign
00:18and endorsed Harris to run in his place.
00:21It now appears that she is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
00:26Thanks to her decades in government and a wealthy husband,
00:29Kamala Harris has built quite a nest egg.
00:31Forbes estimates her net worth, along with second gentleman Doug Emhoff,
00:36at about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021.
00:41Vice President Harris and her husband own a multi-million-dollar home in Los Angeles.
00:46The rest of their assets mostly consist of cash, index funds, bonds, and pensions,
00:51which the 59-year-old Harris will soon be able to access.
00:55The second couple's net worth increase comes almost entirely from a jump in the value of that L.A. home,
01:01and the duo's liquid investments do not appear to have grown significantly,
01:04despite the soaring stock market.
01:07Harris was born in Oakland, California in October 1964 to two well-educated immigrants.
01:14Her father, originally from Jamaica, worked as an economics professor at Stanford.
01:18Her mother, from southern India, researched breast cancer.
01:22The pair met at the University of California, Berkeley,
01:25and after marrying, had Kamala and her sister, Maya.
01:29In her 2019 memoir, Harris writes,
01:32"...we weren't rich in financial terms, but the values we internalized provided a different kind of wealth."
01:38From an early age, Harris showed an interest in law.
01:42She moved across the country in 1982 to attend the historically black Howard University,
01:47and later got a job at the Federal Trade Commission
01:49and another as an intern for California Senator Alan Cranston,
01:53a Democrat whose seat she would later fill.
01:56Harris graduated in 1986 and returned to the West Coast,
02:00earning a law degree from UC Hastings in 1989.
02:04In 1998, she joined the San Francisco District Attorney's Office,
02:09buying an apartment in the city for $299,000.
02:13In 2003, Harris ran for San Francisco District Attorney.
02:17She won the race, beating a two-term incumbent.
02:21Harris initially made about $140,000 as San Francisco's DA,
02:25a figure that climbed to more than $200,000 in 2010.
02:29That year, she won a narrow victory to become the Attorney General of California,
02:34which offered more prestige but less money, cutting her salary to $159,000.
02:40At least the retirement benefits were generous.
02:43Her time in local and state offices
02:45earned her two pensions that Forbes estimates are worth just under $1 million today.
02:50The early 2010s shaped her finances in other ways.
02:54In 2012, following their mother's death,
02:56Harris and her sister sold her Oakland condo for $710,000,
03:01which local real estate agent Jerry Beverly confirmed.
03:04Two years later, Harris married Doug Emhoff,
03:07a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer whom she met through a friend.
03:11Then a managing partner at Venable LLP,
03:14he brought to the table both additional income and a well-funded IRA
03:18with dozens of stakes of individual stocks.
03:21In 2016, Harris ran for the U.S. Senate, and she won in a landslide.
03:26As a new senator, Harris received a small pay bump to $174,000 a year.
03:32Upon her swearing in, she had between $250,000 and $500,000 in a savings account
03:38and a similar amount of investments in retirement accounts, plus her pensions.
03:43The rest of the assets on her disclosure all came from Emhoff.
03:47The couple soon bought a two-bedroom apartment in D.C.
03:50for just under $1.8 million, borrowing $1.35 million.
03:55As a candidate for president in 2019, Forbes valued her net worth at $6 million,
04:01a figure boosted by Emhoff, who was raking in upwards of a million dollars a year as a lawyer.
04:06She ultimately became Joe Biden's running mate in 2020.
04:10They beat Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and in January 2021,
04:14Harris got another raise to $235,000 as vice president.
04:18Emhoff, for his part, stopped his lucrative legal work
04:22and began teaching law at Georgetown University.
04:25The second couple moved into the vice presidential residence at One Observatory Circle in D.C.
04:30and started liquidating assets.
04:32Harris sold her San Francisco apartment in March 2021 for $860,000,
04:38$560,000 more than she paid for it 23 years earlier.
04:43Next went the D.C. apartment for $1.85 million, a hair above its 2017 purchase price.
04:49Harris has also raked in more than $500,000 from books she published before taking office.
04:56For full coverage, check out Kyle Kahn Mullins' piece on Forbes.com.
05:02This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
05:04Thanks for tuning in.
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