What does it take in terms of assets, abilities, and/or income for you to consider them wealthy?
Not only live off investment portfolios, but live well.
I.e. one or two summer houses, take multiple foreign vacations. And do that comfortably with what they already have or are passively earning.
If they own a house, make at least 100k a year and can support their family comfortably, I would consider that wealthy. My father is in this bracket and he goes on vacations over seas, owns 3 relatively expensive vehicles, and still saves enough for retirement.
You don’t need a million dollars to live a rich, fulfilling life.
Which kind of rich do you mean? The ‘this person is truly wealthy but it’s not unreasonable’ or ‘this person is unacceptably rich and should have their money taken away if not worse’?
The former can be somewhere around…$10,000,000 or so. Lower the older the person is really (cause I consider rich versus remaining expected lifespan), so maybe even as low as $6,000,000 for someone who’s currently 40.
The latter where it’s simply unacceptable for people to have that much I’d start the cutoff around $400,000,000 or so.
And slight sidenote on the unacceptable levels: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both are so unacceptably wealthy that they could make one person a day wealthy by my $10,000,000 standard…every day…for 100 years…before running out (and that’s assuming they stopped accruing money at the beginning of this)…and still be unacceptably wealthy to a crazy degree.
Oh and all my numbers are assuming no additional income and definitely no interest or investment (but also assuming the money remains the same value it has today).
not having to work and still get to live comfortably and afford most of the things you desire
Of course, rich is a relative descriptor, like tall or heavy, some people are richer than others.
I would call anyone who doesn’t need to work in order to live (i.e. who can live off investments and interest) rich.
This is apt, because I know people who earn six figures but work 60 hours a week and are living paycheck to paycheck. They’re not poor, but they’re not rich.
A 6 figure salary while living in midwestern USA or elsewhere with low CoL is very different from living in most areas along the coast.
Sorry for linking back to the R word. But FIRE comes to mind with your post
I would call anyone who doesn’t need to work in order to live (i.e. who can live off investments and interest) rich.
Some caveats I would add: (1) Excluding receivers of pensions and/or other benefits.
(2) Without moving to a different country. I could retire today, if I moved to a low cost of living country.Are old retirees rich, then? I wouldn’t consider that accurate.
If you’re not pulling in upper 6 figures from those investments, you’re still not rich.
If I ever manage to earn ~3000 euros (my current net salary) a month from just investments and interest, I will definitely consider myself rich. There may still be richer people than me even in that scenario, which is why I wrote that “rich” is a relative descriptor.
That’s a totally obtainable goal!
For everyone? Do you really believe that?
Everyone? No.
Anyone? Maybe.
If you max out your ROTH IRA every year until retirement that is possible (for the US). Yes, I believe one can easily save and invest in index funds. Based on compound interest with a return rate of 3-7% one could expect 450,000-1.05 mil after 35 years of working. That’s 583$ post tax dollars a month.
Post kids it’s been more difficult but I even picked up an extra job to make sure I can max out my retirement investments.
For everyone? Absolutely not. It is obtainable though. Even half of that per month would result in similarly good returns. The problem is investment education. Reminds me of my local communist reading group who to my surprise didn’t know anything about investing even though capital is like their whole thing.
Max contributions to a ROTH IRA is $7,000. Most people don’t have an extra $7,000 lying around. If you do, chances are you’re already in the top 10%.
I would still say that’s not true… I probably make half as much as you but I just try to be extremely frugal… just saying it’s doable
For everyone, right? Nobody works everyone just collects their 3k
For most of us reading this it is an obtainable retirement income. On the world stage if you can read this you are probably rich. A little bit of savings can get you 3k inflation adjusted once you reach “old age”.
A little bit of savings? How much would you need to save per month?
Of course on the world stage this varies per country but I agree that a big of savings can get you there by retirement, especially if done early.
In China a common goal is to save 140k USD then invest it and retire by one’s mid 30s living a simple life.
That would be achievable in the US as well - 140k US saved and living a “simple life”. Those some people who try it go back to work in a few years because it turns out they value a more complex life. YMMV.
Relax. If you max out your ROTH IRA every year until retirement that is possible (for the US).
Old retirees that don’t need to work to live are rich, yes. If they can afford their rent and food and healthcare, they are doing better than 90% of humans on Earth.
No. Not being destitute doesn’t automatically make you rich. Things are not black and white. There’s a wide spectrum that is very flat until you get to the top 0.1%.
Bring in the top 10% doesn’t mean much when the different between top 99 and top 90 is multiple orders of magnitude larger than top 90 to top 10.
If your definition of “destitute” is having to work for a paycheck, you and I are not on the same page.
When you could stop working and just coast off of what you’ve got till you die. At that point, making more is a luxury.
So you don’t think people should ever be able to retire?
I think people should have luxury, just not to the extent that it starts hurting society as a while. Like with Jeff Bezos’s behaviour.
There’s an enormous gap between grandma living month to month on her pension cheque and Jeff Bezos money. Grandma doesn’t work though so you could say she’s “coasting” even if she relies on the senior discount at the grocery store to get by.
There’s also a lot of people who have a lot of wealth (in the form of land, buildings, equipment) yet can’t afford to stop working, such as farmers. The UK government is going after these folks aggressively and they’re very unhappy. We could be seeing a strike by farmers in the new year where they simply stop delivering food to market.
Yep, Bezos is hurting a lot of people in his pursuit of wealth though. Granda gets to enjoy her extra time in her way.
And yep, some people have plenty of assets to work with. But that doesn’t make you wealthy per se. You provided some good examples of that.
They’re not wealthy. At least not in the way I consider wealth, which was the question.
I’m confused. Here was your original comment:
When you could stop working and just coast off of what you’ve got till you die. At that point, making more is a luxury.
That, to me, includes grandmas who live off their pension cheque as “coasting off what you’ve got.” Did you not intend for that interpretation?
I do, building up a pension over your life is a luxury I think people deserve. I do count those grandma’s as wealthy. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, I think people should be able to retire.
That’s a really good answer, wealth comes with options
Well, luxury and rich are closely related terms, aren’t they? I think what you described is a financial independence.
I’d add that if you can support your desired level of luxurity for yourself and your family without working anymore - that’s being rich.
Edit: I misread the original question, which was asking about wealthy, not rich. Still, I think my answer applies
That is not what I’m describing, no. I am specifying that it’s about having enough wealth that you can stop working.
Having a job, investments, being a landlord, freelancing etc. Those are all ways to achieve financial independence. But none of those allow you to stop doing any of them.
Working class people contribute to society.
The rich are parasites.
That’s the difference.
And no, telling people what to do is not real labor. Rent seeking is not real labor.
For me, being wealthy would mean that if they never intentionally earned another penny for the rest of their life, that would not prevent them from doing anything that they wanted to do within reason.
For normal people that would mean between two and five million dollars in liquid assets available to them.
If you could retire and have enough to keep you comfortably housed and insured until you’re 90, that’s wealth enough.
There are two thresholds that matter: “rich” is where you no longer have to really think much about money on a day to day basis, and “wealthy” is where you no longer have to work for a living. Both thresholds depend on your expenses and the lifestyle you’re looking for, I guess
I was about to type something very similar, but switching words. “Wealthy” to me implies having enough wealth to not really worry. “Rich” makes me think of Lamborghinis and yachts and mountains of cocaine.
My definition for myself to be rich is:
I have enough money that I can pay someone(s) yearly wage to manipulate my wealth into enough money to cover their salary and then some.
Anyone who can forego any form of future income and live off their current wealth for the rest of their life in relative luxury/comfort.
I liked it back when the aristocracy was just called the “leisure” class. At least they didn’t spend their time playing at being an executive and pretending they earned what they have.
Someone who has everything they could possibly need and no bad debt. Does not need to be rich.
Personally, I’d consider myself rich. I live in Germany which is already among the richer countries in the world giving me access to an insane amount of infrastructure and opportunities. Furthermore, I work for an IT company and make more money than average and more than I need to satisfy my immediate needs (shelter, food, transportation etc.) and pay for my hobbies (mostly outdoor stuff). I might not be a millionaire and I can’t just retire tomorrow but still I’m very aware of what a huge privilege I have compared to a vast part of humanity.
Personally, I think already my taxes are too low. Not to start about millionaires or billionaires.
These folks are always comparing themselves to billionaires. “What am I not a KING!”
Much the same story as yours. I consider myself filthy rich vs. the rest of modern humanity and obscenely rich vs. historical humanity.
I think it was Bill Gates who said that all the kings of Europe weren’t wealthy enough to buy the things in a modern grocery store.
Access to a warm fire to dance around, food and libations, and friends to share them with.
