Bill Clinton net worth
Split: 19
What is Bill Clinton’s net worth?
Bill Clinton is an American politician with a net worth of $120 million. This is his total net worth with his wife, Hillary Clinton. Bill was the 42nd President of the United States, serving two terms from 1993 to 2001.
When they left the White House, the Clintons were technically in debt due to Bill’s legal expenses. Over the next 10 years, Bill alone earned more than $1 million in speaking fees. In 2001, he received the largest advance ever, $15 million, for the book that went on to become the best-selling My Life. Bill and Hillary have earned over $250 million to date from speaking engagements, book advances/royalties, investment income and consulting fees. Possibly as high as $300 million. In recent years, the couple has made between $100 and $30 million a year.
Hillary Clinton released eight years of income tax returns as part of her failed 2016 presidential campaign. Those returns show the couple made $28 million in 2014, most of which came from speaking fees. They made $10.6 million in 2015, of which $6 million was speaking fees. As a former president, Bill was entitled to an annual pension of $200,000.
Clinton Earnings History
When they left the White House, the Clintons were technically in debt due to Bill’s legal payouts and the sexual harassment settlement. In the decades since leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary have earned more than $250 million from speaking engagements, book advances/royalties, consulting activities and investment income. If you assume they made at least $10 million in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, they’ve made about $280 million since leaving the White House, as the chart below shows.
Before landing in the White House, Bill Clinton never made more than $35,000 a year as attorney general and governor of Arkansas. Hillary was the breadwinner at the time, and when he was a partner at a Little Rock law firm, his base salary was about $110,000. Before entering the White House in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she also typically earned about $60,000 a year from corporate board fees, for a total of about $180,000.
During Bill’s first few years as president, Hillary earned zero income while his presidential base salary was about $200,000. In 1996, their earnings jumped to $1 million thanks to royalties from Hillary’s book “It Takes A Village.”
The following table lists Clinton’s annual gross income from 1991 to 2015 (they haven’t released tax records since 2016):
| Bill and Hillary Clinton annual income | |
| year | Total revenue |
| year 1991 | $200,000 |
| 1992 | $290,000 |
| 1993 | $293,000 |
| 1994 | $263,000 |
| 1995 | $316,000 |
| year 1996 | $1,065,000 |
| 1997 | $569,000 |
| 1998 | $569,000 |
| 1999 | $504,000 |
| 2000 | $416,000 |
| 2001 | $16,000,000 |
| year 2002 | $9,000,000 |
| Year 2003 | $8,000,000 |
| year 2004 | $20,000,000 |
| 2005 | $18,000,000 |
| year 2006 | $16,000,000 |
| 2007 | $21,000,000 |
| Year 2008 | $5,000,000 |
| 2009 | $10,000,000 |
| 2010 | $13,000,000 |
| 2011 | $15,000,000 |
| 2012 | $20,000,000 |
| year 2013 | $27,000,000 |
| 2014 | $28,000,000 |
| 2015 | $11,000,000 |
| All: | $241,485,000 |
Clinton Earnings History
early life
Clinton was born William Jefferson Bryce III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father died unexpectedly in a car accident three months before he was born. His mother Virginia Dale Cassidy moved to New Orleans shortly after his birth to study nursing, and his maternal grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy grew up in Hope. His mother returned in 1950 and married Roger Clinton Sr., and the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he grew up. Clinton began using his stepfather’s last name almost immediately and legally changed his name when he was 15.
In 1963, Clinton visited the White House as a boy state senator to meet then-President John F. Kennedy. The moment, combined with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, inspired the young Clinton to want to become a public official. Clinton would go on to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she earned a degree in foreign service. After graduation, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University College. From Oxford, Clinton went to Yale Law School.It was here that he met his law school classmates Hillary Rodham, who will he marry later. While at Georgetown University, Clinton won class president elections in 1964 and 1965. He also interned and worked as a clerk in the office of Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.
Bill married his wife Hillary Rodham on October 11, 1975. Their only child, daughter Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.
Political career
After graduating from law school, Clinton moved back to his home state of Arkansas and began working as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. He ran for the House of Representatives in 1974, narrowly losing to incumbent Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt. He then ran for Arkansas attorney general in 1976 with no opposition in the general election, and was thus elected to the position. Just two years later, he defeated Republican candidate Lynn Lowe at 31 and at 32 He became the youngest governor in the country when he took office.
Clinton’s primary focus on education and health care reform drew national attention. He was even expected to run for president in the 1988 election. By 1992, Clinton was ready to run. He won the 1992 presidential election and was elected into office over the incumbent President George Hubert Walker Bush, along with his Vice President Al Gore. He served his first term as president from 1993 to 1997 and ran for president in 1996 won re-election. He served a second term as president from 1997 to 2001. During his tenure, he signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, known as the Brady Act, and expanded the income tax credit. He also appointed two Supreme Court justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994. He left the White House with 66 percent approval, the highest approval rating of any president since World War II.
However, his days in the White House were not without turbulent times. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998. The House voted 228 to 206 to impeach him for perjury by a grand jury, and he was impeached a second time by a vote of 221 to 212 for obstruction of justice. The impeachment proceedings are based on allegations that Clinton tried to unlawfully cover up and cover up his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Ultimately, the Senate acquitted Clinton of both charges. He is the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first being Andrew Johnson and the third being Donald Trump.
(Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Post-Presidential Income and Philanthropy
Bill and Hillary later admitted that they left the White House with negative net worths after paying millions of dollars in legal fees as part of Bill’s impeachment defense and sexual assault settlement. The Clintons hit the road to make as much money as they could.
The first way the Clintons cashed in was by pre-selling books for Bill’s memoir. Bill gets a $15 million advance for the rights to his memoir, breaking the record for the largest advance ever paid. Adjusted for inflation, the $15 million in 2001 was the same as today’s $21 million, which is still technically the largest advance ever, slightly higher than the $20 million advance that Barack Obama received in 2017 . Bill’s book My Life was published in 2004.
Bill Clinton has been a sought-after and well-paid speaker since leaving the White House in 2001. Clinton made between $150,000 and $700,000 per speech. His average fee is about $200,000.Between 2001 and 2013 alone, Bill Clinton won $106 million Participation fee in speech. In 2012, he made 73 speeches worldwide and earned $17 million. Much of his income comes from speaking internationally, including one in Lagos, Nigeria, for which he earned a record $700,000.
Combined with Hillary’s earnings, the couple made about $280 million in the two decades since leaving the White House.
His humanitarian work, primarily through the Clinton Global Initiative, remains in the public eye. Clinton focused primarily on issues such as HIV/AIDS and global warming. He has also been assigned to various diplomatic missions since the end of his presidency, such as being named the UN Special Envoy for Haiti in 2009 and coordinating fundraising efforts with then-Obama-era former President George W. Bush to Haiti in 2010 Efforts for Haiti following the devastating earthquake in 2009.
In addition, he returned to the 2008 presidential election campaign, when he promoted and campaigned on behalf of his wife, Hillary. She ran against Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, losing the nomination. The Clintons returned in the 2016 presidential election, in which Hillary ran against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, losing to him.
