How Kamala Harris manages her money: Index funds and a 2.625% mortgage

The vice president and her husband, Doug Emhoff, are fairly conservative investors, federal disclosure records show. They keep much of their money in plain-vanilla index funds—with a fair amount in cash. As Harris makes her case to run the country, voters can also look at how she manages her finances.

The couple earned around a half-million dollars last year, and have assets worth somewhere between $3.6 million and $7.36 million, plus real estate, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found. Much of their wealth is in retirement accounts, not unlike the average American, financial advisers said. They also have a 2.625% mortgage rate, something most current home shoppers would envy.

“She’s a little boring financially,” said Megan Gorman, a wealth manager in San Francisco. “She has clearly taken great care to avoid anything controversial or overly risky.”

The Harris campaign declined to comment on her financial strategy.

Here’s a breakdown of their income and assets, according to property records, the couple’s tax returns and forms they filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which requires disclosures of asset values within broad ranges.

Income

Harris and Emhoff together earned $450,299 in 2023, according to a jointly filed tax return. That consists of the $218,784 Harris reported earning in wages as vice president and $174,994 Emhoff made as a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Around $6,000 came in from royalties on Harris’s books. They made $50,603 in taxable interest on bank accounts and other investments.

The couple’s income is significantly lower than it was before Harris took office as vice president. Emhoff, who was a partner at the corporate law firm DLA Piper, left the practice in August 2020 before Harris was inaugurated. He made more than $1.2 million in partnership income at DLA Piper in 2020.

Harris was also making more from her two books published in 2019. She has profited a total of $749,484 since 2020.

They gave $23,026 in charitable contributions in 2023. Their largest gifts went to two colleges in California and Howard University, and they gave to six nonprofits and religious organizations.

Investments

The couple has retirement assets and bank account balances worth somewhere between $3.6 million and $7.36 million.

A significant portion of Harris’s and Emhoff’s net worth is held in retirement accounts, according to government ethics forms.

They also have $850,000 to $1.7 million in four bank accounts, including one they hold jointly with a balance of $50,001 to $100,000.

Combined, the two have between $1.79 million and $4.4 million in retirement accounts. This doesn’t include an estimated value of the pension benefits Harris earned while working in state and local government in California.

Emhoff has two individual retirement accounts with a combined total ranging from $1.27 million to $3.19 million

Harris, a long-term government employee, has 401(k)-type accounts containing between $525,000 and $1.25 million.

The average American ages 55 to 64 holds retirement savings of about $537,560, according to the Federal Reserve. But Harris and Emhoff’s retirement account balances pale in comparison with the $20.7 million to $101.6 million Mitt Romney disclosed in an IRA, when running for president in 2012.

The couple’s portfolio, including their retirement and bank accounts, is fairly conservatively allocated, with roughly half in stocks, about one-third in cash and the rest in bonds. They hold a broadly diversified portfolio that includes several low-cost index funds.

Harris has one thing many Americans lack: pensions.

When she turns 60 in October, she will be eligible for $3,981 a month from a state of California pension plan, although it isn’t clear when she plans to start her benefits. Harris’s disclosure forms calculate the lump-sum value of a second pension, from the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, at between $250,001 and $500,000.

She may have additional retirement benefits from the federal government, which lawmakers aren’t required to disclose, according to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics.

Real estate

The vice president and her husband own a 3,500-square-foot Los Angeles home, according to property records. Records show she previously owned other property in California and in Washington, D.C., as well.

Emhoff bought the Brentwood-area house in 2012 for about $2.7 million. The home was transferred to Harris and Emhoff’s family trust a few years later.

Like many American homeowners, the couple has benefited from home-price appreciation in recent years. The four-bedroom house is estimated to now be worth around $5 million, according to Zillow estimates.

They also took advantage of historically low interest rates that enticed many homeowners to refinance during the pandemic.

The couple got a $2 million, 2.625% seven-year adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, with Wells Fargo in 2020. They previously took out a seven-year, 2.625% ARM in 2016 on the same property.

ARMs typically carry a lower rate than a 30-year fixed mortgage in the loan’s early years, and then adjust at regular intervals based on one of several indexes. Wealthy clients often refinance ARMs with the same interest rate before the loan resets to effectively extend the term of the loan, said Gordon Miller, a mortgage broker in Cary, N.C.

Write to Veronica Dagher at Veronica.Dagher@wsj.com, Katherine Hamilton at katherine.hamilton@wsj.com and Anne Tergesen at anne.tergesen@wsj.com