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So, we know Harry inherited his money from James. By descriptions from the books, it looks like he had enough money to spend during his school years with plenty to spare for later life.

Is there an estimate on how much money he had? How much would that be in muggle money? Was he extremely rich?

I'm thinking here that he could have received more than just an inheritance. For example, anonymous supporters could have given him money through the bank while he was a baby, or when he was about to go to Hogwarts, and he wouldn't have known (not even Dumbledore would have known).

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Janoma
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4 Answers4

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Slytherincess has given an excellent answer if we could figure out how much Harry has. Let me give you a few clues as to how much that might be, and then let's estimate. Here's what we know.

  1. Harry had a visibly large amount of money, but not so much that he could afford to spend in on whatever he wanted. In particular, the Firebolt seemed out of his reach, although he could have bought it, it would have used a considerable amount of his cash. Estimates for the Firebolt's cost is around 400-1000 Galleons.
  2. Harry stayed for 2 weeks at the Leaky Cauldron. Rates were never mentioned, but it seemed reasonable to guess it would cost a few galleons.
  3. It seems likely that it was more than the 1000 galleons he won during the Triwizard tournament.
  4. It seems that Harry pulls around 20-30 galleons equivalent per school year. This seems to be enough to leave him with a considerable, but not insurmountable, amount after everything is done. Everything in this case is paying for his books, supplies, and other general spending money for the year.
  5. There's a fairly popular article, no longer on the web, but mentioned in sites like this, that estimates the cost of going to Hogwarts at about $50K USD/year. (EDIT- It seems there is no tuition at Hogwarts, making the cost quite a bit less.)

All in all, I'm guessing that the amount of money would be somewhere around $1 million USD, or about 20K Galleons. This is enough to do quite a bit, but while someone could potentially live off of it for life, it wouldn't be a particularly well off lifestyle, and many people would continue to work to earn money even with that income.

Cearon O'Flynn
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    point 2 - did Harry pay for his stay at the Leaky Cauldron? If the Ministry wanted him there and were willing to do favours for him, might they have paid? – NiceOrc Mar 01 '12 at 03:11
  • that means that there is aproxamately 350,000 UK pounds just in galleons wow that is probably more than my parents earn in a year combined, i am not sure how much that converts to the Australian dollar but i am pretty sure that it would convert to a lot of money –  Mar 02 '13 at 01:10
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    For point #3, he gave his Triwizard winnings to Fred and George. No mention of profit sharing or anything like that, but I would imagine that after HP:DH he probably got a cut. – JohnP Oct 12 '13 at 00:51
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    Unrelated, but 1 million USD is more than sufficient to live off for life. Invested properly, it will return $40k/year after inflation (assuming 7% return and 3% inflation annually), which is a lower-middle-class salary in the US. Also, if you're a wizard, your cost of living is much lower; no need for a car, electronic gadgets or other expensive stuff. You can repair your things (clothes, furniture etc) so they last longer. I can't see Harry as a "gentleman of leisure" though :-) – Jay Dec 12 '13 at 18:22
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    @Jayraj Adult humans have enough problems investing their money wisely - you think a 12-year old wizard would be able to pick wise investments in a wizarding world he barely knows? – Zibbobz Apr 16 '14 at 13:41
  • @PearsonArtPhoto Don't forget he also inherited everything from Sirius. – Andreas Aug 28 '14 at 09:08
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    @NiceOrc's comment seems correct. My wife is currently reading POA to our kid and I'm pretty sure that Fudge told Harry that he (Harry) wouldn't have to pay the bill. – GreenMatt Feb 12 '15 at 17:41
  • $1,000,000 = 20,000 galleons? How do you figure that? If 1 galleon = £5, that would mean that 1£ = $10, which is clearly not the case… – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 28 '15 at 20:12
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    Great answer, but he'd have to have more than that. It's been said (I believe by JKR) that Harry has enough to buy all of the supplies for the entire school for all their years (or something along those lines). There's also nothing here about what he inherited from Sirius. – Anoplexian Apr 01 '16 at 14:22
  • @Jayraj The money is lying in a vault; that's about as far from "invested properly" as you can possibly get! – A Simmons Apr 05 '16 at 15:18
  • @ASimmons I wasn't saying Harry's money is well-invested. I was disputing the answer's (original) assertion that $1m USD isn't enough money to live on forever IRL. – Jay Apr 05 '16 at 20:47
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The exact amount is never stated in canon, and it's impossible to estimate without knowing exactly how many Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts Harry owned. But it was a considerable amount:

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

"All yours," smiled Hagrid.

All Harry's -- it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.

Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag. "The gold ones are Galleons," he explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. Right, that should be enough fer a couple o' terms, we'll keep the rest safe for yeh."

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - pages 58-59 - US Hardcover Edition

It is estimated Harry had quite a lot of money, which he inherited from James and Lily. I'll see if I can find an estimate of Harry's wealth in Muggle money. Was he extremely rich? Yeah, I'd say he was quite wealthy, but probably not as wealthy as the Malfoys. There is no canon evidence that there were any charitable funds set up on Harry's behalf to receive funds for him. I'd say that would be pure conjecture.

ETA: The Harry Potter Lexicon has the following:

JKR has stated in an interview (Comic Relief 2001) that she estimates the value of one Galleon to be "about five pounds," which works out to around US$9.75 (the exchange rate at the time of the interview was US$7.33). In the introduction to both QA and FB, US$250-million is stated to be the equivelent of 34 million Galleons. That also works out to a value of £5 to the Galleon, at the exchange rate of the time. The price listed on the back of the books, however, is not correct, since US$3.99 would equal less than half a British pound, or 8 sickles and 15 knuts. The book instead incorrectly lists US$3.99 as being equal to 14 sickles and 3 knuts. (Unfortunately, CNN.com uses this incorrect value for their Knuts-to-dollars converter.)

This gives us approximate values as follows:

1 bronze Knut = £0.01 (US about 2 cents)

1 silver Sickle = £0.29 (about US$0.57)

1 Galleon = £5.00 (more or less US$9.75)

These rates vary as the exchange rate fluctuates - see the Wizarding World Currency Converter for the current rate.

There is apparently some kind of foreign wizard money that consists of gold coins the size of hubcaps (seems impractical to me, LOL!). So if we had any way of knowing exactly how many Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts Harry had, we could estimate his net worth. Unfortunately, I can't find a specific number quoted by a reputable source, but admittedly I didn't look super hard. :)

Slytherincess
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    No matter what JKR says, it seems unreasonable to have a Galleon worth £5 - even a very tiny (impractical for daily use) gold coin weighing just 1 gram would be worth £25 as 'scrap metal'; a small gold coin is generally worth about £100. – Peteris Feb 16 '14 at 11:54
  • If you haven't found it, it doesn't exist! Likely JKR didn't want to put a whole dollar amount to it on purpose. Harry had enough money to be comfortable and for it to be a stark contrast to his living with the Dursleys; that's all that matters - IMO. – Möoz Apr 14 '14 at 02:12
  • How can $3.99 be equivalent to less than half a British pound? That makes no sense to me… – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 28 '15 at 20:09
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Currently, 1 British Pound is equivelant to US$1.50. However, in the answer, we see that 1 BP is $2. As such, $3.99 should really be 1.99 BP. Typo, or math worse than JKR. Take your pick. – Dave Johnson Nov 06 '15 at 17:52
  • @Peteris, perhaps she means equivalent in spending power to £5. I.e. could get in the wizarding world something you would spend £5 on in the muggle world. – crobar Sep 29 '17 at 11:36
  • @Peteris Is it ever stated that the coins are literally gold, or just gold in color? – Brady Gilg Oct 12 '23 at 23:55
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The site http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/the-5-richest-hogwarts-graduates/ lists the top five as:

Richest of the Rich (rounded to the nearest galleon)

  1. Bellatrix Lestrange $2.1 billion (421686753 Galleons)
  2. Lucius Malfoy $1.6 billion (321285145 Galleons)
  3. Harry Potter $2.6 million (319995 Galleons)
  4. Gilderoy Lockhart $2 million (243309 Galleons)
  5. Sirius Black $1.6 million (199513 Galleons)
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It would be hard to really know, but I am sure it was a lot. I think James Potter probably inherited from his parents as well. The Potters are an ancient wizarding family, and they James parents were already old when they had him. Lily and James would have eventually contributed to the money they inherited from their jobs. Although they likely didn't work for too long because they had to go into hiding, but likely they did work for a little bit. So Harry probably had quite a bit when he finally started at Hogwarts. After Sirius died, he inherited all of Sirius's money as well, who got money from his uncle.

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