Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yeah and those making 300K can buy a much nicer car(s) house and better food. If they were smart, they would buy a smaller (who really needs 4K sq feet or more?) house, a car that isn't a Benz, Mercedes, ect- live within your means
300K a year IS rich- I don't care who you try to tell it isn't
Again, we all define rich so differently.
To me the truly rich NEVER have to consider living within their means. Their investments make way more than they could spend annually. They are paying such high taxes that they donate a small fortune to charities each year.
They start foundations helping their favorite causes - schools, hospitals, disease research.
If you think you can be rich on 300k, you are not using your imagination enough - you must have, when you were young, have thought about the REALLY rich sometimes?
Do the words 'filthy rich' have meaning?
Not 'middle class rich', but filthy.
I keep seeing the argument that people define being rich by accumulated wealth and not by your yearly income or salary. I'm going to make the argument that if you make $300,000 a year and are unable to save or accumulate more wealth with an income stream like that, you obviously are not very financially savvy. I guess some people feel they have to have a bigger house, more cars, more toys--it's common at all income levels, people refuse to live frugally and save money and insist on living above their means. I only make about $50,000 a year, and I managed to save and smartly invest a good chunk of change in the last seven years since graduating college.
If less than .09% of the population makes more than $300,000 a year and $300,000 a year isn't considered rich, then a lot of Americans need to stop imagining that they will ever be rich... My parents never made over $150,000 a year, but through some clever investments and saving they acquired a sizable amount of wealth--enough that their friends and family all considered them to be "rich".
My concept of rich is probably what your folks might have thought was rich after living in their income category for a bit.
Don't forget how inflation made your parent's income much larger than it appears today, too.
It used to be thought that people who won the million dollar lottery were rich. Well, the income generated by such an investment after taxes means people don't give up their day job.
Investing was a lot easier during the Clinton balanced budget 'boom' years in the market. Those who had some bucks to invest then made out like bandits, if they knew when to pull out.
There is a difference between 'comfortable and happy' and 'rich'. Rich hire full time money managers just for their account.
Wealth is not a "shoulda been" concept. There are other issues that folks are introducing that blur the line. Wealth is simply a numbers threshold. No sense of fairness, shoulda beens, no grading curve to punish stupidity. Whether one is wealthy should be an aoral numbers threshold.
A person who makes a lot of money and is an idiot for losing it all . . . ISN'T WEALTHY OR RICH. He's stupid.
My concept of rich is probably what your folks might have thought was rich after living in their income category for a bit.
Don't forget how inflation made your parent's income much larger than it appears today, too.
It used to be thought that people who won the million dollar lottery were rich. Well, the income generated by such an investment after taxes means people don't give up their day job.
Investing was a lot easier during the Clinton balanced budget 'boom' years in the market. Those who had some bucks to invest then made out like bandits, if they knew when to pull out.
There is a difference between 'comfortable and happy' and 'rich'. Rich hire full time money managers just for their account.
True, in fact there should be a distinction between wealthy and rich. You can be middle-class, but happy as a clam. I would not hesitate to agree if someone felt they were rich because of that. But, in that sense, that wouldn't give the government the right to tax that dude for being happy and content, lol. Although no doubt they'd try.
If everyone was middle class and happy as a clam, congress would undoubtedly pass the Happy As A Clam Tax! The 1040 would ask just one question...how much do you earn, and it would have just one line of instruction....send it to the IRS.
We have a annual family income of over $300,000 per annum...that puts us in the top 99.8 percentile of incomes in the world (that's even adjusted for cheaper cost of living in other parts of the globe)...by any reasonable standard this is 'rich'. The problem comes with our societies superficial obsession with possessions and celebrity. Too many young people (and more then a few so called mature folks) seem to have the idea that if they aren't driving BMW or Escalade to high school, that they or, in actual fact, their parents are not successful. Shows like CRIBS, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and My Sweet 16, enforce this ridiculous idea. If you want proof look at the number of people on this forum whinning that $300,000 isn't 'wealthy'. It's no wonder we are in the current credit mess we are in...decadence...the final stage before the fall of most empires throughout history.
I've seen this question 'debated' on at least half a dozen forums - nobody seems to be able to define exactly what is "RICH". A small businessman with 20 employees and an income of 200K is certainly not "rich" - he may barely be hanging on while he grows his business and pays his employees. A family income of 250K does not make a family "millionaires & billionaires" - but the politicians refer to them that way. It's all nonsense and hyperbole.
It's clear to me that "RICH" is just having more money than somebody else.
We live in an Envy society.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Does an income of $300,000 make someone rich?
