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Dad, Are We Rich?

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Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#91

Post by DanBC »

_ah wrote: post #82

I think there's an important distinction to be made between rich and wealthy . Rich is defined by income level, and often by lifestyle. A high-spending star athlete can be rich AND broke. There's a reasonable argument to be made that a high-income, high-expense lifestyle in the Bay means that you are NOT "rich". Wealthy is a measure of saved, investable assets. Wealth is not income-dependent, and ideally grows over t…

> I think there's an important distinction to be made between rich and wealthy.

No there isn't, these are synonyms in any decent dictionary. Chambers uses them to define each other.

"Rich: having a lot of money, property, or possessions; wealthy"

"Wealthy: possessing riches and property; rich or prosperous".

Everything else in your post is just stuff you've made up, which is mildly interesting but has nothing to do with those words as they're used in the real world.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#92

Post by brokensegue »

geggam wrote: post #78
ac29 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80th percentile household income in Santa Clara County is $200k/yr [0]. The linked dataset doesn't go any higher, but I suspect 500k/year is 95th percentile or above, which puts you in the upper class. Even in the Bay, $500k/yr is the "own two homes and a few Porches" level. [0] http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income

If you are single maybe. I think of a middle class man being what my old man was. Single income, wife stayed home and he provided for everyone. 4 kids. Good luck having 2 homes and some porsches with only 500k in the valley supporting a wife and kids

plenty of people support a family on $60k/yr so take the remaining 440k minus taxes and buy two porsches outright. You should be able to save enough for a down-payment on each house given a year of saving.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#93

Post by harryh »

rootusrootus wrote: post #28
docker_up wrote: post #6

My kids asked me this and I said we are "comfortable". We are easily 1%-ers in terms of income level but we don't consider ourselves rich. I consider someone rich who has the luxury of not working and still maintaining a very good lifestyle. In Silicon Valley you can't do that without substantial net worth. The reason why we don't consider ourselves rich is because both my wife and I have to work very hard. We love o…

The way I look at it is that there is a significant difference between being 1%-er by income, and 1%-er by net worth. The former is not terribly uncommon in the tech industry, but the latter is what counts as real wealth.

I very strongly suspect that the overlap between people in the 1% income level and people in the 1% wealth level is extremely high.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#94

Post by _bxg1 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
war1025 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having kids is the wrench in the gears for many people I'd guess. There's a reason for the term DINK (Dual income, no kids). Edit: Also to clarify, I absolutely agree with the living frugally thing, and think most people would be in general better off if they focused less on spending every penny they make.

The second you have dependents, the equation changes. Now you're optimizing not just for your remaining years of life, but for your children and possibly their children. Which, in most cases, means living in higher cost of living areas to get them in better schools and access to wealthier networks. Also, any adverse health events can sink your whole family, so you need to keep on the treadmill until you have sufficie…

Yeah, the author curiously neglected to factor dependents into all his numbers, which makes a massive difference. I think lots of people have kids as a "default option" in their life roadmap, without considering how big of a sacrifice it will be in terms of time and money (and the fact that it's optional!). It's important to put things in perspective before making that kind of decision; making kids may be free, but raising them is anything but.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#95

Post by strikelaserclaw »

sudosteph wrote: post #67

It's a bit ridiculous to see the hoops that some of the wealthy will jump through so they don't have to feel guilty about their position in the world. The person writing this article is almost certainly "rich" by any reasonable standard. Meanwhile, most families making 60k in the US (especially in areas with the best job markets and high COL) - are not. The world income comparison thing at the end is not meaningful i…

It must be where i grew up but in St.Louis and Kansas city, you could give your children most of these opportunities with roughly a middle class dual parent income. The smartest kids in my class became doctors, stanford phds, etc... None of them were what i consider upper middle class (provided they came from both parent educated households).

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#96

Post by harryh »

docker_up wrote: post #6

My kids asked me this and I said we are "comfortable". We are easily 1%-ers in terms of income level but we don't consider ourselves rich. I consider someone rich who has the luxury of not working and still maintaining a very good lifestyle. In Silicon Valley you can't do that without substantial net worth. The reason why we don't consider ourselves rich is because both my wife and I have to work very hard. We love o…

We are easily 1%-ers in terms of income level but we don't consider ourselves rich

I'm forced to wonder how many policy problems in America are due to people like this failing to acknowledge just how good they have it and thus failing to be comfortable contributing to the greater good because they "don't consider themselves rich."

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#97

Post by harryh »

sudosteph wrote: post #67

It's a bit ridiculous to see the hoops that some of the wealthy will jump through so they don't have to feel guilty about their position in the world. The person writing this article is almost certainly "rich" by any reasonable standard. Meanwhile, most families making 60k in the US (especially in areas with the best job markets and high COL) - are not. The world income comparison thing at the end is not meaningful i…

The world income comparison thing at the end is not meaningful in the slightest.

Why not? I would say that it's very important to understand that even middle class Americans are quite well off when compared to the vast majority of the rest of the world.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#98

Post by tshibley »

mrep wrote: post #38
bagacrap wrote: post #31

The wealth figures for X percentile seem low. I wonder where he's getting them. When I Google it, 2.4M was the 95th percentile two years ago.

The income levels are also way off on globalrichlist.com $60,000 a year makes you the 11,425,788th richest person in the world? US median household income was $59,039 in 2016 and if there are 125 million households in the US, then that means you are only the 62th million richest person in the US alone let alone the world.

They could be going off of per capita income rather than household income - US per capita income is closer to $32k a year[0], so 60k a year would put you quite high on that distribution.

0. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/SEX255217

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#99

Post by rootusrootus »

harryh wrote: post #93
rootusrootus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I look at it is that there is a significant difference between being 1%-er by income, and 1%-er by net worth. The former is not terribly uncommon in the tech industry, but the latter is what counts as real wealth.

I very strongly suspect that the overlap between people in the 1% income level and people in the 1% wealth level is extremely high.

That may very well be true, but I don't have any good data. To hit 1% in income, you need to make about 750K a year. To hit 1% in net worth, you have to clear a bit more than 10M. So the question would be how many people hit 750K for a year, or a few years of their life, without accumulating 10M in net worth? Depending on lifestyle and location, I bet there are plenty of people who make a load of money but also spend a load of money.

Re: Dad, Are We Rich?

#100

Post by treis »

jedberg wrote: post #7

My measure of rich is "Can I live my current lifestyle without regular income from a job?". If the answer is yes, then you are rich. The trick here is to make sure to keep your lifestyle costs in line with your salary when you first start out, so that as your income grows you can save. So yeah, if you want a big house and nice cars and nice vacations, you wouldn't consider yourself rich compared to people who don't h…

>My measure of rich is "Can I live my current lifestyle without regular income from a job?"

I would say that's wealthy. Rich, to me, is if you have the means to buy and do what you want for a reasonable set of desires. In other words, you can buy a nice house in a nice area, drive a new luxuryish (i.e. BMW level) car, go on vacations, and buy stuff like a big TV without worrying. Somewhere between 150k and 300k salary depending on the area.

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