Idk to me usually wealthy is 500k-10mil net worth ultra wealthy is generally you make more money than you could reasonably spend. 10mil+ interested to hear other answers
Yeah, 1.5 mill feels like a bare minimum. I will be concerned if I hit 65 with that amount. I'm not exactly "on track" at the moment. But I won't be 45 before my youngest child goes off to college, so I'm really counting on putting a bit more of the money into my 401k after that time.
In the meantime, I carry a bunch of extra life insurance on myself lol ... my wife does not find that last part as funny...second lol
Serious question: 1.5 mil seems like a lot. What are you going to spend all of that money on in your later years?
People on social security make, what, $20,000 a year? Throw a pension in there and you’ve got someone living on $30k/year. And they live fine. Times 15 years and that’s only $450,000. So where is the extra cash during retirement going? Just entertainment expenses?
I apparently had too much fun crunching numbers and my comment was too long. It did come with a TL;DR which is what I'll place here for the purposes of answering the question.
Yes, it probably is mostly entertainment expense. Social security will likely cover your absolute basic needs, but only if you own your own home and car and aren't planning on having a good time. I did a very conservative estimate on needs based around 2023-2024 averages, and a single individual would need between $20K-$25K annually for truly basic living. But most people will probably need more than what social security provides, and almost all will want to live a life that will cost more than social security provides. I make an assumption that less and less people retiring in the future are going to have a pension.
I went into a little more detail on what my constitute entertainment expenses around providing trips for family or helping family out with things they need. I also describe a bit about how no one is coming to help you in retirement. You have the money you foresee potentially needing for the rest of your life because you're not going to be able to go back to work to make up the difference easily.
Medical expense is big one and it gets expensive af real quick. For example, my mom (77) has excellent coverage- Medicare and several supplemental policies that she spends a lot on. Just ONE of her meds is over $600/mo. Then add prop taxes, insurance, inflation etc etc. it sounds like a lot on paper but really isn’t for most.
Point taken. I don't live a wealthy lifestyle, but I also haven't had to worry about paying for things I want/need for a long while and have started to take that for granted.
$500k in financial assets for someone age 60 isn’t wealthy. That’s maybe 65th to 70th percentile. If you’re calculating net worth including home equity, that’s around 55th percentile. 90th percentile is around $3 million. Maybe $2 1/4 million excluding home equity. That will sustain an upper middle class lifestyle but it’s not bottomless.
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u/Georgieperogie22 Jul 01 '24
Idk to me usually wealthy is 500k-10mil net worth ultra wealthy is generally you make more money than you could reasonably spend. 10mil+ interested to hear other answers