The media and Wall Street got all excited when the Dow Jones industrial average hit 20,000 earlier this year — and justifiably so.

But why not give the same sort of attention to the US federal debt, which will slip past $20 trillion later this year or in early 2018.

The symmetry of these two numbers is just too precious to ignore.

As of Monday afternoon, the US debt, according to usdebtclock.org, stood at $19.849 trillion — and was rising at the rate of $13,404,542 an hour.

That’s $321,709,008 million a day.

At this pace, the first digit on the tote board will flip in 469 days — on July 2, 2018.

But don’t trust me when it comes to predicting the exact circumstances of a future event — my bracket had Duke winning the NCAA tournament.

Of course, a lot of things can happen between now and July 2, 2018. Some of those things, like spending a lot of money on infrastructure or on the Mexican border wall, will speed up the clock while other “things,” like more revenue pouring into the Treasury from added jobs and a faster-growing economy, will slow the debt clock down.

And by “things,” I mean practically anything that could ever happen.

To make matters a bit more cloudy, the Treasury Department, which maintains the official debt stats, has a different number from the debt clock.

One of them is promoting fake news.

Hey, our country is in serious financial trouble. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with it. Pick a date and let’s see who gets closest.