He was making better than $200K a year while he was Vice President.
After he left office in 2017, he was earning anywhere between $40,000 and $190,000 in speaking fees. He earned $540,000 as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. He made $11 million in 2017, of which the bulk of that ($8 million) was from a book deal he signed with Flatiron Books. He earned $42,500 as a freshman Senator in 1974 and that climbed to $174,000 as a senior Senator.
A person having a net worth into the millions is far more common than you probably think...