Harry S. Truman
Financial situation

Before being elected as Jackson County judge, Truman had earned little money, and was in debt from the failure of his haberdashery. His election as senator in 1934 carried with it a salary of $10,000 (equivalent to $228,000 in 2023), high for the time, but the need to maintain two homes, with one in expensive Washington, Margaret Truman's college expenses, and contributions to the support of needy relatives, left the Trumans little extra money. He likely had around $7,500 (equivalent to $127,000 in 2023) in cash and government bonds when nominated for vice president.

His finances were transformed by his accession to the presidency, which carried with it a salary of $75,000 (equivalent to $1,269,000 in 2023), which was increased to $100,000 (equivalent to $1,281,000 in 2023) in 1949. This was a higher salary than any Major League Baseball star, except Joe DiMaggio, who also earned $100,000 in his final two seasons (1950 and 1951). Beginning in 1949, the president was also granted a $50,000 (equivalent to $640,000 in 2023) expense allowance, which was initially tax-free, and did not have to be accounted for. Although the allowance became taxable later in his presidency, Truman never reported it on his tax return, and converted some of the funds to cash he kept in the White House safe and later in a safe deposit box in Kansas City.

Upon leaving the presidency, Truman returned to Independence, Missouri, to live at the Wallace home he and Bess had shared for years with her mother. In a biography that contributed greatly to the myth that Truman was near penury after departing the White House, David McCullough stated that the Trumans had little alternative than to return to Independence, for his only income was his army pension of $112.56 per month (equivalent to $1,282 in 2023), and he had only been able to save a modest amount from his salary as president. In February 1953, Truman signed a book deal for his memoirs, and in a draft will dated December of that year listed land worth $250,000 (equivalent to $2,847,000 in 2023), savings bonds of the same amount, and cash of $150,000 (equivalent to $1,708,000 in 2023). He wrote, "Bonds, land, and cash all come from savings of presidential salary and free expense account. It should keep you and Margaret comfortably."

The writing of the memoirs was a struggle for Truman, and he went through a dozen collaborators during the project, not all of whom served him well, but he remained heavily involved in the result. For the memoirs, Truman received a payment of $670,000 (equivalent to $7,620,522 in 2023). The memoirs were a commercial and critical success. They were published in two volumes: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions (1955) and Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope (1956).

Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal retirement package; President Truman himself ensured that former servants of the executive branch of government received similar support. In 1953, however, there was no such benefit package for former presidents, and Congressional pensions were not approved until 1946, after Truman had left the Senate, so he received no pension for his Senate service. Truman, behind the scenes, lobbied for a pension, writing to congressional leaders that he had been near penury but for the sale of family farmlands, and in February 1958, in the first televised interview of a former US president that aired on CBS, Truman claimed that "If I hadn't inherited some property that finally paid things through, I'd be on relief right now." That year, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 (equivalent to $264,014 in 2023) yearly pension to each former president, and it is likely that Truman's claim to be in difficult financial straits played a role in the law's enactment. The only other living former president at the time, Herbert Hoover, also took the pension, even though he did not need the money; reportedly, he did so to avoid embarrassing Truman.

Truman's net worth improved further in 1958 when he and his siblings sold most of the family farm to a Kansas City real estate developer. When he was serving as a county judge, Truman borrowed $31,000 (equivalent to $353,030 in 2023) by mortgaging the farm to the county school fund, which was legal at the time. When Republicans controlled the court in 1940, they foreclosed in an effort to embarrass Truman politically, and his mother and sister Mary Jane had to vacate the home. In 1945, Truman organized a syndicate of supporters who purchased the farm with the understanding that they would sell it back to the Trumans. Harry and Vivian Truman purchased 87 acres in 1945, and Truman purchased another portion in 1946. In January 1959, Truman calculated his net worth as $1,046,788.86 (equivalent to $10,941,000 in 2023), including a share in the Los Angeles Rams football team. Nevertheless, the Trumans always lived modestly in Independence, and when Bess Truman died in 1982, almost a decade after her husband, the house was found to be in poor condition due to deferred maintenance.

Bess Truman's personal papers were made public in 2009, including financial records and tax returns. The myth that Truman had been in straitened circumstances after his presidency was slow to dissipate; Paul Campos wrote in 2021, "The current, 20,000-plus-word Wikipedia biography of Truman goes so far as to assert that, because his earlier business ventures had failed, Truman left the White House with 'no personal savings.' Every aspect of this narrative is false."
detectable_format:constrained_response