this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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What does it take in terms of assets, abilities, and/or income for you to consider them wealthy?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Access to a warm fire to dance around, food and libations, and friends to share them with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Second house is immediately qualifying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

I know where you're coming from, but my mortgage-having peers are often little better off than I am. Though I suppose neither of us technically own a house.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 12 hours ago (21 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

Sorry for linking back to the R word. But FIRE comes to mind with your post

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 hours ago

For (2), in that country, you would be rich.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

It's always "wealthier than us", isn't it?

But I'd say whenever you have no money worries, that's wealthy. Like you could retire today if you wanted and not just survive but buy a new car or house if you wanted to, go on a long vacation, anything that just needs money to do is within your reach. Never have to say no simply because of money. That is what I define as wealth (financial wealth) and it's different amounts in different places.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Wealth is the feeling of having all your needs met and being satisfied with life in a stable and permanent way.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

I’d be a slight exception… I’m VERY MUCH not rich but I never think about money. I can’t afford a house and I would really love to have my own house…. I don’t buy many things, but when I do, I don’t think about it. I put everything on a credit card that gives me money back and I pay it off every month. I used to put 5USD of gurl in my car, and now I’m very thankful that I don’t think about filling my entire tank or going out for sushi.

Maybe someday I’ll have a house.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 12 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

The tiers for me are: Doesn't worry about money -> Doesn't work -> Can afford a US senator to protect money. There are not titles for this kind of thing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Bezos is not wealthy. He just has a lot of money. I can't imagine he's found any real happiness with it. Sure a brand new Ferrari every week can buy you some happiness, but that's short lived.

The man has a serious mental illness that will not be addressed, because he has too much money and power for anyone to be allowed to tell him he's ill.

Billionaires are a danger to themselves and others. They should be admitted into a mental hospital against their will and they should be treated until they are cured.

This isn't even a "CEO bad" joke. I honestly believe it's a mentally disorder. Or maybe a specific mix of different disorders and unfortunate environments, circumstances and enablers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

What's your take on Elon.....I know mental illness, but I saw somewhere that his gaming account that was almost #1 got banned and all I can think is he's obsessed with being no1

[–] [email protected] 2 points 53 minutes ago

I'm not sure it's quite the same level of blatant disregard for human life, or life in general, that Bezos has. Elon has different issues than Bezos, but definitely something unhealthy and dangerous about his behaviour as well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

$5 million of spare money. Not net total wealth but actually $5 million investable dollars.

At that point, I'd you stick that money in a very conservative and safe brokerage account allocation, 5% return per year is $250k. That is a higher salary than almost anyone needs, meaning you can live very comfortably without working. You can't buy a yacht but you can be "done" and so can your children and their children if they aren't stupid.

If you choose to work, then you can just reinvest that $250k and let compound interest do its thing and get richer. Lucky you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 34 minutes ago* (last edited 22 minutes ago)

With 5% you run a serious risk of running out of money. The general rule is 4% at retirement age, but younger than that with a longer time horizon is even less.

E.g you can look at this FIRE calculator (Financially Independent, Retired) which runs simulations against historical data. It's all inflation adjusted for the yearly withdrawal.

https://www.firecalc.com

With $5,000,000 and a $250,000 withdrawal rate, you have a 53.2% chance of making it 45 years and not running out of money. 4% 200k is 79.8%, and 3.5% 175k gets you to 96.3%.

Take that same 5 mil though and do 4% for 25 years with a 65 year retirement age so money until 90, and it's a 98.4% chance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago

I consider anything above $500k to be "well off". Once you start to pass $10M, that's truly wealthy. $1B rhymes with obscene

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (6 children)

If you can basically do whatever you want and the cost is of little to no concern, you're rich.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Eh I'll adjust that a bit to "and you're not required to work 40 hours a week to do so". If you are living well and still working, then I'd still say congrats, but that's not rich, that's supposed to be the top end of middle class. (If it is anymore, well, who knows).

The big kicker is if tomorrow they lay you off, are you nervous or worried? Not rich then, the rich would shrug it off and take a few months or years off doing whatever they like. If your first thought when you get laid off is "how long will my savings last" or "I need to find another job", congrats! Not rich.

But if you don't need to work (or you're someone like a board member or executive who shows up for 10 hours a week and claim they "work", then no, your rich, you have enough were you don't have to work anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

You're not really wealthy until you can raise your own legion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You can cure rich with a weekend in Vegas, Wealth is terminal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Shit, for the obscenely rich, a green plumber can cure that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

We need a new word beyond rich. Everyone takes rich as a personal achievable goal.

We need a word for someone who has more money than is healthy. An easy to use word.

They are so rich they no longer know the cost of things. They can't relate to their neighbors. They no longer need to be a part of their community to survive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

That's a good one

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Anybody who doesn't have to work for the rest of their life because it's voluntary + they don't really have to look at the price tags of the things they want.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Depends entirely on where you live. In my part of the world, a decent 1800 SF house goes for around $1.5M.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I first thought 1800 SF house was referring to the painted ladies and thought the price way too low.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago

Someone for whom the normal and inevitable experiences of suffering (illness, death in the family, natural disaster, etc) have no real economic consequences.

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