For Millionaires ‘Wealthy’ Is $7.5 Million, Fidelity Says

[elsewhen]

I have heard elsewhere that people gnerally say that they would be "wealthy" at twice their current net worth. So, I wasn't surprised to read that the average net worth of the 1000 head's of household in the sample had a net worth of $3.5MM.

[petercooper]

Though this rule falls down a bit when your net worth is negative ;-)

[sunchild]

I've always put the low-end cutoff for "wealthy" at "can I comfortably live on interest, assuming a reasonable annual return?"

[splat]

Unfortunately, your definition for "live comfortably" tends to change as you accumulate more money.

[daimyoyo]

I'd need about $30mm. At that amount, I can have an income above the US median off t-bills alone. Having said that, I'm sure if and or when I actually have that kind of money, I probably wouldn't be so conservative with it, but that's the baseline.

[ChuckMcM]

This is perhaps the interesting bit, using the 10 year t-bill rate to compute what it would take to make the median income. (its not $30M at the moment though, median income is $47,127 [1] federal, state, and other employment taxes reduce that to under $40,000 (that would be your 'take home' pay)) You will want health care however which depending on your age will add $500 - $2500 a month. So more like $60K). Now 10 yr bill are currently at 3.25% so you only need $1.85 million in 10 yr T-bills to pay you that amount of income. $30M in t-bills is about $975K / year which is way above the median.

[1] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_weal...

[TimothyFitz]

Here's the original source, which has the raw data with less editorializing: http://www.fidelity.com/inside-fidelity/individual-investing...

And here's the same survey from last year for comparison: http://www.fidelity.com/inside-fidelity/corporate/fidelity-s...

[Jabbles]

The title was based on this paragraph. Only those that did not already feel wealthy contributed to the $7.5M figure.

among those who classified themselves as not feeling wealthy, the investable asset level needed to begin to feel wealthy is $7.5 million.

Of the 58 percent of millionaires who say they feel wealthy -- up slightly from 54 percent in 2009 -- they began to feel so at $1.75 million in investable assets,

[danielayele]

Interesting how close this is to the statistical value of a life (dated, but see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/10/american-life-worth...).