Truman was so poor when he left the White House that he was forced to move into his mother-in-law’s home. It took him 12 years to get out of debt.Ģ0. Harry Truman declared bankruptcy in 1922 when his hat shop failed. Roosevelt is on the dime? Congress voted in 1945 to place his profile on the ten-cent coin to commemorate the March of Dimes, a charity that FDR founded to combat childhood polio. Hoover was worth $75 million (over a billion dollars today) and donated his presidential salary to charity. Hoover would later study geology at Stanford University and go on to make a fortune in the mining business.ġ7. President Herbert Hoover’s first job ever was picking bugs off of potato plants. He loved it so much, in fact, that he once lost an entire set of priceless White House china in a game. His $75,000 salary in 1909 would be the equivalent of almost 1.9 million in today’s dollars. Taft was the highest paid president in history. Three years later he was elected president. The business failed, and McKinley was forced to declare bankruptcy. While he was governor of Ohio, McKinley co-signed a loan to support a friend’s business venture. Eventually, Grant wrote and sold his memoirs in order to pay off his outstanding debts. However, in light of his situation, Grant also had a $150,000 debt forgiven by William H. Grant was forced to sell his old Civil War mementos for money. After he left the presidency, Grant lost almost all his money when he invested it in a business that turned out to be a swindle. and given a $5 speeding ticket for driving his horse and buggy too fast.ġ1. Grant was pulled over by the police in Washington D.C. After Berry died, Lincoln was left owing so much money that the future president started referring to it as “The National Debt.” Ulysses S. As a young man, Lincoln owned a grocery store with a business partner, William F. However, the coins proved so popular that they just never stopped minting them!ĩ. It was (you guessed it) the penny! Minted in 1909, “Lincoln Pennies” were only meant to commemorate the 100 th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be featured on a U.S. President James Monroe was buried in New York City because there was no money to send his remains back to his home state of Virginia. Those books formed the basis for the Library of Congress. In 1815, he was forced to sell his library to the government in order to pay his creditors. Thomas Jefferson was in debt for pretty much his entire life. That’s why Washington had to borrow $600 from a neighbor in order to attend his own inauguration. Even though George Washington was one of the wealthiest people in the whole country, the nature of farming meant that he had very little free cash on hand. In 1866, this tradition was made law by an act of Congress.ĥ. This dates back to Washington’s refusal to have his portrait printed on the U.S. It's against the law for a living president’s likeness to be printed on U.S. Her money came from her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, who was almost twenty years older than her and died after only seven years of marriage.Ĥ. When Washington married his wife, Martha, she was by far the wealthier of the pair. If a modern president’s salary was two percent of the budget, it would be around $80 billion!ģ. That $25,000 salary was two percent of the U.S. It is now against the law for a US president not to take a salary.Ģ. He was later convinced to take the paychecks in order to set a good precedent for future office-holders. When George Washington was elected as the first president of the United States, he refused to accept the office’s $25,000 salary. We reached out to financial expert Harrine Freeman and she provided us with a whole trove of presidential money facts. When it comes to handling their personal finances, our presidents are kind of a mixed bag. presidents would have a history expert financial management, right? Well, you'd be wrong. Have you heard the one about the ex-president who was so broke upon leaving office that he had to move in with his mother-in-law? If you had to guess, which president do you think got a speeding ticket while in office? Did you know that Thomas Jefferson’s poor financial decisions are the reason we have the Library of Congress?
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