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Kristi Noem Net Worth 2025:
The wealth starts 1,200 miles from the capital of the country in eastern South Dakota, where buildings sporadically surface and waves of grain abound. Surrounded by fields, the family farm where Noem grew up lies outside of Hazel (population: 132).
Her present residence is on a 200-acre ranchland tract near Castlewood (population: 698). The key to the Noem family’s finances is a modest, single-story office building located in the small town of Bryant (population: 471), housing her husband’s Noem Insurance, which has brought in $1.1 million in income and profits for him over the past two years selling insurance policies on homes, cars, farms and lives.
2010 saw Kristi’s husband Bryon Noem buy the business from a South Dakota bank. Starting in 2015, the cash flow seems to have surged from a range of $50,000-$100,000 in 2014 to $100,000-$1 million the following year, never falling back again on Noem’s reports submitted while she was serving Congress.
Forbes projects today that Bryon might obtain $2 million for selling his agency, after debt. That makes it the one largest component of the personal portfolio of Trump Cabinet members.
Bryon owns a car wash, their house and acreage, and a mixed bag of Noem’s pensions, many cash and investment accounts, farming tools and a loan to their 28-year-old daughter’s yoga studio.
Born in 1971 to farmer-ranchers Ron and Corrine Arnold in Watertown, South Dakota, Kristi Noem grew animals in her early years—including, as she related in an autobiography, raccoons, parakeets, a goat, a sheep, a miniature horse and “a small herd” of between 20 and 30 cats.
In 1992 she wed Bryon, a high school friend. Tragic events happened in 1994 when Noem, eight months pregnant and in college, lost her father in a farming accident. She dropped her classes to assist with the running of the farm. She married Bryon and added three children in a decade.
Until Bryon started overseeing Bryant State Bank’s insurance operation in 2003, they maintained a hunting lodge connected to the farm. Assessor records show that three years later the couple paid $7,500 for a 31-acre property in Castlewood, South Dakota.
There they built the house they currently live in now and, in 2008 and 2010, also bought roughly 170 acres of surrounding land to use for grazing livestock. Before include a roughly $200,000 mortgage against the house and land together are worth roughly $1.1 million.
Noem arrived at Castlewood the same year she was seated in the statehouse of South Dakota. “I reasoned we needed someone in the legislature still active in business and agriculture,” Noem said in her first book.
With a pay of $12,000, the part-time job Three hours away was Pierre, the state capital; Noem stayed in town for her first forty-day period with a family friend. She met other Republicans in leadership, and during another term in 2008 she assumed assistant majority leadership.
2010 saw Kristi and Bryon promoted. Turning the insurance agency he oversaw into Noem Insurance, he purchased She defeated a fast ticket scandal, reportedly accumulating almost two dozen over the years and hadn’t paid all of them on time, resulting in two arrest warrants.
She also ousted a Blue Dog Democrat in the Tea Party wave. After her brothers bought her out of her portion of the farm, Noem moved to Washington where her new employment paid $174,000.
She acted as a link between House Republican leadership and the huge class of fresh GOP members, developed a reputation for trying to defend federal agriculture subsidies, and finally spent four terms in Congress earning a pension Forbes estimates to be worth roughly $140,000 today.
Thanks to online courses, she also at last completed college while working in office. 2011 saw her graduate with a political science degree from South Dakota State University.
Noem’s political climb persisted in 2018 as she became victorious in the gubernatorial contest for South Dakota, therefore cutting her yearly salary to $113,000. But the office helped her establish her national brand, and Noem soon started touring to conservative gatherings extensively.
According to a recent Associated Press inquiry, taxpayers paid over $150,000 in travel expenses—mostly security costs—mostly unrelated to her job as South Dakota’s chief executive as governor.
Noem wrote two autobiographies while in office. Published in 2022, “Not My First Rodeo” failed and sold roughly 700 print copies, according industry statistics agency Circana Bookscan.
The second, “No Going Back,” hit stores in 2024 and drew criticism for a now-famous story in which she details killing a hyperactive 14-month-old dog following a pheasant hunting expedition. She sold over 36,000 copies with Noem apparently under consideration for the VP seat on Trump’s 2024 ticket at the time.
During this period Bryon also started his own business, purchasing a plot of property adjacent to a Pierre Walmart with a partner and developing a car-wash on it. After debt, Forbes considers his portion of the company to be worth about $300,000.
Trump—no stranger to scandal—brought Noem on board in his government even though he passed her up for vice president. She makes $235,101 a year working for Homeland Security. She also has more profile and a larger budget than she has ever had. Last year, DHS spent $140 billion, almost twenty times the state budget for South Dakota.
Furthermore, the Republican tax-and-spending proposal under review in Congress would, according to a New York Times analysis, provide the department an extra $138 billion over ten years for border security and immigration enforcement, somewhat offset by $67 billion in income from increased immigration fees.
She hasn’t, however, forgotten her hometown. Noem recalled building a fence with her father at age 10 and mentioned in her first speech to DHS staff members following her swearing in that dad would want her to have tools available for him before he needed them so he could work fast.
“That is also what our job is here, at the Department of Homeland Security,” she informed gathered employees. “We get ready and consider three steps ahead so that people have what they need before they need it.”
