52% or more of Americans are now invested in the stock market so when all those IRA's, 401k's and other instruments are added to the mix, it's not hard for me to believe that his numbers are accurate. Moore would never make this kind of claim in the WSJ unless he had done his homework.
Hopefully, with a debt-to-asset ratio of 86%, you are still young and will reduce that percentage as you get older. It will be pretty hard for these folks you know to ever retire if they don't have a plan for growing their assets much faster than their debt. I have more debt now than at any other time in my life, but my assets have grown many times faster. This is true for most Americans, which is why our household net worth hit an all time high of $51 trillion last year. This is more than double what it was in 1994 and only 21% of this wealth comes from homeowner equity. The average household owns a lot of liquid assets.
"Moore's figure of 18.3% is the average for all American households."
Which is why I don't trust it as a reflection of how the middle-class is doing. What I've been trying to find is how much assets and debt is among those earning between $45k and $94k a year in monthly salary/hourly wages.
"Hopefully, with a debt-to-asset ratio of 86%, you are still young and will reduce that percentage as you get older."...."However, according to the fed report, the average American household has 57% equity in their home."
Assuming the housing market doesn't undergo a dot-com style bubble-burst and wipe out most, if not all, of the equity.