How much money does it take to be "rich"

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
32,148
Location
Yokohama, Japan
Can we come up with a more or less objective definition for the word "rich"?

Either a specific amount of money, or a percentile of wealth or income above which one is "rich"?

I suppose that we should also clarify the context: do we measure against the global average or median, or against the average or median in a whatever country one lives in?

My own tentative definition: The top 1 percentile in either wealth or income, is rich in whatever context is relevant to the discussion. Hence, some people may be "rich" when the relevant context is the whole world, but not when the relevant context is the US or developed countries in general.

I considered the top 2% or the top 5% as possibilities, but, while it is arguably arbitrary, 1% seems like a good round number to choose.
 
I consider another definition for me. You take the average income of the local country, multiply by the average number of year a person work (600 times the month media salary or 50 times the monthly yearly salary). if you possses more than double of that at any moment, you are rich, if you posses between 1 time and double that, you ae wealthy. Anything below is neither.

So yes i am aware that a rich person in india would be not even wealthy by US standard. But I do think you have to take into account the environment.
 
Aepervius said:
I consider another definition for me. You take the average income of the local country, multiply by the average number of year a person work (600 times the month media salary or 50 times the monthly yearly salary). if you possses more than double of that at any moment, you are rich, if you posses between 1 time and double that, you ae wealthy. Anything below is neither.

So yes i am aware that a rich person in india would be not even wealthy by US standard. But I do think you have to take into account the environment.
Click to expand...

OK, so to clarify, when you say "median salary" do you mean salary for one person, or what is often used in the US for example, which is median household income? Household income may include income other than a salary, and is total income for one family or "household."

ETA: I guess you meant "average income" and I'll assume that you meant average household income.
In the case of the US for example, the average yearly income is roughly $50,000, and so multiplying by 50 we get $2.5 million to be "wealthy" and $5 million to be "rich"

I wonder what percentage of households in the US have that much wealth.
 
Last edited:
I don't have a specific number, but in my personal definitions, level of wealth has to do with desire structure. I define someone as rich when all of their needs are met and they do not have to plan and save to meet their desires. (not counting borrowing money, or the sort of mental illness that lets people spend impulsively and not care about the consequences) I'm not there yet. All my needs are met, but many of the things I WANT will require planning and saving for years. I know people who have everything they need and want; those folks are rich regardless of income. I also know at least one person who has levels of assets that are almost uncountable, and yet lets their desires grow to meet any possible level of income. He'll never be rich, even when he manages to get a billion dollars in the bank, because he'll always find a way to want something that he can't yet get. (he was talking about collecting trains the last time I heard. Not toy trains. Apparently the hard part isn't buying them; it's getting them moved when the tracks are gone, and then getting them restored and displayed.)
 
I did a little searching for what the top 1% in income means as a dollar figure.
In 2007 in the US it was $277,983.

I haven't yet found a figure for the top 1% of total wealth, but it's probably several million dollars.

Here is a way to compare yourself with the rest of the world:
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
(Although it seems to be a few years out of date, including the exchange rates. Either the US dollar is stronger than it should be or the yen is weaker.)
 
My personal classification of rich is "could continue to live a comfortable lifestyle without ever working again"

I reckon here in the UK that'd take around £5 million.
 
The Don said:
My personal classification of rich is "could continue to live a comfortable lifestyle without ever working again"

I reckon here in the UK that'd take around £5 million.
Click to expand...

That sounds age dependent. Rich at age 98 might be the price of tomorrow's lunch.
 
I don't think there's an easy one size fits all definition, certainly not one with figures attached. I'd describe someone as rich if they are in a situation where money is not a bar to them doing any of the things they want to do, and is not likely to be a bar unless circumstances catastrophically change.
 
Lamuella said:
I don't think there's an easy one size fits all definition, certainly not one with figures attached. I'd describe someone as rich if they are in a situation where money is not a bar to them doing any of the things they want to do, and is not likely to be a bar unless circumstances catastrophically change.
Click to expand...

But for most people, the more money they have, the more expensive the things they want to do.
 
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Click to expand...

- Mr Micawber by way of Charles Dickens
 
The Don said:
My personal classification of rich is "could continue to live a comfortable lifestyle without ever working again"

I reckon here in the UK that'd take around £5 million.
Click to expand...

That's what's hard to define. For some food, shelter, health and several hours a week with access to the telly / internet would be "comfortable". For others it means a very large house with body servants. :)
 
Rich is relative. It's however much you need to snag yourself a trophy wife or house boy. Or both, but that's just being greedy.
 
You are rich if you can let the IRS do your taxes, and not even bother to see what they take..



Nevermind ... I just realized you can safely do this with no income at all, and even get a refund..
 
One of the people with the least money and the lowest standard of living I know is the only person I know to have said they have "enough" money. I know people with far greater income and assets but none of them have said it's enough.
 
Puppycow said:
Can we come up with a more or less objective definition for the word "rich"?

Either a specific amount of money, or a percentile of wealth or income above which one is "rich"?
Click to expand...

The problem, much as you illustrate with your percentile comparisons, is that issues of rich-ness are always relative. We can come up with a standard, but an absolute figure is only valid at a given point in time and in comparison to specific others. No matter how much money the mark is set at, if everyone has the same amount then none are "rich." On the other hand, if everyone else you normally interact with only has one cent, and you have 10 cents, you are actually quite rich in comparison.

In general, we should probably acknowledge that the term "rich" is an exclusionary label most often used by those who feel deprived/entitled (it's hard to feel "deprived" unless you feel "entitled.")
 
Ocelot said:
One of the people with the least money and the lowest standard of living I know is the only person I know to have said they have "enough" money. I know people with far greater income and assets but none of them have said it's enough.
Click to expand...

For most "being rich" means having a slightly greater income that they have currently.

"Oh, that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" -- Robert Browning

:th:
 
This is a topic I've discussed before and it's one that many people seem to disagree on.

First off, it has to be a relative term. It doesn't make sense any other way as it's basically a category distinction anyway. Rich is all about context, otherwise there would be no distinction to make (if everyones rich, no one is rich).

Of course you can take it the other way and define rich universally in it's own terms. For me that would be something like "indoor plumbing" since once you get to that level the extra comfort starts to have quickly diminishing returns.

In the USA of today there are incredibly wealthy people. They are obviously rich. I think the problem becomes when trying to figure out where the cutoff lies.

Peoples financial situations are often very complex and hard to categorize. For example some people have high income but also have high debt levels and don't have a lot of liquid capital in relation to their income. They won't feel rich even though they live a rich lifestyle because they are going to have the stress of continuing to earn a high income.

Compare that to someone who makes a modest income but has lived debt free and saved their money. Their lifestyle reflects their income (part of it) and they save the rest.

Which of these people are richer than the others? Who has less stress in their life? The guy who make $500k a year but spends $600k? Or the guy who makes $60k a year, lives on $25k and has $500k in savings to rely on in the event of murphy showing up?

Then you can compare both to the guy with $50M in Microsoft stock who are semi-retired and dabble in investments. They always seem to have a smile... ;)

All of the above could be considered rich by some perspective. On the other hand it's fairly easy to agree on what constitutes poor. So perhaps rich is just the inversion of that which would pretty much make middle class people "rich".

Anyway just some food for thought.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom