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Year income to be rich

  • $30,000/year

    Votes: 7 2.8%
  • $40,000/year

    Votes: 2 0.8%
  • $50,000/year

    Votes: 3 1.2%
  • $60,000/year

    Votes: 4 1.6%
  • $70,000/year

    Votes: 6 2.4%
  • $80,000/year

    Votes: 8 3.2%
  • $90,000/year

    Votes: 3 1.2%
  • $100,000/year

    Votes: 32 12.9%
  • $150,000/year

    Votes: 32 12.9%
  • $200,000/year

    Votes: 44 17.7%
  • Great than $200,00 please post

    Votes: 107 43.1%

  • Total voters
    248
no matter how much money you have, "more" is always the answer to that question.

Well, not really. "How much money does it take to be rich?" is a question with a finite quantifiable definable answer. I think most people would agree that, assuming a bell curve distribution of wealth, if you have more money than 95% of the other people in your society, then you are rich.

Now if you're in the top 5% of wealth ownership in your society, you're definitely rich, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't want even more. Some people have lots of money and still feel like they don't have enough, while some people can have very little and yet feel like they really pretty much have all they could want. And vice versa.
 
wow I under estimated how high I need to make the pole. Should of just started it at 50k and gone up by 25k at a time.

I have to agree that partly relative to where you live. 7 8 years ago the average income per family in my home town was 160k a year. Top this off that is in an area of the country where cost of living is below the national average.
 
I said +$200k. Yes, it does depend on where you live. If you live in the big cities like LA or NY you will need to make more to be considered "rich" but it also depends on your definition of "rich". I only make about $50k/year, single income family, barely keeping my head above the bills but I have a roof over it and food in our stomachs and a wife and kid who loves me. I would consider myself rich.

But I will take a lot of money as well... lol

Peace:cool:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

rich to me is being to spend extravantly, without having to worry about how much it costs.
 
Never enough

None of the above. The correct answer is "more."

Correcta-mundo!

Unfortunately $200,000.00 PA will not buy a home in our part of the world. To pay cash for a home that will be more than 40 mins from the CBD you would be looking at more than $350,000.00, plus,
Car
Boat
Gas (for both)
Entertainment
Health
Booze
Food
Utilities
Accountants
Lawyers
Alimony
Computers
ADSL++2
iPhone
AND
Holidays!

:)
 
If you make $100,000 or more a year than you are set in my opinion. :cool: I hope one day I'll be rich (I'm 16 right now). :D

Not really. Let me put things in perspective. I am 40, and make $89,000.00 per year, and am single (well currently have my elderly mother staying with me since she has no place else to go).



I make $89,000.00, after federal and state taxes, and if I dont contribute to my retirement fund comes out to about $4000.00 per month (it may be a little more, I just got a raise a few weeks ago so am unsure) .

Dont forget that in most places there is a 1% wage tax you have to pay also, and there may also be what is called an "occupation tax" which can range from $100.00 to a few hundred per year.

Now lets break this down into monthly living costs. Lets also assume that there are not other sources of income, and no large amounts of money available from family. In other words, you are totally on your own. Lets throw in a student loan payment of maybe $250.00/month.

In terms of housing in my area ( i work near Princeton NJ, and commute from bucks county), all this salary can get me is a condo of maybe 800-900 sq feet, or maybe a townhouse that needs alot of TLC (yes, condos and rundown townhouses in my area are in the 200k-250k range). So now you have a small condo for about 200k (and thats a lowball figure). Assuming you put as little as 3.0% down, and have a rate at 6.0%, your mortgage payment with taxes, interest, and PMI will be around $1700.00.

Your monthly income is now down to $2050.00.

Want to drive a decent car ? Meaning a car that isnt in the shop every month and doesnt make you miserable? That means a car payment. Lets ball park it and say $250.00 for a car payment, $100.00 for ins, and $200.00 a month for gas. If its a new car you probably wont have to do any maintanance. If it is 3 or more years older, I can gaurentee you your maintenance costs will be about $1000.00 or more a year (dont forget, you live in a condo so cant do your own auto work). So now we are to $550.00 a month so you can drive to your job.

Your monthly income is now down to $1500.00 a month.

Dont forget that condo or townhoues has association fees. They can range anywhere from a $200 a qaurter, to $200 a month. Lets just say $150.00 a month.

Your monthly income is now down to $1350.00

You will need utilites. Electric, water, sewer, gas, phone, cable etc. are all expensive. Together these will run you on average $300.00 or more per month.

Your montly income is now $1050.00.

Want to eat? If your single your grocery bill will probably be around $300.00 per month. Most people like to eat out once a week or so, get lattes, whatever, so lets add another $100.00 for food.

Your now down to about $650.00 left over after most of your bills are paid, and thats all WITHOUT contributing to a retirement fund.

Thats all also without have credit card payments for anything. Thats also assuming you dont have any major expenses (house repairs, etc).

There are probably a few more expenses Im missing, but you get the idea.

So, $100k is really not that much, and it is getting to be less and less each week as the price of oil, groceries and everything else goes up.

These days, to live comfortably, have a few nice toys, and to stash money away for retirement, you either need to make around $200k per year, or have a spouse/partner who makes good money also.
 
New Option: 1 share of AAPL.

---
Something good Iscariot said:

You can actually become quite wealthy without having to work terribly hard and making the national average for salary. All you have to do is pay down debts aggressively and live below your means. If you can save $100 a week, with even a modest rate of return you can save up $60 000 is ten years. Save $200 a week, and you've got $125 000 in ten years. And that's if you just let your money sit around in a basic savings acount, invest that in fairly low risk mutual funds with a 10% rate of return and you've got 88 000 or 176 000 respectively, in just ten years.

A little bit of fiscal responsibility and a little bit of wise investing and even a tiny sum of money can yield big returns.
 
New Option: 1 share of AAPL.
:)

Something good Iscariot said:
How about this.

Say you can save $5 per day by cutting down your daily purchases. Not hard it you try. It might mean cutting out a Starbucks coffee, or bringing your lunch to work. But let's say you can do it.

Let's say you start at age 25 and want to retire at age 65. You figure that you can get 9% return on your investments over time.

Here's what $5 per day (or $150 per month) would be worth at these ages:

45 --> 100,183

55 --> 274,611

65 --> 702,198

Surprising how a small amount can make such a big difference.

Of course if you could scrimp and save $10 per day, you could have double the figures above.

This is one reason why I don't upgrade to a faster Internet connection. I currently pay about $25 per month for a decent connection. A much faster one would work out costing me $25-$30 more per month. I figure that I would rather invest the $300-$360 per year. After all, in 10 years, that would be $3,000 to $3,600! Not a huge amount, but it adds up.

One thing is for sure, you have to live below your means, save and invest to get ahead by increasing your net-worth.

Unfortunately for many, they realize this too late in life.
 
Though I'd never want to earn too much, I love saving up for big things.

Houses here go for £500k-2million and it's where I'd like to stay.
 
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I voted $100,000, because here in England, surprisingly, you only need to earn £45,000 per year to be in the richest 10% of the population.
 
I voted $100,000, because here in England, surprisingly, you only need to earn £45,000 per year to be in the richest 10% of the population.


Really??? I'm keeping my gob shut then... But to be classed as rich I'd say that you need enough money to life a good life style without needing to work. For that I'd say £3 million is the minimum
 
Really??? I'm keeping my gob shut then... But to be classed as rich I'd say that you need enough money to life a good life style without needing to work. For that I'd say £3 million is the minimum

There was a article in the papers some time ago saying that you need to have at least £5 million to have a lifestyle like that.
 
wow!

According to the results of this pole somebody thinks that what I make a year puts me in the "rich" category!
wow!
:eek:
 
It is all a matter of perspective. I heard this on NPR a while back.

The research finds that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which — with 37 million members worldwide — is far from an exclusive club.
http://update.unu.edu/issue44_22.htm

Wealth is a double edged sword. Gelfin hit it dead on. I have seen a person so obsessed by the pursuit of "just a little bit more" that they forgot to enjoy what they had and in turn lost it all (divorce, bankruptcy, the works).
 
my vote was for $200+, here in northern ca with the cost of living you are going to be able to pay your bills with about 200 and not have much left over at the end of the month (assuming you have a average home to pay off which will run you $700k +) When I think of being rich I think of being financially free, where I don't have to work and have enough incoming coming in from investments to live off of. In order for me to have that I would need to make over 600,000 for about 10 years and invest my excess income well to really be financially free. Not there yet but working on it :)
 
Who voted for $30,000 per year???? That seems ridiculous
Just be fore I got out of University I calculated I could live quite happily on $20,000/yr. Now of course priorities and desires change. ;) Now that I'm making much more than that I can honestly say that in terms of 'happiness' I'm not that much different from back then, it's just that I have nicer and more stuff.

It's been my observation that the more money you have only changes the quality/quantity of things you buy. Acquiring 'things' may make you happy for a time (even to the point of arrogance), but eventually you get used to having that level of income (or your possessions end up becoming a burden) and want/'need' more income to compensate... it's a vicious cycle.

I am by no western definition 'rich' but I really felt the consumer trap this year at Christmas. I felt all the stuff I wanted was either unreasonable to ask for as a gift or a pure indulgent luxury. I did come up with a few things, but this year I think I'm going to ask that everyone donate some money to that charity that buys goats/chickens, and builds homes and schools for poor villages in 3rd world countries. I think that's something that will make me happy this Christmas instead of filling my condo with more stuff than I need.

I'm trying to do something positive with my salary increases, I'm saving about half of the difference for retirement (or for the mortgage :eek: ), and some charitable causes that need help. It's that kind of thing that really makes me happy, so I'm working towards that goal. :)
 
Who voted for $30,000 per year???? That seems ridiculous

A 16 year old living at home with his/her parents and a hamster!

I said $150,000 as this would be enough or me - single, no kids, already good level of savings and general assets.


Edit: Just realized, this is my 1,000th post. Not exactly the post I was hoping for as my 1,000th! I was hoping for something a little more insightful!
 
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