1)It depends on how the percentiles break down.

2)If, as an individual, you earn $80,000 before tax, you're pretty clearly well off and above middle-class. I dunno about "rich."

1) 75+%

2) 120k per annum for a single person, 200k for family.

Top 5%

$200,000

I look forward to seeing how far off those two are from each other in reality!

Though I also think anchoring biases are going to be a problem if more than a couple people post their guesses . . .

2% ?

$200,000+/year

(you have the worst captcha ever)

Top 2%

$750,000 a year

200k, 2.5%

1) .1%
2) Million plus

This is besides the point. Everyone thinks they are middle class unless they have wealth.

10%
200k

or whichever is lower

unearned income that is 150% of median for the zip code in which I choose to live.

3%, 200k

national or global distribution?

is "rich" about income or about wealth?

Top 90% to be "rich"
million/year to be considered "rich"

(manhattan-skew?)

top 1%
$200,000 for an single individual

I'll go around top 2%, $150-200k for a two-person household, but the income/wealth distinction's an important one, as is location.

Having caught some of Bravo's 'Real NY Housewives', I'm also extending this to anyone who summers in the Hamptons and says 'oh moy gahd'.

20%

100K/individual

1-2% Household income over $300,000 or assets in excess of $5 million.

To be rich? I'd say $125,000 for an individual and $210,000 for a family of four. I'd also say those above 85-90% threshold could be considered candidates.

The top 10% of Americans are generally the group we would all call "rich."

OTOH, I think that anyone whose after-tax-income is twice that of the median after-tax-income, is rich by a relative standard. If you have twice the means of the average person, you have it pretty well off.

Also: my guess is that 95% of Americans are massively rich compared on a global scale where billions live on less than $600 a year.

Top 20% is rich

Um, $250,000.

95th percentile is rich. $200k per year.

Top 5%
$400,000

$100k - $399k I'd consider comfortable to very, very well-off.

You guys saying $200K don’t live in Silicon Valley, do you? $200K is just upper middle class here. Rich is being able to afford serious luxuries, like a vacation home someplace nice; I’d say more like $500K or $1M annual salary, probably like top 2%. Though I think Tim has it right that globally, anyone able to afford a computer to read this is rich.

As someone who went to school in SoCal, you know that standards vary with the cost of living.

That said:

Top 5% and 200,000k/year

Id say if your doing better then 75% of the country.. your rich. 1/2 again above middle seems about right.

$200k per year. If you're not rich at that point you just have spending issues.

Yea I think there will be a discrepancy there.. but it may well be mostly caused by the super over the top ungodly rich types.. that make simple 'rich' seem much less gilded.

That's true, Max, but there's also an argument to be made that anyone who can afford to be upper middle class in Silicon Valley is rich compared to the country as a whole. An income of a million dollars a year might put you in the bottom 10% of your community if you live in Beverly Hills (I'm making these numbers up; bear with me), but it'd be hard to argue that you're not "rich."

I'll say top 10%, 100k per year

Top 30%, 90k/year

For a single adult living anywhere other than NYC/SFO/LA/DC? Anything over the 80th percentile and anything over $90,000/yr. With children, obviously more, probably another $30-50k/yr per child depending on the quality of the local public school system.

Inside the NYC/SFO/LA/DC areas, tack some premium on, let's say 25% at a minimum.

No, seriously. If you don't think that's rich, you haven't thought very hard about it.

(And yes, by that calculation, I qualify. Having been on the other side of things, I'm pretty happy with it.)

Income is a poor metric upon which to determine if some one is rich. First of all it can be volatile. If someone makes 200k in one year, but then lose their job, and are forced to take a new job making only 75k are they still rich? I’ve always looked at rich from an assets basis. I would define rich as owning your own house, and having assets in excess of 1-2 million excluding the primary dwelling. At that asset level with an average return of 8% or so it should be possible to live very well and keep up with inflation. The reason I look at this as being rich is because of the stability. Assuming well diversified investments, you are basically going to be rich no matter what happens short of the collapse of western civilization. This isn’t life styles of the rich and famous territory, but it’s enough to afford a nice luxury car every couple of years, and travel the world if you want. It’s also almost freedom from financial concerns.

I think this exercise highlights a real dilemma for progressives.

On one hand, we should highlight the real poverty that exists in this country and emphasize the gap between the "comfortable" and the lower classes. People should know that anything over about $80k/year puts them in the top 20% and makes them upper-class. We want those people to feel "rich" so they understand our shared obligation toward the genuinely poor people who have it much, much worse than they do.

On the other hand, we should highlight the total absurdity of the superrich in this country. People should know that $200k/year is chump change to the people who run American government, business, and media. We want people making 80k/year to understand that, when we talk about imposing new obligations on the "rich" in order to reduce inequality, we're talking about people who make much, much more money than they do.

1. Top 1%
2. $200,000/yr

I don't know...psychological benchmarks maybe?

1) Top 0.5%
2) $300k

Your readers were apparently all raised in Atherton and Greenwich. This would help explain many of the ridiculous comments that show up whenever you write about income inequality or class.

~110K = top 5% of individuals
~165K = top 5% of households

The ceiling for upper middle class seemingly reaches to just under the top 3% of all households.

Top 5% >1M per year.

I'm a bad sample. I know 3 billionaires and one more on the way (just upgraded his Gulfstream). Where a 3BR home runs you 1M, 100k doesn't get you jack, and rich takes on a whole other meaning.

Well, literally speaking, there are now more billionaires in Russia than California or NY, (which is sad), so I'd say that first off, you'd need to reside in Russia! As far as Americans (residing and paying taxes in America, that is) are concerned, I'd say who ever gets taxed the least percentage are definitely the rich ones.

Annual income varies, but assuming this figure is constant, the individual's living expenses are within 1/3 of their earnings, and all of these earnings are documented, I'd say someone making 1 million/year.

To me, it's not how much you earn that makes you rich, it's how much you can keep. Lets say there are two households, each earning $60,000/year. One of the households, for whatever reason, has monthly expenses of around $5100. The other spends about half that (but still lives comfortably). Are they both equally well off?

Above say 250k or so is where most of the professional classes top out. THe problem is the erosion of 'middle class' to mean "most people." British class system is much more logical.

To really be "rich," I'd say, you fall in the top 10%.

For income, I'd throw out $250k+.

Top 10%
$100,000/yr/individual

If I'm talking personal finances, it's anyone getting over $200K / year, or some such.

If we're talking class domination of the U.S. political system, it's the top fractions of 1%, the billionaires, the centi-millionaires, the generational extremely wealthy, the officers of major corporations and investment houses.

Two completely different conversations.

You would have to start at a million, and then consider expenses.

If you make 500,000 a year, but have four special needs children costing 600,000 per year for their care...just how rich are you?

Ok, I'll play your game:

Top 30%
$100,000 per year per adult

__________

Really, though, "wealth" is what you have -- and the socio-economic implications. If you have $100,000 in the bank, you are rich.

How many people can take a five year vacation without starving or going homeless?

Yes, you might have to live within limited means but if you can do that without working (or relying on assistance from others), your life is qualitatively different.

Duh. It depends where you live. I make 80K and have a family of 4, but live in an NYC suburb and have a 2 bedroom coop, and can hardly have a cent. I can't afford a vacation, and could not buy a new car if I wanted. I don't feel rich, I hardly feel well off since I can't afford nursery school. If I lived someplace cheaper, I might have a large house, things might be cheaper and I might feel well off.

It would take at least,a quarter of a million dollars a year to be called rich.But with the value of the dollar on the decrease,my answer is subject to change.

It seems stupid to me that so many people are saying location matters. But look -- choosing to live in an expensive locale is an expense like any other spending choice, not some built-in reduction of income. You can live more cheaply than most people do in different areas (or farther from the best areas) in cities if you want; making tons of money and spending a high percentage of it on housing doesn't make you not rich, it just means you're choosing a benefit -- living in a desirable location of a popular city -- that costs money, no different than buying an expensive car or having kids. No?

... with the caveat that yes, some living expenses are inherently higher in certain areas. But to say someone is no longer rich because they spend 40% of income on a Manhattan apartment rather than 15% on a house that's a 30 minute subway ride away seems, to me, silly. That money is going toward a benefit that people believe is worth the cost. If you're rich (or "rich"), you get to have that nice choice. (Although of course it all depends on how you define "rich" in the first place . . .)

Gut instinct
Top 10%
150k

Top 1% or over $500,000/yr. Whichever comes first.

Top 10%
120k

Wikipedia's article on Household income in the US gives the following figures for percentages of top-earning households, drawn from 2005 census data.

$100,000 or more (15.73%)
$100,000 to $149,999 9.89%
$150,000 to $199,999 3.17%
$200,000 to $249,999 1.17%
$250,000 and above 1.50%

A very wise person once told me that the definition of rich is being able to buy whatever you want. Half of meeting that definition is controlling your wants.

per person, something like 80K

For a family, more like 100K-120K

Top 10%

1st, it's a skewed distribution, and it depends on where you live, and there's wealth v. income, etc. Given all that, you've got your middle class, say the 35th-80th percentile; your lower middle class, say 15-34; and your poor, below 15; your upper middle, say 81-95, and rich, 96-99.9; and oy, > 99.9.

Rich isn't a matter of income, the question itself is wrong. It's owning your time. Actually being rich means not having a "job" or "career" that pays a salary. If you have a job, and have to show up to it, you aren't rich. If you make money from investments, residuals, then you are rich, even if your monthly income is less than a highly paid specialist or CXO. And as Dwight said above, much of that is controlling your wants.

Gut is top 2 percent and more than $500K per year.

OTOH, if you must have income from a job in order to maintain your standard of living, you're not "rich," IMO. You're just a working person who is doing very, very well.

And I'm sorry if I repeated anything above, in keeping with the spirit of the question, I didn't want to read other answers.

Top 5%
$350,000

But I live in NY City, so the cost of living is much higher

Haven't looked at other comments yet. My take:

1) Top 20%
2) $300K+

How about this? What much would it take to comfortably afford a $1 Million house? Well... approximately 3x to 3.5x your income, which is around $300,000 to $350,000/yr.

if you must have income from a job in order to maintain your standard of living, you're not "rich," IMO. You're just a working person who is doing very, very well.

Exactly. If maintaining your living expenses is dependent on having a salary next year, you cannot possibly be rich. Though you might be overextended.

. If you have a job, and have to show up to it, you aren't rich. If you make money from investments, residuals, then you are rich

Also, if you make money from the work done by others, you're rich... so that the upper-level associate in a law firm isn't rich, but a law firm partner would be. The surgeon with his own practice is not rich, but the doctor who owns a clinic with many other health-service-providers in his employ is.

Magenta nailed it--rich is when you don't have to do any work you don't want to do. The rest is commentary.

IHMO Almost all americans are rich so I would the top 95%.

I lived in Honduras where there are some poor people.

I also lived with my family of 4 on less than $15,000/year for a few years in the mid 1990's. I was rich then and I am very, very rich now.

Anyone who is fat is rich.

Where income from all sources is 2x median household expenses including childcare, special needs care and health care and assets are 2x debts then you can accurately be called wealthy. Anything over 2x is rich, anything over 10x gets into the stinking rich category.
I do not fit into any of those categories but do know people who are house rich but money poor, and people who are house poor but money rich. Needs, wants and priorities can move the balance but anything over 2x the median of your neighborhood makes you rich in the eyes of your neighbours.
(I really hate your captcha, copy everything before posting.)

Heavily dependent upon where you live IMHO, but ...

Rich single person >150K
Rich family > 300K

If you are in the top x% of the distribution, you will be rich at (x/3)%. Or if you make $x per year, then you will be rich at $(3x) per year.

Defining wealth by whether you need a paycheck is false. I know of $1,000,000 a year law partners with $50,000 in savings because they can't seem to cut back on having $600 bottles of wine at dinner 3 times a week. They are rich even if asset poor.

I'd say you're rich if you can afford a moderate amount of luxury while living in a neighborhood with good schools (or are able to send your kids to private schools) and if you don't have to sweat too much about paying for your kids' college. Also, if you can take the overseas/spa/ski etc. vacations you want when you want without having to budget to pay for them. Also, you don't have to worry about health insurance or expenses when you need to go to the emergency room or have surgery.

Ballpark guess, for a family of four, $250,000 a year in income is rich. If you're young, healthy and single, $125,000 is rich.

Carefully answering without looking at the rest of the thread, almost but not quite going by my "gut reactions"... 99th percentile, $200,000 annual household income. Based on nice round numbers as much as anything else.

85th percentile; $200,000/year.

So, I posted without looking at anyone else's posts. Now that I've looked, I think it's fascinating how the answer to #2 seems to have converged around the response I gave, $200K/yr. But the answer around #1 varies a lot more widely. I think in retrospect I was being foolish, there's no way that 15% of the population makes $200K+ per year. But my gut wants to stand by both the 85th percentile figure AND the $200K figure, even though I'm fairly sure they're contradictory.

My gut:

• Poor
• Working Class
• Middle Class
• Upper Middle
• Professional Class
• Rich
• Rich Rich > 350,000 per head + 50,000 each additional member (99-100 percentiles)
  

$100 more than your wife's sister's husband, as Mencken suggested.

(Repost with less than signs removed.)
My gut:

• Poor lt $12,000 per adult household head + 5,000 each additional member.(10th percentile)
  
• Working Class lt $25,000 per head +10,000 each additional member.(20-30 percentile)
  
• Middle Class lt $50,000 per head, + 15,000 each additional member.(40-60 percentiles)
  
• Upper Middle lt $80,000 per head + 20,000 each additional member (70-80 percentiles)
  
• Professional Class lt $150,000 per head + 30,000 each additional member.(90-95 percentiles)
  
• Rich
• Rich Rich > 350,000 per head + 50,000 each additional member (99-100 percentiles)
  

I don't think the percentile or the number of dollars has anything to do with it. I think that you're rich only if you basically want for nothing and don't have to work if you don't want to.

You're "rich" if you have significantly more money than I do. If you have significantly less, you're "poor."

How hard is that?

20% and 125K/yr.

Top 10%, $150K

Floccina's position that fat folks are by definition rich doesn't hold for a non-agrarian society. Time to exercise, a safe place to do so, and easy access to fresh produce can be very hard to come by if you're poor. High-fat, starchy dreck is cheap and universally available.

Whenever I think about what qualifies as rich, I'm reminded of what Clair Huxtable told Theo on The Cosby Show when he said that they were rich. She said they had to work for their money, rich is when your money works for you.

Percentiles seem like the wrong way to think about this. Or at least, they show that the upper-middle-lower class system is not the same as rich-middle class-poor is not the same as any particular percentiles. Calling $200,000 in household income per year "rich" really would seem to minimize the term when there are thousands of people in this country who make millions a year. On the other hand, calling the top 1 percent "upper class", or even the top 5 or 10 percent, implies that everyone up to the 99th percentile (or 95th or 90th) is middle class, but those percentiles don't look very middling at all.

Also, this shows that the words we're using here are very ambiguous. Not just across countries or across regions with different costs of living, but even when used by the same person in different contexts.

"Rich" when talking about economics means annual household income as calculated by comparison to a certain percentile, and it happens to have a strong, but not perfect, correlation with security and free time and wealth. "Rich" when talking about culture means everyone mentioned in gossip magazines and the people that really classy ads in airports are aimed at, and "superrich" means the Waltons, the Hiltons and other people who own companies that are household names. "Rich" in daily life means anyone with income and wealth well above that of the rest of the people in their hometown.

And "rich" when in a philosophical mood means anyone who doesn't look like they worry about money much in daily life. (My salary is about $20,000 per year and my most valuable assets are a 1994 Honda, a two-year-old computer and a collection of Magic cards. But I have no dependents and no debt except for whatever's on my credit card this month — I'm rich, baby!)

"When in doubt, deny all terms and definitions." — Bill Watterson

I'd say the top 25% are rich, the middle 50% are middle class, and the bottom 25% are poor. If I were guessing I'd say income of over $200,000 per year would put you in that category.

Rich: $100K+ in income; top 10%

Wealthy: $200k+ in income; significant unearned income.

If maintaining your living expenses is dependent on having a salary next year, you cannot possibly be rich.

That's just a weird argument.

You could always go with the classic class analysis and say that how rich you are can be measured by how many poorer people support your standard of living,

Though I'm almost inclined to go with Chris Rock: "Shaq is rich; the white guy who signs his check... is wealthy."

(And Floccina may be rich, but he/she ain't coherent.)

That's just a weird argument.

Yes, it is a bit weird.

But the guy who's wealthy enough that his house is paid for or his mortgage is just an accounting arrangement because he makes more money on his investments isn't depending on his salary to live year to year-- he's rich. The mid-level law firm associate who makes $150k/yr while having to pay down his law school debt and afford his mortgage isn't. But he will be rich in 10-20 years.

I live in Canada's biggest city in the downtown area. I would say comfortably middle-class is $200,000 for a family of four. Rich? At least $500,000, maybe a million a year. (Remember, our dollar is now at par with yours).

For me, rich means able to do whatever the heck you want (a weekend in Paris, skiing in the Rockies, a big house, private school for the kids) without having to ask yourself if you can afford it. You certainly can't do any of these things without getting into serious debt if your family income is $200,000/year. Not that I'm saying that any of this is actually necessary, but I would love to take off for Paris on a whim...

I like the approach of Molly McRae (and Chris Howard), but I also like that of FearItself.

My family has HHI of about $125,000 a year from two workers, which is about the 90th percentile here in New York City. Upper Middle Class, more or less. Large apartment in an unfashionable neighborhood, public school, opera subscription.

Fropm observation of old college friends, I'd say the people in households with incomes of $250,000 or so (guessing), which is near the 95th percentile for the city, live differently enough from us that they don't really know what it's like. They are surprised to hear what we can't do.

If you don't know what it's like to live as low as th 90th percentile, maybe you're rich.

Tyro, I'm willing to exclude school loan payments (and perhaps others I haven't thought of) from a person's income in determining their social status. School loans specifically (as opposed to home/car loans) because you're not purchasing anything other than the ability to work a certain job. Paying through the nose to live in a highrise condo is part of the "rich" lifestyle while paying back loans so you can work 70 hours a week isn't. So I'd say the associate/resident making $200k per year but paying $25k per year in school loans probably doesn't qualify as rich, though even then they're pretty close. Me, I'm making almost $60k per year and making $12k loan payments per year, so I don't exactly feel sorry for my hypothetical associate.

My gut reaction was top 20%, or anything over $120,000 a year.

But between gut-check & the 30 seconds it took to get to writing this comment, I'll revise and say that for a few locales, you need to have 10-15% more because of cost of living. Sure living somewhere expensive is a "choice" but it's not exactly the same type of choice as whether to get a bigmac or a whopper.

I'd also point out that 120k doesn't make you "really rich," just rich. Similarly, you can be a poor guy w/out health insurance making less than 15k a year... but that doesn't put you in dirt poverty.

My finale caveats would be that it also depends on if you have kids / dependents. And obviously net assets matter just as much as income.

The table I keep in my head / gut looks something like this:

under 10k - poverty / dirt poor
10-15k - poor
15-25k - working class / working poor
25k-35k - working class
35k-55k - middle class
55-70k - middle class & upwardly mobile
70k-100k - upper middle class
100k-120k - upper middle class / professional class
120k-250k - rich
250k-400k - really rich
400k - 1 million - really really rich
1 million+ - filthy rich.

after that the nomenclature is based on the amont of money you have- e.g. Millionaire, Multimillionaire, Billionaire.

-----------

final thought after reading a few other answers:

maybe I begin the rich line lower than other commenters because I grew up "dirt poor" (by my naming scheme). I bet the kids of people in the 80k-120k range would start the rich line a bit higher.

1. Top 10%
2. Right now, 300k+ annually in all forms.

After reading other posts, and thinking a bit, I think I'm going to have to adjust my percent answer down to, oh, let's say the top 10-15%, which is probably a lot closer to my $200,000 per year(which I stick by) than 25% was.

Still, I bet even that adjustment still doesn't make them match up...

5%
$125 K or more

15% more than what I make.

AZ Escapee wrote:

Floccina's position that fat folks are by definition rich doesn't hold for a non-agrarian society. Time to exercise, a safe place to do so, and easy access to fresh produce can be very hard to come by if you're poor. High-fat, starchy dreck is cheap and universally available.

If you go to a poor country you will see that the poor there, in the country or in the city, are never fat. Even the truly poor here in USA, the homeless, are not fat.

One can exercise anywhere (sit-ups, pushups, squats thrusts, jumping jacks etc.). If the place is not safe it is the fault of one’s neighbors not a result of poverty. We USAers have excessive fear of the “poor” and “poor areas”.

Fresh produce like collards and mustard greens are cheaper than just about anything, you can often get them free, but caned will do. High-fat, starchy dreck is often fortified with enough vitamins and minerals and certainly with a one a day vitamin is plenty nutritious. Further more I bet very, very few Americans are suffering from vitamin/mineral/amino acid deficiencies. I support a medical mission to the Dominican Republic. The people who go down there like to take lots of vitamins because the people there have vitamin deficiency diseases that they just do not see here. They tell the people there to break the vitamins in 4 pieces to stretch them because a ¼ of a one a day is plenty.

top 25% in the US

$100,000 or more for a family of four

87%
sp
122,000

Two standard deviations above the mean, whatever that is...

Top 2%.

Spike - if only it were normally distributed. But this is definitely power-law territory, not a bell curve, dammit...

I say $100K plus $40/hr that you actually, productively, work in a year. So $180K for a full-time worker (probably a professional or manager); $100K in investment income is enough by itself.

1. top quintile or decile
2. anyone who spends less than 50% on `necessities' post-tax - housing, utilities, transport, health care, education, etc. i.e. anyone who could, if they wanted to, save 50% of post-tax income.
3. anyone who can afford to give 15% away?

for a concrete number, I'd guess 130-150k a year starts to get into rich territory.

I'll only quibble with your #2 roublen: Even rich people buy houses and cars that they can barely afford.

It's hard to really answer this question without taking cost of living into account.

100K / year doesn't get you the same life in Manhattan as it does in other nice places to live (and yes, there are a few of those outside NYC).

In general, I'd say that the "rich" are the people in the top 10 - 15% of the people in the relevant area. Broadly defined as some area big enough that the top 15% of urban poor aren't considered rich, but small enough that people who everyone around them think about as rich, aren't considered middle class because they're not investment bankers in NYC.

What income this corresponds to will vary with the area.

ok. I live in Manhattan. I make somewhere north of 125K. I pay a shitload of taxes (federal, state and city income). I rent (going rate for a one-bedroom in my hood is about 4K a month. I pay more like 2500 a month to live with roommates). I have about 160K in student loans. I'm single. I deduct jackshit on my taxes.

yeah, statistically I'm rich. but not really. not at Manhattan prices.

Top 10%.
> $200,000

I was just about to gripe more about how much this is relative to location (as someone who spent his 20s in the rural Midwest and 30s in LA), 5:16PM above illustrates the point perfectly. If I had 125k in Ann Arbor, I'd be doing quite nicely. In LA, the median house price was 600k before the bubble burst, and the median house was pretty shitty. 125k doesn't go very far around here in most places.

Leave Manhattan or SoCal or quit your whining. You all act like living in a great city or with 300 days of sunshine isn't a lifestyle choice that you have decided to pay for.