That sounds more like a 0.1%er, or a 0.01%er. The 1% threshold is about half a million a year, and that’s not underground parking garage money, especially since most of them are living in high CoL areas where that kinda salary doesn’t even get you a McMansion, let alone a real one.
But I’d agree that 1%er is the new 6 figures. Not rich-rich, but well off. Good chance of one living down the street. They might own a plane, but if they do it’s piston powered.
Yeah, I think 1%er is probably the new “six figures”.
According to my last-but-one pay stub, I cleared seven figures in 2021.
That’s counting the figures to the right of the decimal point.
That’s probably why he got trapped in the garage!
Yes, things are more expensive now. That’s what inflation is all about, and it’s probably the biggest reason why salaries also go up over time. The market for various jobs and job skills varies over time and affects how much purchasing power a worker in any given profession can hope to earn at any given point in history, and location matters too, but as a coarse estimator, your inflation-adjusted salary is probably pretty reasonable.
To add support to that, I’ll refer to the federal government’s GS pay schedule, which sets salaries for federal works based on grade (the general nature of the work you do) and step (a measure of how long you’ve been on the job). For comparison’s sake, I’ll refer to a GS 15-10, i.e. a management level employee who’s been on the job long enough to reach the highest step, step 10.
In 1988, that manager would be earning $71,377 (not accounting for locality adjustments).
In 2022, that same manager woudl be earning $146,757.
So the 2022/1988 multiplier for a federal government management employee is 2.05, versus your multiplier of 2.8. In the same ball park.
The federal government also uses locality multipliers to adjust the GS schedule to different parts of the country so as to remain competitive with the local job market. That multiplier may change over time. Example, for southeast Michigan in the late '80s the multiplier was about 1.03, but now it’s more like 1.2. So for this region, a GS15-10 manager in 1988 would have been earning $73,518, and these days they’d be earning $176,300, so the total salary ratio around here for that job, from 1988 until now, about 2.4.
Bottom line, if $100,000 was considered big-shot money in 1988, then $250,000 is probably a fair benchmark for big-shot money these days.
In the US, the Freedom of Information act assures that the salaries of most federal employees are public information (there are exceptions for national security concerns). This also happens at the state level (including state university employees), and I presume also at the local level.
He didn’t OWN the garage, he was stuck in an underground parking lot, a public car park. Where the gate only took cash or MasterCard or Visa cards. Having been raised by 1%ers, the concept of carrying cash or plebian credit cards had never occurred to him…
Honestly, that is a bit idiotic as there are many places that accept Visa or Mastercard but don’t accept Amex. Though perhaps the point is he never goes to such places.
So, how rich do you need to be these days to be a millionaire?
When I was a lot younger and I’d gossip with my co-workers, we seemed to agree that $100K salary, for a single-income household, would get someone enough stability to comfortably afford a nice house and a nice car. Hence, the shorthand of “six figures.”
That was 1997 or so. I think we’d still use “six figures” as shorthand, but we’d really be talking around $140-$150K.
I think it’s $200-250k (depending on where you live). That’s the number where I would transition someone mentally from “doing well” to “doing very well”.
I don’t know how you could NOT go to such places as that probably describes the vast majority of retail establishments. Unless one has a retinue of servants to do all of one’s shopping. I had an Amex for awhile and was well aware of how limited its acceptance is. I got rid of the card both for that reason and because I found it a shitty organization to deal with. I also had an Amex business card which was more useful because I only ever used it for airlines, rental cars, hotels, and restaurants, but I still hated the organization.
There is a story, possibly apocryphal but my friend swears it’s true, about an old farmer who applied for an Amex card. He was turned down. As it turned out, this farmer had recently sold a substantial amount of farmland to the airport authority for expansion of Pearson International. He returned the letter of refusal along with documentation showing that he was a millionaire several times over. In a fit of apology, Amex sent a representative to personally deliver his Amex card. The farmer took the card, took a large pair of shears, cut it in half, and told Mr. Amex to get lost. 
Wife and I creep up to $200k here in Denver…I feel we’re comfortable. I don’t think that’d be the same in Seattle, L.A. or the DC beltway.
And our real-estate is doing what real-estate did in California, so I’m hopeful our house will help us as the dollars we earn buy less.
Pretty sure the definition of a millionaire hasn’t changed. You must have a net worth of at least $1 million. Net worth is defined as your total assets, less your total liabilities. If that is equal to more than $1 million, then you are considered a millionaire.
Recently, a professor at Wharton Business School, that when she asked her students what the average American salary was, a quarter of them said it was over six figures. One student said that it was $800,000. The actual amount is $45k. Many younger people that come from affluent families have very little knowledge of what the real world is.
I think Pleonast’s point was that the definition of “6 figures” also has not changed.
There’s a big difference in the inflation of a salary, and someone’s net worth.
Someone’s salary could rise from $100k to $280k, but their spending habits also increase, and their net worth could have declined even though their annual compensation increased.
Sure, but in decades past, like in a movie from the Golden Age of Hollywood, saying someone was a millionaire meant that they were Rich; big house, tuxedo, living large. Now a peon like me would, technically, be a millionaire.
The solution then is “being a millionaire ain’t what it used to be.”
But I would expect that most Americans would happily want to be millionaires.
I don’t think anybody here, including the OP, has suggested otherwise. The point was that in the late 1980s, “six-figure salary” was a noteworthy benchmark for “I’m getting paid a lot”, but it’s not so much the case these days and we’re wondering what currently stands as a comparable, nice-round-number benchmark.
Honestly I could have started a thread asking what the 2022 equivalent of pogs are and some pedant would come along and tell me that pogs still exist ergo the 2022 equivalent of pogs is pogs.
I do think the “what’s a millionaire” now is a harder question. But interesting. I feel like it doesn’t track as closely to inflation. 20 million maybe?
Just came in to post this. I would like to see the Wharton grad devise a business plan for their coffee shop that factored in “barista, wages, $250,000/year.”