A brief analysis/discussion on net worth following necklace debacle
Hey yall, in light of recent necklace-related revelations I have seen a few people discussing net worth, who can afford what, etc. etc.. Unfortunately a lot of this info is nothing more than poor estimates so I thought it might be intersting to lay some stuff out as this is the kind of stuff I work with for my day job (i'm a bit tipsy too).
TLDR: The necklace was definitely affordable lol
For background, all of the stuff here is based on publicly available info.
Now, for most of the cast, it is basically impossible to know or verify the net worth of a housewife/husband. This information is private and without them telling you/showing you everything you see online is basically guesswork. Really the only information you would be able to see are the real assets they own (houses/cars/etc.) and any declared shareholdings (SEC requires you declare your ownership of a stock if you are above a certain % threshold).
With that out of the way, we are fortunate that Bronwyn's husband Todd worked as an executive at a public company, Hewlett-Packard. As an executive at a public company, Todd's compensation package must be approved by the board of directors and published via a public filing. It should be noted that Todd left HP in 2014, so these numbers are very stale, but we'll use this as a conservative base (assuming no money saved prior).
In 2013, Todd received an $1.7m cash payment for his role at HP (salary + bonus) with an additional $7.5m in stock for total compensation of $9.3m. Important to note most of his pay was in stock.
Compensation for the role during his tenure was as follows:
- 2013: $9.3m
- 2012: $7.4m
- 2011: $10.7m
- 2010: $9.1m
- 2009: $11.8m
- 2008 (financial crisis lol): $21.5m
- 2007 (first year as an exec): $7.7m
For a grand total of HP compensation of $77.5m by 2013... Now since most of this is stock it gets taxed at federal capital gains (assuming no tax trickery which is... unlikely), so we'll assume 20% was taxed, meaning Todd's net pay was likely $62m post-tax. Also worth noting that Todd held $4.2m of stock per the 2013 disclosure, which has tripled by now if he didn't sell (so give or take an additional 4 to 12 million).
Now, with a post-tax base of 60-70m lets shave off 5-10 million for lavish lifestyle expenses (not including houses as that retains value) and say Todd's base net worth in 2013 was around $55m. Growing that base in line with the S&P 500 (currently up 238% from 2013) would give you $185m today.
Now, obviously, there's a ton of guess work and flaws with the above methodology. First, we have no idea what Todd/Bronwyn have done with their money, and it's very possible they have invested substantially less/invested in less succcessful things. Second, We are not giving any credit for any ventures Todd may have had since 2013 as it's too hard to value, but given his position I would be surprised if those aren't material contributions as well.
All that is to say, (1) we have no idea what their net worth it, but (2) we definitely shouldn't put stock in online estimates of net worth because $25m is way off the mark based on my 15 minutes of google and (3) the $4m necklace was definitely within reach if Bronwyn wanted it lol.