Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I noted the definition is individual, I gave mine, which is as valid as anyone's.  The calculation on what is needed for retirement has to include age at retirement.  Let's assume you are 65, you're life expectancy is 86 for a female and 83 for a male.  So, you need to cover 20 years, and have a safety net in case.  I didn't include SS in my own situation, but it's a nice "perk" indeed.  I actually could live off SS with my wife's as well.  It would be a simpler lifestyle.

Another definition of "rich" is you can do whatever you want without considering the cost (aside from bizarre things).  I consider costs a lot when we travel.  I imagine everyone here does as well.

And I'm not saying your definition is wrong. However, if we're having a discussion, and we're all using the same word while having different definitions, then we're not effectively communicating. 

I.e. for OAM, it seems that "rich" is anyone with a comfortable enough income that they have time for leisure and don't have to grind their way to avoid abject poverty. I'd argue that someone who can devote spare time to an obscure passion, i.e. a college football board game, that may be only modestly profitable, would fall under his definition of "rich". But I don't think he calls himself rich. 

On the opposite side, I've known many people that I'd consider rich. We're talking people that built up nice businesses, live in palatial estates inland or large oceanfront houses on the boardwalk in Newport Beach (or both in one case), live in luxury, have expensive wine collections, etc etc. But even with the houses I'm not sure they're at $50M net worth, much less $50M in semi-liquid assets. 

My only point is that it seems for both of you, your definition is outside the mainstream. Which, again, is fine. I'm not saying that definition is wrong. But it makes it hard to communicate when the spectrum of "rich" is so wide between us, but we're all trying to use the same word. 

uartile table with fifth quartile split and the tenth decile indicated:

Percentile of net worth	2019	Percent change from 2016
25	$12,400	+14.8%
50	$121,700	+17.6%
75	$403,800	+2.9%
90	$1,220,200	-3.3%

Source: Federal Reserve - Survey of Consumer Finances, 1989 - 2019^{[color=rgb(14 165 233/var(--tw-text-opacity))]3}[/iurl][/size][/sup][/i][/font][/size][/color]

• The top decile (90-100 in quartile chart), or top 10% of high net worth U.S. families, own 76% of the wealth, according to analysis done by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
• 12.9 million families are in this top decile, and a net worth of $1.22 million is the threshold to join.⁴

U.S. Net Worth Statistics: The State of Wealth in 2023 | FinanceBuzz

I don’t think a lot of people consider it an honorific. People sort of begrudgingly admit it.

By my definitions, I would bet a few people on this here message board fall into or close to the category of rich, and I’m guessing if I said that to them, they would not say “oh yes, I am.”

Well, it depends on a lot of things.

One is the dichotomy of income vs net worth. A lot of people define "rich" by income. But that can be skewed because income can stop coming in. I would be part of that group that's high income but not high net worth. One reason (per Badge) is that being younger, I've had less time to amass wealth. Another is my own personal circumstance--I had to sell my house when I got divorced in 2016, and I've been stuck renting since then. If I still owned the house I'd have well over a half mil in equity due to continued mortgage payments and appreciation, which I don't have now. I have a wonderful life, but if something happened where I couldn't earn money, I'd be screwed very quickly. 

The second that CD brought up is liquidity of assets. The houses in my neighborhood top out at about $1M in value. Bear in mind these aren't mansions, they're almost 50 years old and anything that isn't renovated won't be higher than maybe 1800 sq ft. But as medina points out, someone who has paid off that house and has $1M in equity isn't rich, because if they sell their house, they still need a place to live. The value of having their house paid off isn't that they have access to that equity, it's that their expenses have gone down because they don't have to pay mortgage or rent. 

This is why the test that CD mentioned, i.e. ability to live w/o earned income, I think is a very important test. If you can't maintain a middle class to upper middle class lifestyle without earned income, you ain't rich. 

I suspect we'd all agree that top one percent in net assets is "rich", as a starting point.  (And yes, location is a factor.)  How much lower one can go is variable.  I'd be happy with a consensus board opinion on the topic.

What do you think is the median opinion for where a person is "rich" in the US?  Consider net asset value.

A million?  Two?  Three?  Ten?

Americans need $5 million in net worth to join the 1% | Fortune

Top one percent if $5 million.

I would venture to say the "median" opinion in the US would be somewhere between 2M and 5M. 

My own opinion would be the 5M-10M range, because the problem in a lot of cases for the lower ranges is that you're talking about net asset value, which might be illiquid assets (such as one's house) that if sold would need to be at the very least replaced or downsized in order to keep living.

As I said, I view "rich" as being able to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle w/o eating into your investment principal, so based purely on annual gains. 

Worth noting, there are different vectors of this prosperity.

If you’re making $200k a year in all but a few cities, you’re arguably rich. Now, you could be spending it on cool stuff that doesn’t help you’re net worth, but in one sense, still rich,

Yeah, and living in one of those areas of the country, I'm spending a crap-ton on rent in a tiny old 3br 1200 sf house on a postage stamp lot, and another crap-ton on alimony and child support. Neither makes me feel cool nor rich lol.

Well, it depends on a lot of things.

One is the dichotomy of income vs net worth. A lot of people define "rich" by income. But that can be skewed because income can stop coming in. I would be part of that group that's high income but not high net worth. One reason (per Badge) is that being younger, I've had less time to amass wealth. Another is my own personal circumstance--I had to sell my house when I got divorced in 2016, and I've been stuck renting since then. If I still owned the house I'd have well over a half mil in equity due to continued mortgage payments and appreciation, which I don't have now. I have a wonderful life, but if something happened where I couldn't earn money, I'd be screwed very quickly.

The second that CD brought up is liquidity of assets. The houses in my neighborhood top out at about $1M in value. Bear in mind these aren't mansions, they're almost 50 years old and anything that isn't renovated won't be higher than maybe 1800 sq ft. But as medina points out, someone who has paid off that house and has $1M in equity isn't rich, because if they sell their house, they still need a place to live. The value of having their house paid off isn't that they have access to that equity, it's that their expenses have gone down because they don't have to pay mortgage or rent.

This is why the test that CD mentioned, i.e. ability to live w/o earned income, I think is a very important test. If you can't maintain a middle class to upper middle class lifestyle without earned income, you ain't rich.

Seems like we're saying the same thing in different ways.