Ask Lemmy

Not only live off investment portfolios, but live well.

I.e. one or two summer houses, take multiple foreign vacations. And do that comfortably with what they already have or are passively earning.

Nobody wants to give a hard number?

I’ll say six million dollars earning ~5%/year. That’s $300k/yr before taxes. Assuming long-term investments, that’s 15% gains tax, so take $45k for taxes (fed), no idea what state will be because they’re all different, so just round it down to $250k year income in your pocket.

$250k/yr isn’t a lot of money…(I can hear the wtf’s…just hang on)…out of that has to come all your expenses including medical insurance in the US, your mortgage, car payments, etc.

This is not “fuck you” money. This is living an upper middle class lifestyle. You’ll have nice cars but not crazy nice. A decent house but not a mansion. You can tweak it a little this way or that depending on the CoL of where you live, but not a lot. Yeah, you can earn more in interest, but I was being conservative.

You’re rich because you don’t have to lift a finger to enjoy it, and you have the time to enjoy it.

Want closer to fuck you money with the above conditions? Try $20 million in the investments at 5%. That’ll get you a million a year before tax.

If they own a house, make at least 100k a year and can support their family comfortably, I would consider that wealthy. My father is in this bracket and he goes on vacations over seas, owns 3 relatively expensive vehicles, and still saves enough for retirement.

You don't need a million dollars to live a rich, fulfilling life.

If literally running around in a warehouse full of 20 dollar bills collecting all you can with your hands and unlimited bags makes less money, there's no fucking way your actual work is producing so much value.

Which kind of rich do you mean? The 'this person is truly wealthy but it's not unreasonable' or 'this person is unacceptably rich and should have their money taken away if not worse'?

The former can be somewhere around....$10,000,000 or so. Lower the older the person is really (cause I consider rich versus remaining expected lifespan), so maybe even as low as $6,000,000 for someone who's currently 40.

The latter where it's simply unacceptable for people to have that much I'd start the cutoff around $400,000,000 or so.

And slight sidenote on the unacceptable levels: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both are so unacceptably wealthy that they could make one person a day wealthy by my $10,000,000 standard...every day...for 100 years...before running out (and that's assuming they stopped accruing money at the beginning of this)...and still be unacceptably wealthy to a crazy degree.

Oh and all my numbers are assuming no additional income and definitely no interest or investment (but also assuming the money remains the same value it has today).

I think calling Bezos rich is an understatement. My mind cannot comprehend the amount of wealth he has.

Wealthy and rich have nothing to do with one another.

Wealthy is a person that lives in a stable environment, where they aren't threatened with death on a regular basis (such as, losing one's job).

Wealth is anything beyond having the necessities of life covered.

If you can afford a reasonable home, your bills, food, any dependents, eating out once a week, hobbies, taking a holiday or two per year, and contributing to your retirement then you're living comfortably.

Anything beyond that is wealth, it allows you to splash out on luxury products, luxury holidays etc.

Some people may never realise they're wealthy because they live excessively and believe that's the norm, ie payments for an overpriced car, spending excessively on hobbies etc

Of course, rich is a relative descriptor, like tall or heavy, some people are richer than others.

I would call anyone who doesn't need to work in order to live (i.e. who can live off investments and interest) rich.

When you could stop working and just coast off of what you've got till you die. At that point, making more is a luxury.

There are two thresholds that matter: "rich" is where you no longer have to really think much about money on a day to day basis, and "wealthy" is where you no longer have to work for a living. Both thresholds depend on your expenses and the lifestyle you're looking for, I guess

For me, being wealthy would mean that if they never intentionally earned another penny for the rest of their life, that would not prevent them from doing anything that they wanted to do within reason.

For normal people that would mean between two and five million dollars in liquid assets available to them.

I liked it back when the aristocracy was just called the "leisure" class. At least they didn't spend their time playing at being an executive and pretending they earned what they have.

If you could retire and have enough to keep you comfortably housed and insured until you're 90, that's wealth enough.

If you can basically do whatever you want and the cost is of little to no concern, you're rich.

My definition for myself to be rich is:

I have enough money that I can pay someone(s) yearly wage to manipulate my wealth into enough money to cover their salary and then some.

Personally, I'd consider myself rich. I live in Germany which is already among the richer countries in the world giving me access to an insane amount of infrastructure and opportunities. Furthermore, I work for an IT company and make more money than average and more than I need to satisfy my immediate needs (shelter, food, transportation etc.) and pay for my hobbies (mostly outdoor stuff). I might not be a millionaire and I can't just retire tomorrow but still I'm very aware of what a huge privilege I have compared to a vast part of humanity.

Personally, I think already my taxes are too low. Not to start about millionaires or billionaires.

$5 million of spare money. Not net total wealth but actually $5 million investable dollars.

At that point, I'd you stick that money in a very conservative and safe brokerage account allocation, 5% return per year is $250k. That is a higher salary than almost anyone needs, meaning you can live very comfortably without working. You can't buy a yacht but you can be "done" and so can your children and their children if they aren't stupid.

If you choose to work, then you can just reinvest that $250k and let compound interest do its thing and get richer. Lucky you.

The tiers for me are: Doesn't worry about money -> Doesn't work -> Can afford a US senator to protect money. There are not titles for this kind of thing.

I consider anything above $500k to be "well off". Once you start to pass $10M, that's truly wealthy. $1B rhymes with obscene

Being able to not worry about food, gas, standard bills and actually have something in savings

not having to work and still get to live comfortably and afford most of the things you desire

Anyone who can forego any form of future income and live off their current wealth for the rest of their life in relative luxury/comfort.

Someone for whom the normal and inevitable experiences of suffering (illness, death in the family, natural disaster, etc) have no real economic consequences.

We need a new word beyond rich. Everyone takes rich as a personal achievable goal.

We need a word for someone who has more money than is healthy. An easy to use word.

They are so rich they no longer know the cost of things. They can't relate to their neighbors. They no longer need to be a part of their community to survive.