To ask what people consider rich....

[Imoen]

I'm possibly going to be flamed but Im genuinely curious. I keep reading on thread about its ok for the "rich" or the rich are getting richer etc....

I've also had several conversations with friends/family and often the throw away comment is "its ok for you, you're rich".

Thing is, I don't think we are. To me rich is not having to worry about working again.

WE both have very very good salaries which I'm grateful for an I know we're lucky (me 90K, him 60K) and we have a mortgage on a 4 bed house worth 280K. (130K left to pay).

But I would not say we are "rich".

but there is worry that you can't afford to pay utility bills, rent/mortgage, school dinner money etc and there's worry that you might not be able to keep up aspects of your well off lifestyle - they're very different.

true, but I think it makes the distinction with comfortable people, not rich ones.

The people my friend works for multi £billions. Houses/farms in many places bodyguards etc

@Imoen I have a household income similar to yours and yes I think we should pay more in tax and I would be happy to do so if our infrastructures were fairer and the taxes were truly going to the benefit of all. However, I think when most people talk about the rich getting richer, they are talking about the very wealthy. Wealth breeds wealth.

Rich is a 25k salary and above to me. Very rich is anything above 50k.

I suppose if you live in a place where you can pay off your mortgage and have savings on 13k a year, you can have that view. Where I live it's simply not true.

I would add that some people with a lower income have more disposable cash because of various benefits and tax credits than their neighbour on a higher income.

good income.& comfortable income where a family can live easily (maybe with a sahm) and where luxuries aren't an issue.

e.g. friends of mine: DH is s solicitor, she is a sahm, 3 DC under 10. two holidays abroad every year. living in a lovely 5 bed detached house in a good area. two nice cars, always stylish and expensive clothes, my friend gets her hair done every months, nails done etc... i.e. they don't have to watch the pennies. they are far from being millionaires but that is rich in my book...

As people are saying its all relative.

At the moment, I have done a food shop and now wondering if the £3 on the electrical meter is going to last till Monday.

Anyone who doesn't have that worry is rich in my eyes at the moment

I think there’s a difference between comfortable, rich and wealthy.

Wealthy would be when you’re heading towards £500k

Comfortable is two decentish salaries but below £100k

Rich is in the middle.

Value of house and equity notwithstanding.

I'd love to know what people like breaker, Imoen and Lifecraft do! Along with all the people who are debt free. You are all rich to me. Breaker - you're proper loaded - hats off to you!

I earn £35k which I always thought was a great wage. But I'm in a lot of debt and have a shit credit rating (thanks ex).
I wish I could be debt free - as it stands at the moment it'll take me about 10 years to clear.
Someone up thread said money was just numbers on a spreadsheet - it is for me too - but that spreadsheet keeps me awake at night thinking how the hell am I going to make ends meet until the end of the month.

Any ideas on how to earn an extra £1k a month on top of my full time job would be very gratefully received!!

Depends on how you look at it. You have a good income, but you still have debt in the form of a mortgage. It might be different if you owned your house outright.

Being rich is a state of mind. If you don't feel rich, then you probably aren't. You are rich when you are happy with what you have and don't feel the need for more wealth in your life.

You have definitely invited a lot of stealth gloating on here now OP.

Oh come on. op has a household income of £150k.

The apprentice at my work thinks I am rich - and to be honest when I was inhis porition many moons ago I probably thought th people at my grade were rich too.

I would class myself as comfortable. Bills always paid, can afford food, to run an (old and by no means fancy) car put into savings and still have a reasonable amount left over for frivulous spends. However I do budget every month with spreadsheet and I do constantly have finances at the back of my mind (the future, pensions, what if the car dies etc) and there are definitely things I woulkd like but cannot afford/justify buying. I think rich (financially) to me would be not having to worry about money. but then I think i bet even rich people do! What if their investments fall, tax bills etc.

I think rich would be no or very low mortgage on a a large home, nice car and being able to buy what you want without having to save/work out how many hours work it actually costs etc. That said the few "rich" people I knowdon't really to spend "frivulously"

Money is on my mind alot just now because I just withdrew from an interview for a job with a considerable payrise to take another on the current pay.

It's all relative to someone's individual situation I suppose.

You’re in the 1-2% highest earning households, so yes, you are rich by any normal, non millionaire standards

You are rich and live in extraordinary privilege that you can't see that.

Either that or you are a bored GF.

Oh come on. hmm op has a household income of £150k.

yes, so? Doesn't make her rich by all means. You should calculate how much money they spend on tax and how much help they don't get as opposed to others for a start.

To me rich is having a few million in the bank.

Earning 100k is well off. It's not rich.

I think what many see as rich is actually comfortable- financially rich to me is multi millionaires - but then being financially rich has its own issues and someone can be poor financially but richer in other areas where a multimillionaire is poor.

Rich to me means having all the love, support, health and money you need to not have to worry about a lack of any of them

I think you are pretty well off income wise that's all. Wealthy means you have really substantial accumulated assets which you don't. People who are high net worth have a portfolio of different investments and income streams and assets upwards of several million. They might use a fund manager and private banking. Their money might be very tied up, so in that sense not necessarily rich as such. People who I consider to be rich have everything that high net worth people have plus a readily available disposable income on top to enjoy day to day.

yes, so? Doesn't make her rich by all means. You should calculate how much money they spend on tax and how much help they don't get as opposed to others for a start

Oh fuck off! They have a small mortgage, at a time of historically low interest rates (and they could easily clear that mortgage very quickly with their vast disposable income if they chose), and no children. They have low living costs and high incomes. They have masses of money left over every month! Hence the carribean holidays.....

For most homeowners, housing costs/mortgage size is a lifestyle choice. Living in an expensive area/property rather than commuting from a cheaper area/property is a choice - as are school fees.

Feb HT skiing is a marker of wealth imo. Skiing could never be considered cheap/budget ime - not when you have to pay £200+ pp for a weekly lift pass alone in Europe (even with avoiding France/Switzerland and large resorts) so that's £800+ for a family of 4 to even get up a mountain let alone everything else. You can scrimp on travel/accommodation/food but you can't scrimp much on a lift pass beyond a small discount via a local operator.

This is a good definition:
"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."
(Henry David Thoreau)

For some that might require a lot of money; for others not. If you don't have good health you can never be wealthy no matter how much money you have.

I'd say you are stinking rich you earn at least 7 times more than our family income, and we consider ourselves comfortable.
Surely, it's what you choose to spend not what you earn that determines whether you are financially rich or not.

You can be rich in so many other areas though, but purely financially, I think it's when you can afford luxuries, once you've paid for the necessities. If you can afford to deal in wants as well as needs you are rich.
Necessary, roof over head, food in belly, clothes to keep warm.

Being rich isn't just about how much you earn, it's about how much you spend.

You could buy a nice 3 bed house in the southeast for 600k and live with a lifetime of debt, or you could buy a 2 bed terrace in the northeast for 60k and pay your mortgage off in a few short years.

You could spend 20k on a car on credit and spend the next 10 years paying it off, or you could buy a bike for £100 and never owe anyone anything.

You could spend thousands and thousands on clothes every year with a credit card and get yourself into debt, or you could buy a few nice second hand things on ebay and at carboot sales, buy £2 bras in Primark and never owe anyone anything.

Rich to me is never owing anyone anything. Lifestyle is nowhere near as important as this.

To me, it's relative. Coming from a family where wages are always below the average, anyone on say £40k+ seems rich to me.

Surely, it's what you choose to spend not what you earn that determines whether you are financially rich or not.

I think it is is fairer to judge it by what you earn, because everything you spend is a choice.
Person earns 90k but spends it all on a massive house, good cars, holidays, private education, lovely furniture, private healthcare or insurance, whatever it is they feel they want. Then they say "well because we have so many outgoings we aren't left with much, so we aren't rich". But none of the stuff spend was necessary and if you weren't rich you couldn't have afforded it in the first place.

Definitely a relative concept.

I feel incredibly rich as we are in a £60k (pre-tax) household with no mortgage. Our decisions are sometimes financially based (e.g. holidays) but we can have a meal out if we feel like it and we never have to stress about school trips and the like or new shoes for the children. To me, that is rich. That said we have no savings (as a result of having paid off the mortgage) and we couldn't afford to send our kids to private school or be holidaying in the Caribbean.

I do think we should pay more tax. I think everyone over a certain level needs to pay more tax.

Wife and I work in the public sector, low level, with joint income (take home) of around £42k After mortgage and debts that’s about £24k, bills take it to £14k and so on.

Have about £300 ‘disposable’ income a month so car (bought 10 years old) breaks down etc we loose it all. No foreign holidays, shop in Aldi, don’t go out, no Sky package. But I’d say we’re comfortable and living by our means. In old terms I’d now be middle class.

However, when I met my wife our income was half that, we had no kids, smaller house (one bed flat) and yet still had £300 disposable income.

As others have said. It’s all relative. I would