Poll of the Day > How much money do you consider somebody needs to have before they are rich?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I personally think there are different levels of rich, but, if you have enough money/possessions to never worry about a place to live, or food to eat again, I consider that rich.

Could only be owning a home somewhere (Even a fairly cheap one, like a 50k home in Cleaveland Ohio), and having enough money for food/expenses for the rest of your life.

So in that case a formula that looks something like this.

(Rent or home expenses + monthly cost of food) * ((90-your current age)12).

So if you own a cheap home and only pay a bit in taxes upkeep (say $200 a month), and you eat fairly modestly ($400 a month), then that would be $600* (90-your current age)*12

Say you are 30, then that would be 36k * 12 or somewhere around 400k total needed to be considered rich in my eyes.

So what about you?
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A million dollars.
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Did you do the whole pinky thing after you typed that? (from austin powers)
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gguirao posted...

A million dollars.

THAT
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wolfy42 posted...

Did you do the whole pinky thing after you typed that? (from austin powers)

i was hoping to see a video of that coming into this thread. So disappointed now :(

gguirao posted...

A million dollars.

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A million in cash not assets.

It will definitely depend on where you live. 300k/year in Mississippi will go a lot further than 1 million/year in Manhattan.

With that said, regardless of how much you have and where you live, I draw the line with a few criterias:

A) Being in a place where all of your critical needs (food, housing, healthcare) are met without needing to pay close attention to your budget
B) You don't have to worry about day to day stuff you don't want to do (eg: have enough money to get a cleaning service or order take out whenever you want. Even if you decide not to)
C) If you lost all of your material possessions and was left with nothing but your bank/investment accounts, could you get back to having A + B within a few days.

If you have all of those criterias, you're rich in my book.

That also means that, to me, the "wealth gap" between someone making minimum wage and a doctor is WAAAAY bigger than the wealth gap between the same doctor and Bill Gates. The doctor and Bill Gates both meet the criterias, one just has "more" of everything. While the difference between the first two in term of quality of life is extreme.

Good answer Shadosatphoenix. Not all doctors make that much though sadly (and especially not all attorneys!!). In fact, in the bay area where Attorneys used to start at $35k a year at many firms (and be expected to work 60+ hours a week), it was pretty hard to just pay rent!
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wolfy42 posted...

Good answer Shadosatphoenix. Not all doctors make that much though sadly (and especially not all attorneys!!). In fact, in the bay area where Attorneys used to start at $35k a year at many firms (and be expected to work 60+ hours a week), it was pretty hard to just pay rent!

When I said doctors, I meant physicians, not people with PhDs. It's true that after insurance, expenses, and school loans, the salary per hour of a physician, even many specialists, is actually kind of bad, but I felt it was an example a lot of people understood and could read between the lines. Maybe I should have picked better.

And yeah, lawyers/attorneys is actually one of those "Used to be good, then got flooded, and now unless you're a top litigation lawyer or something, it's actually pretty terrible".

Expect other professions that are currently getting flooded, like software engineers, to be that way in 10-20 years. The top 5% of them will still be swimming in cash, the rest will be scrambling for crumbs.

gguirao posted...

A million dollars.

Probably this.
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