What Is Bill Clinton's Net Worth?
Bill Clinton is an American politician who has a net worth of $120 million. That is a combined net worth with his wife, Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton 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 expenditures. Over the next 10 years, Bill earned $100+ million in speaking engagement fees alone. In 2001, he was paid the biggest book advance of all time, $15 million, for what became the best-selling "My Life." To date, Bill and Hillary have earned more than $250 million from speaking engagements, book advances/royalties, investment income, and consulting fees (perhaps as much as $300 million). In recent years, the couple has earned $10 – $30 million per year.
As part of her failed 2016 Presidential campaign, Hillary released eight years of income tax returns. These returns showed that in 2014, the couple made $28 million, the majority of which came from speaking fees. In 2015, they made $10.6 million, of which $6 million was speaking fees. As a former President, Bill is entitled to a $200,000 annual pension.
Clinton Income History
When they left the White House, the Clintons were technically in debt due to Bill's legal expenditures and sexual harassment settlement payments. In the decades after leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary have earned more than $250 million from speaking engagements, book advances/royalties, consulting engagements, and investment income. If one assumes they earned at least $10 million in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, they've earned roughly $280 million since leaving the White House, as you'll see in our chart below.
Before landing in the White House, Bill Clinton never earned more than $35,000 per year in salary as Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas. At the time, Hillary was the breadwinner, bringing home around $110,000 in base salary as a partner at a Little Rock law firm. In the late '80s and early '90s, before entering the White House, she also typically earned around $60,000 per year from corporate board fees, for a total income of around $180,000.
During the first few years of Bill's presidency, Hillary's income went to zero while he earned around $200,000 in base Presidential salary. Their income jumped to $1 million in 1996 thanks to royalties from the release of Hillary's book "It Takes a Village."
Below is a table listing the couple's annual gross income every year from 1991 to 2015 (they have not released tax records since 2016):
| Bill and Hillary Clinton Annual Income | |
| Year | Gross Income |
| 1991 | $200,000 |
| 1992 | $290,000 |
| 1993 | $293,000 |
| 1994 | $263,000 |
| 1995 | $316,000 |
| 1996 | $1,065,000 |
| 1997 | $569,000 |
| 1998 | $569,000 |
| 1999 | $504,000 |
| 2000 | $416,000 |
| 2001 | $16,000,000 |
| 2002 | $9,000,000 |
| 2003 | $8,000,000 |
| 2004 | $20,000,000 |
| 2005 | $18,000,000 |
| 2006 | $16,000,000 |
| 2007 | $21,000,000 |
| 2008 | $5,000,000 |
| 2009 | $10,000,000 |
| 2010 | $13,000,000 |
| 2011 | $15,000,000 |
| 2012 | $20,000,000 |
| 2013 | $27,000,000 |
| 2014 | $28,000,000 |
| 2015 | $11,000,000 |
| Total: | $241,485,000 |
Clinton Income History
Early Life
Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father unexpectedly died in an automobile accident three months before his birth. His mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy, moved to New Orleans to study nursing soon after his birth, and he was raised in Hope by his maternal grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy. His mother returned in 1950 and married Roger Clinton Sr. The family subsequently moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Bill grew up. Clinton almost immediately began using his stepfather's surname and legally changed his name when he turned 15. In 1956, Roger Sr. and Virginia welcomed a son named Roger Clinton, Jr.
In 1963, Bill visited the White House to meet then-President John F. Kennedy as a Boys Nation Senator. This moment, combined with Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, inspired a young Clinton to want to become a public official. Bill would go on to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated with a degree in Foreign Service. After graduating, he received a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford. From Oxford, Clinton went to Yale Law School. It was here where he met fellow law school student Hillary Rodham, who he would later marry. While at Georgetown, Bill won elections for class president in 1964 and 1965. He also interned and clerked in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.
Bill married Hillary Rodham on October 11, 1975. Their only child, daughter Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980. Bill is a grandfather to Chelsea's three children. Today, the Clintons live in Chappaqua, New York, in a home they purchased in 2016 for $1.6 million.
Political Career
After graduating from law school, Clinton moved back to his home state of Arkansas and began teaching as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. He ran for the House of Representatives in 1974, narrowly losing out 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. A mere two years later, he became the youngest governor in the country when he defeated Republican candidate Lynn Lowe at the age of 31 and took office when he was 32.
With his main focus being on education and healthcare reform, Clinton caught the eye of the nation. He was even looked upon to run for President in the 1988 election. By 1992, he was ready to run. He won the 1992 presidential election and was elected into office over the incumbent, President George Herbert Walker Bush, along with his Vice President Al Gore. He served his first term from 1993 to 1997 and won his re-election campaign in the 1996 presidential campaign. He served his second presidential term from 1997 to 2001. During his time in office, he signed The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and the Brady Bill, and he expanded the earned income tax credit. He also appointed two justices to the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994. He left the White House with the highest approval rating of any President since World War II, at 66%.
However, his time in the White House was not without its turbulent periods. Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, by the House of Representatives. The House had voted 228-206 to impeach him on charges of perjury to a grand jury, and he was impeached a second time 221-212 for obstruction of justice. The impeachment proceedings were based on allegations that Bill had attempted to illegally obscure and cover up his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Eventually, the Senate acquitted Clinton of both charges. He is the second US president ever to be impeached, the first being Andrew Johnson and the third being Donald Trump.
(Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Post-Presidency Earnings and Philanthropy
Bill and Hillary would later admit that they had a negative net worth when they left the White House after incurring millions of dollars in legal fees as part of Bill's impeachment defense and sexual assault settlements. As soon as they were able, the Clintons hit the road to earn as much money as possible.
One of the first ways the Clintons cashed in was through a book advance for Bill's memoir. He earned a $15 million advance for the rights to his memoir, smashing the record for the biggest book advance of all time. After adjusting for inflation, $15 million in 2001 is the same as around $21 million today, which technically makes it the largest book advance of all time, still slightly edging out the $20 million Barack Obama earned in 2017 for his advance. Bill's book "My Life" was released in 2004.
Since leaving the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton has been a highly sought-after and well-compensated public speaker. He earns between $150,000 and $700,000 per speech. His average fee is roughly $200,000. Between 2001 and 2013 alone, Bill Clinton earned $106 million in speaking engagement fees. In 2012, he earned $17 million off 73 speeches delivered around the world. Many of his earnings came from speeches that were delivered internationally, including one in Lagos, Nigeria, for which he earned a record $700,000.
When combined with Hillary's earnings, the couple generated around $280 million in income in the two decades since leaving the White House in debt.
Bill remains in the public eye with humanitarian work, which he runs mainly through The Clinton Global Initiative. He has largely focused on issues such as HIV/AIDS and global warming. Since the end of his presidency, he has also been assigned a number of diplomatic missions, such as being named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009 and partnering with former President George W. Bush, under the then-Obama administration, to coordinate fundraising efforts for Haiti following the devastating earthquake that occurred there in 2010.
Furthermore, he also returned to the campaign trail for the 2008 presidential election, when he advocated and campaigned on behalf of his wife, Hillary. She ran against Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, losing out on the nomination. The Clintons returned in the 2016 presidential election, with Hillary running against Republication presidential candidate Donald Trump, eventually losing the spot to him.
