I thought having a million dollars definitely made one rich, and then some.
When I was a teen and old enough to contemplate people buying houses, I’d have thought a $100,000 house was for rich people.
I was born in 1957. I think these criteria were probably about right, in retrospect. Now I think of a $100,000 house as hard to find, and a million dollars as not very distinctive amount for retirement.
When I was young I knew people who were well off. (Doctor’s families, some real estate developers) but the funny thing was they were better off but not that much better off on a day to day basis. This is in the 1970s in Southern VA.
The amount I would consider rich - here in the very expensive Northern VA area - is a net worth of $3M or more - this number is net and free and clear of debt.
That much should allow you to never have to worry about work - get the job you want and not the job you need.
My Dad worked in Washington DC - we lived in Southern VA - and came home only every other weekend on the train where he would spend the entire weekend fixing up/working on our very old very crappy house. He retired on disability approximately 1982. He was a fielding engineer (really an inspector- sans Engineering degree) and I don’t think he ever made anywhere near $30,000.
Back in the late 70s/early 80s it seemed like you could live on a lot less. Food and clothes seemed expensive - to my parents anyway, but I had a friend who didn’t go to college and moved out of his house.
His first 1 bedroom apt was $150/month + utilities. $1,800 for housing in a year.
Also my parents who had lived through the depression never wasted anything. (rolling up aluminum foil, patching pants , shirts and socks and when we were short at the end of the month it was canned milk on cereal and baking soda for toothpaste.
We always got something for our birthdays and Christmas. I never knew we were not doing that great until I went away to college and saw the cars, stereos, clothes the real well off kids had.
I grew up in multiple worlds. When you know people who are Weyerhauser (timber), Ordway (3M) and Hill (Great Northern Railroad) descendants - and people who grew up in a double wide - and they all seem normal and approachable I grew up thinking that the difference between rich and not rich was “did you have a trust fund” - rich kids had two things that poor and middle class kids didn’t have - college was paid for - even private colleges - and they would get trust funds at some point in their life. Middle class kids might get help with college, but were definitely not getting trust funds. Poor kids were discovering the wonders of military service in training them for a future.
a lot of what people used to be considered well off or rich is surprisingly standard today
I mean mom and dad each have a nice car in the 70s and 80s dad got the new car while mom got dads old beater
houses with more than 2 bedrooms and one bathroom …everyone has their own 50 in flat screen tv and video game consoles their own computer more than one landline when I was a kid you got the old black and white tv to play Atari or Nintendo ………
going out to eat is more often than not a standard meal choice ……I could remember when burger king was a once a month thing that was looked forward to
little things like that
a lot of what people used to be considered well off or rich is surprisingly standard today
I mean mom and dad each have a nice car in the 70s and 80s dad got the new car while mom got dads old beater
houses with more than 2 bedrooms and one bathroom …everyone has their own 50 in flat screen tv and video game consoles their own computer more than one landline when I was a kid you got the old black and white tv to play Atari or Nintendo ………
going out to eat is more often than not a standard meal choice ……I could remember when burger king was a once a month thing that was looked forward to
little things like that
A kid’s perspective on wealth is really funny. When my son was in first grade he came home from a friends house telling me they were rich. To him, they had lots of video games (the Dad had a habit) and a pool in the backyard (that had been put in by previous owners). I sort of laughed. It was a small house built post WWII, with two not new cars parked out front - probably a third of the square footage of the comfortable middle class house we live in (no granite countertops! No custom kitchen cabinets! The neighbors are teachers and hair dressers and mechanics) And linoleum on the bathroom floors!) and his Dad had dropped him off in a new model VW Passat.
What I considered wealthy or rich, was a kid around the corner from me when I was in grade school in the early 70’s. At Christmas when they showed all the cool new toys you could get, me and my friends might get 2-3 of the top 15 toys. This rich kid would get 12 of them, so we hung at his house. His dad bought him a brand new 10x10 Tuff shed as a playhouse. While we had a tiny electric slot car track we kept under the bed, this kid had a huge track mounted on a 4x8 piece of plywood he kept in his playhouse, along with 10 slot cars! He also had the most expensive bike they had on the market. They didn’t live in the largest home on the block, but it was nice.
Near my grandmother on the other side of town was a kid we hung with. His dad was a pretty famous member of a blues band. They had a huge house with an indoor swimming pool in the atrium. They were rich. Some kids had beat up mini bikes, while this kid had a Honda Mini trail motorcycle, which was big time. His dad bought him a riding mower just to ride around the streets!
My relatives think I am rich, but I’m not. Just because I make far more money then they do. That’s because I went to college and have a well paying job, and they work jobs barely over minimum wage. They are always calling to borrow money that they never pay back. I guess who you call rich, depends on your perspective. I don’t live paycheck to paycheck, and can buy whatever I want, but I’m not rich. I consider you are rich if you can live well without working. But I know retired people who do that.
Whatever “a million dollars” bought. Probably a fancy car and a big mansion-like house. I don’t think I understood lifestyles, as such, being part of rich, that seemed to be more a part of being famous or living in particular places.
For example, I should have recognised that on The Cosby Show, Dr Cliff Huxtable and his family were very wealthy, but because they didn’t live an especially luxurious glamorous life, it just seemed like a TV representation of what a successful life was. Whereas Silver Spoons and Diff’rent Strokes were very specifically about rich people.
Nobody I knew in real life were rich as I would measure it. Some had more, some had less, but we all felt much of a muchness, we were all low-to-middle income rural families out in the country.
These days, anyone who is financially secure, i.e. has no need to ever worry about having enough to pay any bill that comes in, or could comfortably retire from any point onward, is what I would call rich. YMMV.
Another thing that I thought was very fancy was when the kids had their own telephone line. The numbers were listed as “teen line” in the phone book.
There’s a big difference between those two things though. Lots of people can cover all their bills without issue- even ones like high summer electrical bills, but don’t have the savings to retire at any point.
I’d agree that the retire at any point would imply rich, but merely being able to cover all of one’s bills? That’s just being solvent, not rich.
I remember when making $100K a year was impressive. I mean, it still is, but I definitely would not consider that “rich”.
I think that you want a binary answer, however the answer is going to be somewhere along a continuum between 1) making enough to pay all of your bills, through 2) financially independent, and ending in the 3) Sultan of Brunei, or Buffet, or Gates, etc.
On this board, my guess is that it is between 1 and 2.
Mr. Money Mustache (et al) would argue between 2 and 3.
I agree with the latter.
Financially Independent does not necessarily mean rich.
If you are eating rice and beans while living off your SS income you are not rich.
Also, income has nothing whatsoever to do with net worth, as I am sure we all know people making well into six figures that are JUST making their bill payments. Without income, they are on the street in 6 months.
In the UK in the 1950’s and 1960’s? A big house and a big car. Or two cars - very rare back then, relatively common now. Foreign holidays; mainly Europe, also the USA. That changed when the Jumbos came in in the 1970s. That was when a million pounds or a million dollars was a lot of money. And into the 1970s; a student who had a car. Any car.
I retired a few years ago and am now a) financially comfortable and b) don’t have to work. I don’t consider myself “rich”. Nor would I have been rich when I was a kid. Well off certainly, but not rich.
What is rich to me now, and then, is the ability to absorb a significant new expense without having to adjust one’s lifestyle. Substantial disposable income. Say a new child, or a major personal injury/financial reverse. Something like that. If one can handle a large unexpected expense, that is rich.
As someone pointed out, if a billionaire loses a million dollars, that is just another day in the market, if a millionaire loses a million dollars, that means he/she goes back to work. So Rich is measured by the size of the reverse one can absorb.
I thought anyone who had $100 was rich.
The key word was “worry”. Most people can pay bills, but there’s still worry about if they might lose their job or something big could come in and throw everything for a loop. Rich is not worrying at all about even those things.
I am not being snarky…really, I’m not.
When did “saving for unplanned expenses” become equated to “rich”?
Is it a generational thing?
I was taught “bad stuff happens so you need to save your money every where possible”.
Maybe two generations after the Great Depression that is no longer a core life skill being taught.
?
Seeking understanding.
…and worrying doesn’t do crap, you need to SAVE.
“Have their own tennis court” was my gold standard.
My uncle, a union pipefitter, had a tennis court, and lived in what was, as the time, an affluent neighborhood. I never thought he was rich; he just wasn’t poor, like I was.
The rich were the ones who owned houses on Lake Huron, like my friend’s dad, who was a surgeon.
I think he’s leaving out the “, indefinitely” part of:
So basically no real need to work or save to cover one’s bills and expenses, which basically translates to having enough money that’s generating enough income to do that.