Pete Buttigieg Net Worth

What is Pete Buttigieg's net worth and salary?

Pete Buttigieg is an American politician who has a net worth of $500 thousand. Pete Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard University and served in the United States Navy Reserve from 2009 to 2017. In 2011, he was elected as the youngest mayor of a US city with at least 100,000 residents, and he served two terms in that position.

During his time as mayor, Buttigieg became known for his progressive policies, including efforts to revitalize South Bend's downtown area and improve public transportation. He also gained national attention for his 2020 presidential campaign, which made him the first openly gay person to win delegates in a major US presidential primary.

In February 2021, Buttigieg was confirmed as the United States Secretary of Transportation under President Joe Biden's administration, making him the first openly gay person to serve in a Cabinet-level position. As Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg is responsible for overseeing the nation's transportation infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and airports.

Salary & Financial Disclosures

As Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg earned a salary of $149,000. According to a financial disclosure released in May 2019, Pete Buttigieg earned $75,000 as an advance for his book. The filing also showed that Pete and his husband own as much as $50,000 worth of Apple stock and as much as $15,000 in Google stock. Finally, Pete disclosed that he has somewhere in the range of $100,000 and $350,000 worth of student loan debt that is due over the next 25 years.

Buttigieg's most-recent financial disclosures reveal that he and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, have a net worth of between $100,000 and $1 million. As Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg earns a salary of $221,400 per year.

Early Life

Pete Buttigieg was born in South Bend, Indiana on January 19, 1982. He is the only child of Joseph and Jennifer Anne Buttigieg. His father is from Malta and studied to be a Jesuit priest before emigrating to the U.S.  to become a professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. His father was a professor at Notre Dame for 29 years. His mother's family has lived in Indiana for generations. Buttigieg attended St. Joseph High School in South Bend where he was valedictorian of the class of 2000. During his senior year, he won first prize in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage essay contest. His essay was about the integrity and political courage of then U.S. Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He was one of only two independent politicians in Congress. Buttigieg traveled to Boston to accept the award and met members of the Kennedy family including Caroline Kennedy.

Buttigieg attended Harvard University where he majored in history and literature. He was president of the Student Advisory Committee of the Harvard Institute of Politics. He worked on the institute's annual study of youth attitudes on politics. His undergraduate thesis, titled The Quiet American's Errand into the Wilderness, was on the influence of puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as reflected in the novel The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Buttigieg graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 2004 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.

Buttigieg worked as an investigative intern at WMAQ, Chicago's NBC News affiliate while in college. He also interned for a number of Democratic campaigns from 2002 to 2006 including Jill Long Thompson's unsuccessful 2002 congressional bid, John Kerry's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign, and Joe Donnelly's successful 2006 congressional campaign.

In 2007, he received a B.A with first-class honors in philosophy, politics, and economics from Pembroke College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he was the editor of the Oxford International Review as well as co-founder and member of the Democratic Renaissance Project, a debate and discussion group of Oxford students.

Consulting Career

Buttigieg worked as a conference director of The Cohen Group from 2004 to 2005. After earning his Oxford degree, he took a job as a consultant at the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company. He worked on energy, retail, economic development, and logistics for three years. His clients at McKinsey included Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Best Buy, as well as several government agencies including the EPA, Energy Department, Defense Department, and Postal Service. Buttigieg took a leave from McKinsey to become a research director for Jill Long Thompson's unsuccessful campaign for governor of Indiana. He left McKinsey in 2010 to focus full time on his campaign for Indiana State Treasurer.

Buttigieg has also worked with the Truman National Security Project since 2005 as a fellow with expertise in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was named to the organization's Board of Advisors in 2014. 

Military Career

In September 2009, Buttigieg joined the U.S. Navy Reserve through the direct commission officer program. He was sworn in as an ensign in naval intelligence.

In 2014, he took a seven-month leave as Mayor of South Bend to deploy to Afghanistan. He was part of a unit assigned to identify and disrupt terrorist finance networks. He also worked as an armed driver for his commander on more than 100 trips from Bagram Air Base to Kabul.

While serving in Afghanistan he learned some Dari, a dialect of the Persian language spoken by locals in the region. Buttigieg was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award. He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2017.

Political Career

Buttigieg unsuccessfully ran for State Treasurer of Indiana in 2010. Buttigieg became the 32^nd Mayor of South Bend in January 2012. He took office in January 2012 at age 29, becoming the second-youngest mayor in South Bend history—and the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents. In November 2015, he was elected to his second term as mayor with over 80% of the vote. In December 2018, Buttigieg announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend.

Buttigieg was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2020 presidential election. He ultimately stepped aside and endorsed Joe Biden. He supports universal healthcare, universal background checks for firearms purchases, labor unions, federal legislation banning discrimination against LGBT people, protecting the environment by addressing climate change, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Secretary of Treasury

When Joe Biden became President, he nominated Pete to be Secretary of Transportation.

Personal Life

Pete Buttigieg came out as gay in a June 2015 piece in the South Bend Tribune. He became Indiana's first openly gay elected official as well as the first one to come out while in office, and the highest elected official to come out in Indiana. Buttigieg is also the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate.

On June 16, 2018, Buttigieg married Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher. They had been dating since August 2015 after meeting on the dating app Hinge. They got engaged in December 2017. They married in a private ceremony at the cathedral of St. James in South Bend. Chasten took his husband's name.

Buttigieg taught himself to speak some Norwegian and also has some knowledge of Spanish, Italian, French, Maltese, Arabic, Dari, and Persian, as well as his native English.

Real Estate

In 2009, a 27-year-old Pete paid $125,000 for a home in South Bend, Indiana. He bought the home out of foreclosure. The home has roughly doubled in value since his purchase. It's a 2,500 square-foot home with four bedrooms.