so how exactly rich do you think harry is ? sorry if you already made any meta previously on harry's wealth i just found your blog very recently
I mean he often labelled as a trust fund kid which is true (no slander intended). He inherited the Potter's wealth and Sirius's vault, so does that put him on the same level with the Malfoy's wealth. I am just trying to measure his finances against a typical pureblood family's finances to understand a compatible comparison. Even tho I know Harry is rich I don't he will ever be as rich as the slytherin pureblood families coz the latter is like old money, and have generations after generations of wealth. Whereas the Potters started to become rich only after Fleamont quadrupled the family wealth by founding his hair potion line.
Ofc then we have to consider Harry's income too as an auror and I believe with his level of expertise he would easily be one of the highest paid aurors amongst the Ministry. But if Sirius really gave him the entire Black vault, mind you Blacks were like a huge branched family, loads came from marriages too so I am just talking about what Warburga Black and Orion Black left for Sirius. If Sirius gave Harry only what he inherited, then Harry is rich but on the same level as the Malfoys, Lestranges, or the other branches of Blacks.
However if he did manage to multiply the wealth he got from his dad and Sirius with what he brought in as an auror, then there is a possibility that he might be neck to neck with the ancient pureblood families. But the question is then how much do you think Harry earned in his Auror career ? And ultimately how rich he actually will be at retirement
Hello 👋
Glad you found my blog and enjoyed reading it! 😊
As for your question of how rich Harry is:
Very.
Like post-book 7 Harry could probably give Draco and the Malfoys a run for their money (no pun intended).
I mentioned here how there isn't a "typical" pureblood family when it comes to finances. Since the majority of the wizarding population in the UK is pureblood or wizard-raised (essentially pureblood), you have both poor purebloods (like the Weasleys) and rich purebloods (like the Malfoys), but both are in the minority. The majority of the population (and therefore the majority of purebloods) is in the middle-class range somewhere.
So, as I mentioned most pureblood Slytherins aren't Malfoy level rich. Even the current-day Blacks (1990s) are probably poorer than they were, say a century ago, and many of them likely had actual jobs to add to their wealth. I mean, money, if it isn't being invested or added to in some other way, is going to dry up eventually (Gaunts, for example). So, even families we think of as "old money", while that is true, they aren't all at the same level of "old" or have the same amount of money throughout the years or the same source of money. Like, for example, while I think the Lestranges are pretty rich and "old money" due to them most likely being descendants of Norman nobility like the Malfoys and what we see in their vault. The Blacks, as a family predating the Normans who lost lands when the Normans arrived, are not as rich off land, but probably from endeavors of some kind or another. The Bones and Smiths are likely in the upper-middle-class ranger, but not at Malfoy levels. Families like the Carrows though always read to me as less rich and at the lower end of the middle class.
I mentioned here that Linfred Potter started the family up with a substantial amount of gold to each of his seven children's names. So, while it's true Fleamount quadrupled the family's gold, the family was already at least upper middle class with a Wizengamot position in the ministry before Fleamont.
So the Potters have been like, a well-off guild family (essentially) for centuries, and recently, with Fleamont, they became super-rich, but they weren't poor before. Quite the opposite. They were pretty influential and well-known in the magical world and were probably very stable financially.
So, the Potters are obscenely rich by the time Harry comes around, probably. The fact that his Trust Vault (which likely doesn't have all the family's gold) had enough for him to consider buying a Firebolt in the summer before 3rd year, is evidence of how rich they were.
(I know he said it wasn't worth "emptying his Gringotts vault for the Firebolt", but he's speaking in hyperbole. He has enough money in his trust vault for a Firebolt and the rest of the school years considering the Firebolt is "a few hundred Galleons" while books (when bought new) cost on average, like, 5 Galleons each. At least that's my estimate).
As for the Blacks, they don't have many branches now. They were a large family, but not anymore. Sirius is the only male heir who would traditionally inherit the family's wealth:
“Black family tradition decreed that the house was handed down the direct line, to the next male with the name of ‘Black.’ Sirius was the very last of the line as his younger brother, Regulus, predeceased him and both were childless.
(HBP, Ch3)
So, Sirius got the vaults/house of the main Black family line (the one from Arcturus). He also received money from his Uncle Alphard:
my Uncle Alphard had left me a decent bit of gold
(OotP, Ch6)
Leaving Sirius very well off considering buying Harry the Firebolt didn't even put a dent in the money he had saved up.
So, Harry is already pretty wealthy and could probably be fine if he or any of his kids didn't work a day in their life.
Now, I mentioned how I'm not a fan of Harry becoming an Auror here. And I don't really have much evidence regarding what Auror income is like, but from Kingsley, Tonks, and Moody it appears it isn't a job that would make you rich, but that you could live with it comfortably. We can use irl detective salaries in the UK which range from £26,000 (~1943 Galleons) annually when starting out to £91,500 (~6836 Galleons) annually as a Chief Superintendant or head Auror.
So, I think the Auror career probably wouldn't make him much richer, unless he went into politics with it (and became head of the DMLE, maybe) but I think even without it he could go neck and neck with the richer purebloods like the Malfoys, as what he inherited from his parents and Sirius might be enough.
(I do want to note, for Harry's alternate profession, that the average professor's annual salary in the UK is £82,004 or ~6128 Galleons. And yes, I know this is for a university professor & lecturer but I assume Hogwarts pays its teachers more in line with university professors than an average school teacher. I also know Snape still lives at Spinner's End, though it could also be from him choosing not to move for a multitude of reasons and not necessarily because of his income.)
For anyone wondering about my money calculations in Galleons:
JKR said a galleon was about 5 pounds. Let's say this exchange rate is true for 1991 when Harry uses Galleons for the first time.
Since wizard currency is based on precious metals, we can assume the worth of Galleons in pounds is relative to the amount of gold in them.
In August 1991, the price of one gram of gold was £6.69, making a Galleon likely to include a little less than one gram of gold (~0.86 grams). I estimate the price of a Galleon in August of 1991 to be £5.76 (this is a bit of a headcanon number, but the real number should be similar to it).
The above salaries are adjusted for inflation, as in I calculated the salaries' worth in 1991 and then calculated that price in Galleons.
Alternatively, it can be calculated to get a similar result using the modern price of gold and the amount of gold in a Galleon.
This is all assuming the currency makes sense and that Galleons aren't like old GBP coins which had 7.75 grams of gold and would then be worth £51.8 and then I would not understand how a smart muggleborn didn't use the ridiculous exchange rate loophole to fuck the system over and get rich.
As such, I'm working under the assumption Galleons aren't just pure, solid gold but have another metal(s) mixed in there as well. I'm assuming a Galleon weighs more than a gram since its edges are large enough for the D.A. to write messages on.
