Meet my millionaires… in North Dakota?
Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece; jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash… in North Dakota?
According to new data from Phoenix Marketing International, North Dakota is adding millionaires at a faster rate than any other state in the country after jumping 14 spots in this year’s list.
The state ranked 43rd in total millionaires last year – just one stop behind Alabama – but jumped to 29th this year, just ahead of Florida thanks in part to an energy-production boom in the Bakken shale region of the state.
It’s not something, though, the residents have been known to flaunt.
“The only way you know a Bakken millionaire is he’ll be driving a new truck and might have taken his wife on vacation,” said Kelvin Hullet, president of the chamber of commerce in Bismarck, the state capital, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
He continued, “I’ve seen the occasional Bentley. But mostly, North Dakota is the type of place where someone can be very wealthy and you’d never know it.”
Maryland was No. 1 for the third consecutive year, with 7.7 percent of households holding more than $1 million in assets. New Jersey, Connecticut and Hawaii followed.
Those four states, in various orders, have led the rankings every year since 2006, the first year of the survey.
According to the survey, there were approximately 53,000 more millionaire households in the United States in 2013 than the previous year. The country now has 6.15 million millionaires, approximately 1 in every 20 households. The numbers, however, do not include the value of real estate.
There were a number of large movements in this year’s rankings: Maine climbed 11 spots over a single year to No. 25 in 2013. Louisiana jumped 10 spots to No. 32. Meanwhile, Nevada fell 20 places to No. 39. Arizona, Florida, Idaho and Michigan all fell by more than 10 positions.
