What salary does someone have to earn in order to for you to consider them 'rich'

ohiopink

Interested to know people's opinions on this.

This question derives from some of the very begrudging posts I've seen on the comment section of articles from the 'How I Spend My Money' series The Journal has been running lately.

Obviously, the answer of whether or not someone is 'rich' depends on a number of factors (children, mortgage, employment status of spouse, etc) but in general what salary would someone have to earn from work (ignoring previously owned assets etc) for you to think "gee, that's a lot"

Edit: I should have used the term 'total income' instead of 'salary'. I have also edited the original question to focus on income received from work and not other factors (inheritance, property assets etc)

I wouldn't say rich exactly but anything over 200k is good I think.

Fr_Dougal

€50k net a month would be a nice wage.

weisses

Rich people are not on a "salary"

Tell me how

It is all relative.

100k/annum for a Dr. Not a lot. The same for a bus driver. That's a lot.

Also, irrespective of the amount someone earns, their commitments and lifestyle will have a massive factor on whether they are to be considered rich or not.

valoren

I'd consider anyone who could pay their annual expenses and their lifestyle with passive income to be rich. That figure is subjectively dependent on their lifestyle.

ohiopink

weisses wrote: »

Rich people are not on a "salary"

Good point, I should have used the word 'income'

James Brown

Any Nurse obvs...

I'd say no debt and an income where you've a lot of money left over for saving and spending frivolously is rich. Depends on where and how you live I suppose.
Mind many 'rich' make a nice living out of shuffling around debt or having it written off.

cnocbui

Being 'rich' isn't a function of how much you are earning so much as how much you have in assets. Someone with millions in assets with a moderate 'income' is rich.

Ray Palmer

cnocbui wrote: »

Being 'rich' isn't a function of how much you are earning so much as how much you have in assets. Someone with millions in assets with a moderate 'income' is rich.

You can also be rich with friends but you know what he means and you are being pedantic

ohiopink

cnocbui wrote: »

Being 'rich' isn't a function of how much you are earning so much as how much you have in assets. Someone with millions in assets with a moderate 'income' is rich.

Agreed, I probably phrased the original post poorly but I'm more thinking about how much one has to earn in a year from their job to be considered 'well paid', 'overpaid' etc

For example, people say someone like Ryan Tubridy is 'overpaid' on €300k or whatever he gets - so in this case they obviously consider €300k a lot of money to earn in a year regardless of what assets the man has.

NSAman

It all depends on your perception of someone else.

By all accounts, I am apparently "rich", I have the lifestyle, the house, the appearance of being wealthy. Am I? Personally no... I dont think I am. I am not loaded but am asset rich, cash poor. Many would think that for all intents and purposes that I am a 1%, in reality, I am just comfortable..;)

cnocbui

Ray Palmer wrote: »

You can also be rich with friends but you know what he means and you are being pedantic

Whoops, looks like I was wrong!

cnocbui

ohiopink wrote: »

Agreed, I probably phrased the original post poorly but I'm more thinking about how much one has to earn in a year from their job to be considered 'well paid', 'overpaid' etc

For example, people say someone like Ryan Tubridy is 'overpaid' on €300k or whatever he gets - so in this case they obviously consider €300k a lot of money to earn in a year regardless of what assets the man has.

In that case, 80K+

Ray Palmer

Ray Palmer wrote: »

You can also be rich with friends but you know what he means and you are being pedantic

they arent being pedantic. it is completely the point to discriminate between salary or any annual income and wealth

wealth is not an annual measure and rich people are only topping up their fortune when they deal with income

we in this country dont think of wealth and its a major blind spot in our tax base and where power lies

hmmm

As others have said, rich means assets, not income. Your income could stop in the morning and you'll be on the dole.

We tax income for some stupid reason in this country, yet rich people can live in a mansion and barely pay anything.

dartboardio

I'd consider anyone who had their house paid off, and dont have many expenses rich.

Car99

I'd consider someone with no financial dependants , living in a nice home , good health insurance with 5k a month disposable income reasonably well off financially .

rossie1977

Would depend on numerous things

Someone earning €2k a week would be considered rich in Leitrim. You would be able to afford maybe a small apartment in Tokyo, Manhattan, Melbourne or San Francisco with that.

Ray Palmer

Deleted User wrote: »

they arent being pedantic. it is completely the point to discriminate between salary or any annual income and wealth

wealth is not an annual measure and rich people are only topping up their fortune when they deal with income

we in this country dont think of wealth and its a major blind spot in our tax base and where power lies

No it is being pedantic obviously meant in the common use of "rich" and not an academic meaning about assets.

YFlyer

It would have to be more than what a Spurs or Arse player gets.

Ray Palmer

Ray Palmer wrote: »

No it is being pedantic obviously meant in the common use of "rich" and not an academic meaning about assets.

by academic you seem to mean.....the common meaning of the word....?


anyways...a person on a six figure income is well off, depending on how long they have had it, how long they can expect to stay on it, and what their living expenses are

you literally, academically, non-pedantically cannot answer the thread question any more than the above imo

MarioLuigi

Someone who has net assets of >€1m excluding their home.

If I am forced to choose from the poll I would say 500k, since this would be about 250k net a year ie. about 21,000 net a month. I think there are very few people, in this country in any case, who wouldn't consider a consistent income like that to constitute being rich.

It really is so subjective though. There are people living in rich areas of New York for whom 20k a month would just keep them ticking over. But that is because what they consider to be the basics eg. prime living location, private schooling, comfortable lifestyle etc. costs a lot to maintain. Other people in the US would be rich on 10k net a month.

I don't know about anyone else, but my subjective sense of what constitutes being "rich" has become inflated in the last 10-15 years. For instance, in the mid 2000s I would have thought somebody worth even 2 or 3 million was rich and say 20 million very rich! A sum like 100 plus million like Dolores McNamara won back then was head-spinning in its enormity to me back then.

Nowadays I would consider someone worth 2 or 3 million to be comfortably off, set up for an easy life with their house, car, pension, kids college etc. looked after but still needing to work and not able to indulge in extravagant spending very often. Someone worth 20 million is rich but has to watch how they spend their money to ensure they stay that way. 120 million is still without a doubt very rich and unless you are totally reckless you always will be.

My inflated estimations of what constitutes being rich is, I believe, the result of a combination of things.
- Everything becomes less heady as you progress from your teenage years through your twenties, and the power of a large sum of money to strike awe into your diminishes a you age.
- As information became exponentially more readily available to us all since about 2006-2008, so too did information about wealth, the lifestyles of the rich, just how rich the rich are etc. My sense of how "rich" a "millionaire" is, for instance, has been crushed down when I see footballers being sold for 100 million euro, or billionaires being worth tens of billions.
- There ARE more rich people, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population, so being worth even the inflation adjusted "equivalent" of say 2 million punts from the mid 90s (say 8 to 10 million euro nowadays?) probably doesn't produce the same psychological effect of "being rich" the former sum would have.
- The baseline standard of living as conceived by people in recent years is much higher than it was even during the Celtic tiger. Most people now can afford whatever foods they want in the likes of Aldi and eating out and fast food are no longer only occasional treats. People expect hot showers daily, comfortable beds, instant entertainment from technological advances. People fly regularly on city breaks, something not done in the past. Formerly luxury cars like Audis and BMWs driven by the middle and lower income strata of society. Girls and guys of all social strata groomed like rich spoilt brats and unabashedly so, where even during the Celtic tiger era such self-indulgence was scorned and socially unacceptable. So when the baseline is so high, and the dopamine reward systems of the lower income strata of society are already saturated, money has far less power to create a subjective sense of enhanced satisfaction than it once did.

Spannerplank

A person who owes nothing.

The Rape of Lucretia

I think it has always been generally accepted, that for a single man, four of five thousand a year is a large fortune.

Mad_maxx

hmmm wrote: »

As others have said, rich means assets, not income. Your income could stop in the morning and you'll be on the dole.

We tax income for some stupid reason in this country, yet rich people can live in a mansion and barely pay anything.

Benefits older people, young people are hated by government, its always been this way here

Mad_maxx

MarioLuigi wrote: »

Someone who has net assets of >€1m excluding their home.

A million in assets is pretty ordinary

Most farmers have that

YFlyer

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

I think it has always been generally accepted, that for a single man, four of five thousand a year is a large fortune.

If mammy doesn't take anything off him.

Bob Harris

cnocbui wrote: »

Being 'rich' isn't a function of how much you are earning so much as how much you have in assets. Someone with millions in assets with a moderate 'income' is rich.

Quite true.

Warren Buffet has an annual salary of $100K.

He has assets of about $87B

oLoonatic

A very interesting post, but as Biggie himself once said. Mo money mo problems.

I'm a fan of the "you're rich if you live somewhere you like, can go eat what you like when you like, holiday where you like, and not be concerned about money." idea.

Above that sort of lifestyle, I'd start to call someone wealthy. As in, a few million to play with in business or on a boat or something.

NSAman

It all depends on the concept of Rich.

I have a few friends who are considered very wealthy. One has sold a company for a few hundred million.

I have a few friends who are considered not very wealthy in the traditional sense of the word. They are working and earning.

One thing to notice about both is the following. Despite having quite an amount of money in the bank, the former is never happy. He continues to work, very very hard. Is always on the phone and cannot relax and enjoy himself. Once we took the phone and hid it while at the dinner table, he went into orbit. He has a wonderful family, who he looks after financially and they love him to bits, he has a huge heart and is a big teddy bear in reality, but he cannot just relax and enjoy what he has.

The latter, enjoy time off. THey have great families and they spend time with friends and family having fun and are more relaxed and healthy.

So more money does not equate to happiness. It means more money. Wealthy can be taken in many ways. Personally, wealthy is someone who has friends and family who care about you. Yes money is required to live, but when you have enough to live and not worry about it, why chase more? Money does not make you happy!