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This contribution will document wealth trajectories and wealth mobility across the life-course of households and individuals in the United States and Germany. While the life-cycle hypothesis continues to orient most investigations into the process of wealth accumulation (Modigliani/Brumberg 1954, Modigliani 1986), to our knowledge this contribution is the first to document long-term wealth trajectories as well as wealth mobility in direct cross-national comparison. The United States and Germany are powerful comparative cases thanks to significant differences in their institutional context (e.g. inheritance laws) and welfare state features (e.g. pension system). We draw on detailed wealth data – and measures of net worth, financial wealth, housing wealth, and other wealth –from ten waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and four waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), covering more than three decades (1980s through 2012). Our analyses begin with a descriptive assessment of wealth trajectories to investigate whether households in these two countries show similar aggregate patterns of wealth accumulation. Next – and as the focus of our contribution – we investigate the pattern and degree of intragenerational wealth mobility, i.e. changes in the relative position in the wealth distribution across the life-course of households and individuals. Assessing the degree of rigidity in the wealth distribution is particularly relevant at the backdrop of hig