It’s not uncommon for people to make questionable decisions with their personal finances. Perhaps you don’t save enough money, make the odd bad investment choice, or fail to take advantage of tax breaks.

Amid busy work schedules and stressful family lives, most Americans don’t have time to read up on all the latest financial advice. Nor are we all destined to be the next Warren Buffett.

But it must be asked: are the less financially savvy among us fit to run a $29 trillion economy?

That is the rather pressing question raised over the selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Kamala Harris‘s running mate.

At 60 years old, Walz is close to retirement age, yet he may be the least wealthy vice presidential candidate in modern history – despite having had plenty of chances to bolster his net worth.

And while a lack of money is certainly no bar to high office, some critics are now openly wondering whether Walz is the right man to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Tim Walz’s net worth was declared as between $112,003 and $330,000 on a 2019 financial disclosure form

The estimated net worth of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates

After all, it’s not just his own wealth that he appears to have mismanaged.

While the U.S. economy has surged by 11.5 percent since January 2019, Minnesota has only experienced 6.2 percent growth during that time under Walz’s leadership.

Likewise, the number of US jobs (excluding farm workers) has risen 5.8 percent in that period, while Minnesota has only increased employment by 0.5 percent.

As for Walz’s personal wealth, a review by the Daily Mail raises serious concerns about his money management skills.

Should Tim Walz’s financial decisions affect his VP candidacy?

Yes, it should be a factor

No, it shouldn’t matter

Not sure

Walz’s 2022 tax return, for instance, must be one of the simplest ever filed by a politician, showing that he and his wife Gwen have nearly no investments.

The filing indicates that the couple earned a total of $166,719 in 2022 through Walz’s job as Governor of Minnesota and his wife’s teaching position at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

However, little of that sizeable sum was stashed away in financial assets. Walz doesn’t have a 401k or an IRA (individual retirement account), and doesn’t actively invest in stocks.

‘He is the absolute opposite of Warren Buffett. It makes no [financial] sense,’ Eric Bond, an LA-based financial adviser, told the Mail. ‘With a $166,000 income, I don’t know what he’s done with that money. The whole thing is quite odd.

‘You need to plan. Where is his money going? If he’s done nothing [with it] that’s not good for someone in his age group. He should at least have a retirement account which could get a significant tax break. Why not take advantage of the tax code with a 401k or an IRA?’

Minnesota’s economy has lagged behind the U.S. under Walz’s governorship

Minnesota still has fewer jobs than it did before the Covid pandemic

Tim Walz gives furious response to claims about his military record

A look to the past reveals that it has been largely the same story for four decades, with Walz seemingly ignoring the greatest wealth-creation engine the world has ever known – the U.S. stock market – his entire professional life.

Over his 12 years as a US congressman from 2007 to 2019, Walz and his wife earned an average of over $200,000 annually, according to publicly available disclosures.

When he was first elected to Congress, Walz reportedly joked to an aide that his new salary, $165,200 at the time, was ‘four times what I’ve ever made in my life’. Walz had previously worked as a teacher and served in the Army National Guard.

And yet, by the time Walz left Congress, his final financial declaration in 2019 showed he owned no stocks, no mutual funds, no bonds and no retirement accounts.

He and his wife also owned no businesses nor real estate, and there were no earnings from publishing books or giving speeches (often lucrative sources of additional income for politicians).

Walz’s net worth on that 2019 form was given as a range between $112,00 and $330,000.

While he was in Congress the median net worth of representatives and senators surpassed $1 million for the first time, meaning his was far less than his peers.

His declared assets in 2019 included two life insurance policies, each worth between $15,000 and $50,000, and a ‘529’ savings plan, which is a state-sponsored tax-deferred initiative that allows you to save for a beneficiary and pay for educational expenses.

That contained less than $15,000 and was believed to have been set up for the two Walz children – Hope, 23, who recently graduated from Montana State University and Gus, 17, who goes to a public high school in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The bulk of Walz’s accumulated wealth is almost entirely in the form of pensions from the state, military, and federal government, which will have been bolstered by taxpayer-funded contributions.

Dougl Emhoff, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and wife Gwen Walz on stage at a rally in Philadelphia

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz disembark at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada U.S., August 10, 2024

The value of those pensions were not disclosed – but his congressional pension is estimated by Forbes to be about $500,000, his military one at least $200,000 and his governor’s pension has been estimated at $100,000.

One financial adviser said he was ‘shocked’ by Walz’s finances which indicated that he had lost out on an opportunity to build generational wealth for his family.

Analysts are baffled by one particular financial move Walz made in 2009 – when he and his wife did own several IRAs, valued at between $1,001 and $15,000, but sold them.

Sensible financial advice dictates that prematurely cashing out on tax-deferred retirement plans should be a last resort and only done if someone is in dire straits.

It’s unclear if Walz ever received such valuable advice. For, looking back over his life, he does not appear to have demonstrated great financial acumen.

Walz graduated from Chadron State College, Nebraska, with a degree in social science education in 1989, before later earning a master’s in education from Minnesota State University.

Since 1990, when he was a 26-year-old teacher, the S&P 500 has shown a return of more than 1,300 percent.

Unlike the 58 percent of Americans who own stocks, Walz did not use his disposable income to take part in that growth.

In 1997, he bought a four-bedroom Cape Cod-style home in a cul-de-sac in Mankato, a small town 100 miles south of Minneapolis.

He bought the house for $145,000, with a mortgage, and supplemented his income by renting out a room, according to financial disclosures.

He and Gwen would spend most of their adult lives there, while he taught geography and coached football at nearby Mankato West High School, and served in the National Guard until 2005.

In 2016, Walz refinanced the house. The amount of his new mortgage was $276,013, according to the property deed records.

Walz then sold the property in July 2019 for $304,000, having not received the original asking price of $315,000, soon after he was elected as Governor of Minnesota and moved into a state-funded home (a perk of his governorship).

His congressional financial disclosures showed his mortgage was still more than $250,000 in the year he sold the Mankato house.

The house Walz sold for $304,000 in 2019 when he was elected Governor of Minnesota

Tim Walz’s beloved 1979 International Harvester Scout II

By selling when he did, Walz also missed out on a house price boom in the area. His former property’s value is now estimated at $460,000, up 50 percent in five years.

Walz owns one car, a blue restored 1979 International Harvester Scout, which is believed to be worth about $30,000, and which he has used in political campaigns.

The off-road truck burns through gas, only getting about 11.4 miles per gallon, which has led to accusations of hypocrisy over his backing of environmental causes.

He appears to have once owned a silver Mazda. He was in that car when he was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving as a 31-year-old teacher in 1995.

His only foray into the private sector as a business owner came in 1994 when he and his wife set up a company called ‘Educational Travel Adventures’, which ran annual student trips to communist China.

Minnesota business records suggest the company was dissolved in 2008.

For its part, the Harris-Walz campaign is seeking to make a virtue of Walz’s relatively limited wealth, casting him as someone who understands the struggles of ordinary Americans.

The campaign has said that ‘he and Gwen have worked hard to earn a living like so many families across the country.’

But Walz’s hard work is not the issue – it’s the choices he has made with the money available too him. And his wealth does present a stark comparison with the other candidates on the Republican and Democratic tickets.

Donald Trump is currently worth $4.5 billion, according to Forbes.

His running mate J.D. Vance is worth between $4.3 million and $10.7 million, according to his most recent financial disclosure.

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, a former entertainment lawyer, are together worth at least $8 million.

Should Walz become vice president, his finances will improve. The job comes with a salary of $284,600, more than twice what he earns now. Whether he would choose to invest it wisely remains to be seen.