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1 year ago from bookmarkletHow Rich is Rich? The Rich-O-Meter - The Wealth Report - WSJ
By Robert Frank
How much does it take to be “rich?”
The answer is of course subjective, varying by region and by individual definitions. To those in New York, Greenwich, or Atherton, having a million dollars (or even a few million) would never be considered “rich.” In most of the rest of the world, it would be plenty.
To get into most private banks and wealth-management firms today, you need investible assets of at least $2 million — and most often, $10 million. (In private-banking lingo, having $1 million counts as “high net worth,” while it takes $25 million to $30 million to be “ultra-high net worth.”)
Since $1 million barely buys a two-bedroom these days in Manhattan or San Francisco, being a multi-millionaire just doesn’t mean what it used to.
When most people try to define rich, however, they’re really after something different. What they really want to know is, “Where do I rank?”
Through the magic of the Internet, and World Bank income data, we can now get an answer. Some creative folks in London have come up with what they call the “global rich list” — a kind of Rich-O-Meter that allows you to plug in your income data and see where you rank. Try it, it’s fun. And it’s virtually guaranteed to give you an ego boost.
The site aims to show that most of us always look “up” to those who are wealthier when assessing our financial situation. By measuring our incomes in a global context, we will be able to look “down,” see how lucky we are and give more to charity.
It’s a brilliant idea. But since most of us don’t live in rural Honduras, and therefore can’t fully appreciate the extent of our good fortunes, I throught it would also be useful to provide a U.S. chart. This comes from an income study done by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Picketty, with 2004 being the latest data year.
INCOME GROUPS IN THE U.S.
Median — $25,076
Top 10% — $87,334
Top 5% — $120,212
Top 1% — $277,983
Top 0.5% — $397,949
Top 0.1% — $1,134,849
Top 0.01% — $5,349,795Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re somewhere above the top 10%. And chances are, even though you’re in the top 10%, you’re now paying more attention to the income of those in the top 0.01% than to the income of those in the other 90%. Such is human nature — something even the magical Rich-O-Meter can’t change.
WHERE DO YOU RANK IN WEALTH
(If you have a household net worth of X … you rank in the Y percentile):
$50,000 … 60th percentile
$93,000 … 50th percentile
$100,000 … 48th percentile
$200,000 … 34th percentile
$500,000 … 18th percentile
$750,000 … 12th percentile
$827,000 … 10th percentile
$1 million … 8th percentile
$1.4 million … 5th percentile
$6 million … 1st percentile Notes
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