America’s poorest presidents: bankruptcy, insolvency and extreme financial hardship

American presidents became bankrupt at a rate at least 20 times the national average. Most of their troubles came from real estate speculation, poor crop yields on the lands that they held, and botched and frequently highly risky business deals.

In a 2010 survey, 24/7 Wall St. examined the finances of all presidents and found eight that became insolvent at one time or another during their adult lifetimes.

Jefferson had a passion for expensive homes, land, and personal property. Madison was a poor judge of real estate values and gambled that his plantations would produce outsized crop production. William Henry Harrison had bad luck with the weather which destroyed his wheat and corn.

By the middle of the 19th century, land ownership went from being common to unusual. Lincoln lost everything when the general store he owned with a partner failed. An associate of Grant’s son ran through the former Union general’s entire fortune. The depression of 1893 ruined the value of McKinley’s investment in a tin plate company. Truman lost the clothing store that he owned with a partner.

As has been observed, the nation’s chief executives were men of their times, at least financially. What is striking is the extent to which many were gamblers. Some, like Hoover, bet and won. He became wealthy in the mining business. LBJ made money as a cattle rancher, a risky business depending on the national appetite for beef and, to some extent the

William McKinley (5th, 1897-1901)

While McKinley spent most of his life in relative financial stability, the depression of 1893 bankrupted an investment he had made with a friend in a tin plate company. His final debts reached an estimated $130,000 and McKinley was forced to file for bankruptcy. In order to pay off his debts, McKinley solicited some of his friends to help him manage his estate and sell off his property. Instead, his friends exercised various connections and raised the sum of money on their own, much to McKinley’s perpetual shame.

Harry S. Truman (33rd, 1945-1953)

One of the saddest cases of presidential hardship, Truman, was relatively poor throughout his life. He borrowed against his meagre future inheritance and invested in a zinc mining operation, which failed and lost him most of his investment. Truman later performed various menial jobs, which barely kept his family afloat. However, the real financial disaster occurred when the clothing store he owned with a friend went bankrupt in the wake of extreme deflation. Truman lost his $30,000 investment, but never declared bankruptcy, despite urgings from friends and family to do so. Truman continued to pay debts throughout his early career, and was still thousands of dollars in debt when he began his tenure as a senator. It was Truman’s sad financial state that inspired the doubling of the presidential salary, which he received after the fact. Truman and his wife were the first two official recipients of Medicare when Lyndon Johnson signed the programme into law.