Hey, I said I am “comfortable” and I live in a small apartment. So, get a smaller tarbrush, OK? 
Yep yep, we’re keeping a close eye on the market, hoping to buy in the next 12-18 months. Housing prices are already dropping in san diego county, not yet dropping in LA county but at least not going up much. ::fingers crossed::
That wasn’t intended to portray everyone in the thread. Just the inevitable smattering.
For the record, I’ve more in common with you and Giraffe. I earn a decent income, but live in Boston, where housing prices aren’t Bay Area insane, but that doesn’t make them reasonable, either. And so, I’ll never own a home here, but I live comfortably enough.
“Rich” is, of course, a term nearly as relative as “pretty”. But I still have to laugh at people who insist that sure, they have a maid, a cook, and a gardener, but since they watch their money closely enough to know exactly how much they pay these people, they’re not rich. 
MarineGuy the answer is that you choose to have an overhead that requires constant maintenance (your job). You could just as easily get rid of some of your luxuries and retire faster or pay off your mortgage.
Again, people totally lie to themselves about “necessary” costs (including me). It generally varies by one’s philosophical outlook. There are baseline costs of living, “reasonable expenditures” over baseline that make life easier/are widely accepted as normal, and costs that you really don’t need. People always get defensive over that last one and claim either that you absolutely need them or having them doesn’t make you “rich”. If that last one includes an extensive list, you’re either wealthy (accumulating assets/maintaining funds despite spending) or spend most of your income.
Oh yeah. My wife’s family all live in the Midwest – to them we are the poor relations from out West. Her several-years-younger-than-us cousins both have what seem like mansions to us, just working regular office jobs.
Actually, that raises an interesting point. Things like electronics and cars cost the same everywhere, making their relative cost much lower in high cost of living areas. So who is richer, the guy with the huge house and the old TV or the guy in the rented apartment with the giant plasma TV and nice car?
I have a friend who really doesn’t work much. He and his wife live basically off family money. But they don’t live well off of it (they do travel a lot, but there isn’t a big fancy house and a BMW type of lifestyle, there is a very working class sort of lifestyle with some extravagant travel). I’ve always wondered if he is rich.
If the definition of rich is tied up in “could you quit and maintain your standard of living” then a lot rides on that standard of living…
I’ve met wealthy people who work and poor people who don’t. I’ve met people living in huge houses that don’t have a dime and are deep in debt - but do rent a new BMW. I’ve met teachers who hire someone to clean their homes (not live-in help, but a cleaning lady). To some extent, “rich” is really about “how much do you have to prioritize your spending and how far down the want/need ladder can you go.”
As a person who has made about a quarter of what you do per year, often less, I’d say you’re pretty rich. 
I was not bragging about how much I make by any means. I was responding to a thread and making a point. In non-SDMB life I never discuss money with anyone. But my background is simple. I grew up DIRT POOR in Camden, NJ. I spent ten years in the Marines making very little and saving very little. I got a job that could possibly pay very little, but I work very hard. I work 80 hours a week (EVERY WEEK, no exxageration at all). I never go out. I save every penny I can.
Perhaps in some areas I would be considered rich. But I think a lot of it will depend on what area of the country you are in. It my area I am probably in the bottom 10% for the income bracket. So while I may be a rich city folk to someone from a different area, in my area I am just regular ol’ formermarineguy who works his ass off to have what he has, and if he didn’t would have nothing.
I am definitely not rich.
I consider $75-$100K to be middle middle these days.
Rich is relative. My brother makes well under $20K a year and he thinks I’m rich when I’m lower-middle on my own income and middle-middle with my husband. We are paupers compared to our wealthy relatives. They’re looking at a $2M house.
Sorry, I did not see this or I would have responded to it in my previous post.
You are right. I could live in a different area. But where I live it would mean either commuting much further to work, getting another job, or moving to the bad area of town. Read up on the Florida housing market.
I would consider myself upper-middle class probably.
You want to see rich, come to my work. The clients are rich.
That is an interesting point. 
And, it depends on who really owns the house, TV or car- you or the bank?
Here’s the thing…you CAN afford to drive a Lexus or fly first class, if you chose to. Instead, you choose to have someone to take care of your pool & take a vacation every year. Being upper-middle-class doesn’t mean that you can afford to have everything you want with no compromises…to me, that is what “rich” is. So, no, I would not say you are rich, but I definitely do not think that you need to make a quarter of a million to be upper middle class, either. I would say that anyone who can afford to have a nice house with a pool, a cleaning lady and a pool service, as well as taking a nice vacation every year (which is how you described your vacations in the previous thread) is definitely living an upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Also, in the previous thread, you mentioned that you don’t have “disposable” income the way rich people do. As I pointed out in that thread, disposable income is what people use to pay for luxuries, such as pools, cleaning services, and vacations, not what they have left over AFTER they pay for such things.
Exactly. Disposable income is what’s left after you’ve paid for the mortgage/rent, utilities, miscellaneous debt, and food. Disposable income **is ** what we pay the gardner with. The gardner is **not ** a necessity. You can tell, because so many people get by just fine without one.
Many, many people would argue that just having the *option * of hiring a gardner makes one ridiculously wealthy.
No offense, but I think you’re waaaay out of touch with what the vast majority of people in this country would consider to be “rich.” I’ll grant, as several people have pointed out, that your income isn’t quite the same as your purchasing power, but wherever you live your income has enabled you to live very, very well. Frankly, based on the fact that you live among the top 1% wealthiest income in the country (which is saying a lot, considering this is the wealthiest country in the world), and you have at least four, possibly five people working for you (does the maid do the cooking or do you have a separate cook?), I’d put you darn close to “filthy rich.” So what that there are still lots of people orders of magnitude wealthier than you – people who own yachts and Swiss chalets and the like. In the grand scheme of things, you, my friend, are still pretty stinking rich. I don’t see how the fact that you have to work for a living and have a mortgage possibly negates that.
And hey, it’s not an insult. I’m sure you’ve worked really hard and are smart and driven and have made sacrifices and deserve what you have. I hope to achieve the same some day – I want to move into your neighborhood. I’m glad we don’t have the “tall poppy syndrome” too much in this country. But don’t kid yourself, either.
I had household help (a cleaning person that came in every couple weeks) when I was making $30K/year. They don’t cost that much, and I was happy to pay someone so that I had a few more free hours on the weekends.
Currently, my husband and I have a six figure income. Unfortunately for us, we do think about the cost of things, and I shop at Wal Mart and Target.
I think there’s a lot of people out there who don’t realize that you need a hell of a lot more than a six-figure income to live the lives of the rich and famous. Sure, the Athena household does OK. But we don’t book vacations to European cities, stay at $500/night hotel rooms and fly first class. We don’t buy new cars every year (maybe once every 10-15 years), we don’t have full time maids, gardeners or cooks, and we do look at prices when we buy stuff. We could live OK on one income, but there’s no way we could both quit our jobs and expect to live even modestly.
Actually, that’s discretionary income. Disposable income is everything you have left after taxes.
MarineGuy, no I meant you could ditch the maid, gardner, cook etc… Those are costs you are incurring by choice.
As far as real estate goes, I spent my adolescence in Massachusetts and now live in Los Angeles. I’m sure it’s expensive and all that but I’m not exactly speaking from a South Dakotan perspective here.
See, this is what I was referencing-to you what a reasonable person sees as luxuries you equate as basic necessities. This alone means that you have more at your disposal than others.
You work hard. That’s very commendable. But if you can carry a high overhead without debt, you live a pretty privileged life by definition and it’s likely you could have way more money as assets if you simply spent less. I think people get annoyed because of the difference in perspective. To you working = not rich while to others you work but have more than people who work just as hard as you and seem to not acknowledge that.
I totally agree with everyone whose point was this question is very relative to where you live.
Where you can really see this demonstrated in a real way that “its relative” is in Housing prices (pdf pops).
For instance, in 2006 the median price of a single family home in
Louisville KY-TN was $138K while in
San Fran-Oakland-Fremont Area it was $751K
Assuming that they had the same Mortgage rates and were qualified under the same lender calculations (a pretty safe assumption) – the gal in San Fran can be making 5X (five times!) more than the guy in Louisville & still not be able to afford as much of a single family house.
It really is relative.
I definitely take no offense. This is a message board and I take nothing personal on here. I am here for the education and views of others. Perhaps I am way out of touch. Perhaps becuase I worked hard to get here, I view things differently.
No, the maid does the cleaning and ironing. We have a seperate person cook for us. They actually cook at their house and bring it to us.
Once again, I do not take it as an insult. Perhaps I am out of touch with reality.
Saw this after I made my post. I still don’t see how working for a living negates being rich. Think back to when you were a poor kid in New Jersey, and imagine how you would have viewed someone who has everything that you have currently made for yourself. Wouldn’t you have thought that someone who lived that well was rich, regardless of how they made the money?