Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Second house is immediately qualifying.

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.

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

Bezos is not wealthy. He just has a lot of money. I can't imagine he's found any real happiness with it. Sure a brand new Ferrari every week can buy you some happiness, but that's short lived.

The man has a serious mental illness that will not be addressed, because he has too much money and power for anyone to be allowed to tell him he's ill.

Billionaires are a danger to themselves and others. They should be admitted into a mental hospital against their will and they should be treated until they are cured.

This isn't even a "CEO bad" joke. I honestly believe it's a mentally disorder. Or maybe a specific mix of different disorders and unfortunate environments, circumstances and enablers.

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

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

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

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 who has everything they could possibly need and no bad debt. Does not need to be rich.

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.

Anybody who doesn't have to work for the rest of their life because it's voluntary + they don't really have to look at the price tags of the things they want.

Access to a warm fire to dance around, food and libations, and friends to share them with.

You are wealthy/rich at the point where you no longer know or care about the well being of the people that count on you to survive–the point of dehumanization is the threshold of a monster.