At 92, Joan Payden Is One of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, She Is Worth $700 Million

Nearly four decades ago in 1983, she quit her job and cashed in her 401(k) to start her money management firm, Payden & Rygel, per Forbes. At 92, Joan Payden is one of America’s richest and oldest self-made women. She still serves as the CEO of the Los Angeles-based firm that manages over $161 billion in assets and nearly 240 employees across multiple offices, according to its website.

Payden’s assets have grown with the firm as she is the majority owner. She currently boasts an estimated net worth of $700 million and is a new addition on the Forbes’ 2024 list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women.

Here's How She Did It

Payden’s career spans decades. She majored in math and physics at Trinity College in Washington and became one of the few women engineers at a New Jersey-based company building oil refineries in the 1950s. She lost her job in a mass layoff after working for three years, Forbes reported.

Utilizing her math background, Payden turned to the financial sector and landed a junior associate role at Merrill Lynch. “I was hired at a 25% discount because I didn’t know the difference between a bond and stock,” Payden said in an interview with the The Los Angeles Times in 1999.

Within a couple years, she switched jobs and moved to Los Angeles to join Scudder, Stevens & Clark, a prestigious money management firm. Working her way up, in her 40s, Payden became the first woman partner at Scudder, Stevens and Clark.

However, she often felt alienated and faced gender discrimination while serving in the top management. Years later in 1983, she quit her job and cashed in her 401(k) to work on her own.

“I didn’t want to find myself 10 years [later] in the same place,” she told the Notre Dame students in an address, as per Forbes. 

On her way out, she asked her colleague Sandra Rygel to join her, and with an undisclosed amount of seed money they formed Payden & Rygel.

Taking the Leap of Faith

At the time, she wasn’t entirely convinced if they would succeed at all. “There are always worries. When I set up the company, I worried I wouldn’t get clients,” she told The Los Angeles Times.

However, over the past 40 years, she quietly built Payden & Rygel into one of the country’s largest private money managers. With over $162 billion in assets under management the firm now has offices in Los Angeles (headquarters), Boston, London and Milan, marking a global presence.

Her firm focuses on fixed income and global markets, and even manages the riches of high net worth investors, government and corporate pension funds, central banks, foundations and more.

As per Forbes, her controlling stake in the firm is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion. She has about $100 million in other assets.

Payden is also a great philanthropist and she has given millions to charities, including animal sanctuaries, Catholic causes and her alma mater, Trinity College, which is now called Trinity Washington University. Her advice to budding entrepreneurs is to jump in the lake if the risks of not doing outweigh the risk of doing it.