How Mike Pence Achieved a Net Worth of $1 Million

Mike Pence, a former vice president, has a net worth of $1 million. He is widely known for being Indiana’s former governor and the vice president to President Donald Trump. He served as the forty-eighth vice president of the U.S.A from 2017 to 2021. He is also a lawyer and broadcaster. Pence was born on 7th June 1959 in Columbus, Indiana.

He ran for congress a few times during the late eighties and nineties but was unsuccessful. Pence won the first election in 2000 and served until 2012. He married his wife Karen in 1985, and they have three kids, Audrey, Michael, and Charlotte. He earned a degree in history from Hanover College and a degree in law from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney law school. This enabled him to practice law and become a politician.

Pence was raised in an Irish Catholic home, and according to some reports, he wished to be a priest. His parents were managers of gasoline stations. The Pence’s owe about $100,00 to $245,000 from student loans that they applied to pay for their children’s college education.

Inheriting Stock

In 2013, almost when they moved into the governor’s mansion in Indiana, they sold their modest 3-bedroom home outside Washington DC and their 1,400 square foot home in Columbus, Indiana. Four years after that, they moved from the governor’s mansion to the U.S.A Naval Observatory, the official residence of the vice president. Mike Pence does not have much business experience and has a few assets apart from stock in Keil Bros. Oil Co, a convenience store and gas station chain.

He likely inherited the shares from his father. In August 2016, Mike Pence disclosed that his net worth was modest. His net worth was made up of a pension worth about $500,000. A 2019 Forbes report stated that Pence did not have much apart from index funds worth $65,000 and about $15,000 in the bank.

However, his federal and state pensions while working as a government official are about $85,000 annually for as long as he lives. Forbes’ calculations conclude that the pensions may make Pence worth around $1.2 million. However, since he owes a student loan debt worth 6-figures, Forbes places his net worth at $1 million after factoring in the student loans. Let’s look at how he achieved his net worth.

Salary

Mike Pence’s main source of income before he became vice president was his salary as the governor of Indiana. In 2015, his average salary was about $173,860. Before entering politics, Pence also worked as a talk-radio host in Indiana. A financial disclosure released in 2016 stated that Pence and his wife had a combined adjusted gross income of $113,026.

Most of the income came from his salary. The couple also earned about $9,000 from an annuity/pension fund. They claimed a loss of $3,500 connected to Karen’s enterprise, That’s My Towel Charm Inc, and debt worth $80,000 related to their kid’s education. Every year from 2009 to 2016, the couple earned $100,000 or more. They earned $187,000 in 2009 and 2010.

Investments

In 2004, Pence disclosed that he had invested about $200,000 to $450,000 in Kiel Bros. Unfortunately, the following year, the firm went bankrupt, and the share’s value dropped significantly. According to Forbes, Pence lost over $600,000 after the business went under, but he had several thousand dollars in savings.

This is based on information from his returns in 2006. Fortunately, Pence had served in the federal government for five years in 2006, and he could receive a federal pension, which provides a guaranteed income stream when one retires. Pence further benefited from Congressional self-dealing.

This was a federal law passed in 1986 that based the pension payments for Congress members and their staff members on a large percentage of the yearly payment compared to the regular pensions of federal workers. In 2012, Mike Pence was one of the many congressmen who voted to end this benefit to congress members in the future, but he benefited from the older, heftier pensions.

They were almost two times more valuable than regular federal pensions. Between the twelve years that Pence worked as a congressman and the two years he was vice president, he can collect about $50,000 annually from the government for as long as he lives. If he could sell the annuity, he would obtain an estimated $700,000 for that amount.

Radio show

In the early 1990s, Pence ran a radio show called The Mike Pence Show. Some fans say that it was almost the same as Rush Limbaugh’s show. Some of his fortunes came from his earnings from the show. It was a talk show meant for audiences with conservative values. From the show, he established some following that prompted him to run for the United States House of Representatives.

Campaign contributions

Reportedly, Pence made some cash after running for office through campaign contributions, and this was legal.

State pension

In 2013, he left Congress and became Indiana’s governor. Pence served one term in the statehouse before he became the vice president. After the four years of service, the amount he can receive is 30 percent of the amount he earned as a salary for as long as he lives or 40 percent if he retires at 65.

During his last year as governor, Pence earned about $112,000. Therefore, the state will pay him about $35,000 every year beginning from the age of 62, which is about $500,000. His other assets also come mostly from the federal government. He disclosed that he had two retirement accounts run by the state, worth about $65,000.

It is also likely that he has saved some of his salary from the federal government through a 401K program for people employed by the government. If he has contributed regularly, he might have extra funds saved in that program, which public officials do not have to reveal.

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