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".

Someone once said to me that the difference between being rich or not was whether you were worried about things like your washing machine breaking. Of course, there are people who have so much money they don't know what to do with it, but if you live in a nice house on a good salary and can buy everything you need, and most of the things you want you're doing ok.

I think we are probably 'rich' especially compared to our relatives or my childhood. We live in a house that is modest by some standards, but one that I would never have realistically considered possible growing up or even as a young adult. I don't think I would ever try to claim not to be rich (and our income is not as much as the OP). We are incredibly lucky, even if some people do have more..

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

Well I don't earn that much. I mean, some weeks I do, but not every week.

OP you are well off and comfortable.
Breaker is rich

I am down the other end of the scale by comparison.

I earn about £22k, live in an expensive area and consider myself well-off.

My parents are on £60k a year. They also protest when I refer to them as rich, but they never have to think about going out for a meal, replacing stuff around the house, buying new clothes etc. That's definitely rich to me. I'm not sure why so many people don't like to be considered rich, or even seem to consider it some sort of insult. Being rich is not equivalent to spending needlessly, spoiling your kids or being a bad person?

Not having to make any more choices is not a good indicator if someone is rich. Even the superwealthy may lament having to choose between buying an island and funding a trip to the moon. If you can afford anything you want, then why haven't you solved world hunger yet?

Having no choices is a sign of poverty, though.

I would say over £35-40k is rich for a single household, and over £60-65k for a family with kids. Comfortably well-off is the roughly up until £20k below those household incomes. There are people who are rich on less (people who have loads of assets for example), but even if you have bills and debts I would still consider you rich at this point because of the options you have.

My husband makes 250k+ a year, we have 3 kids in private school, I'm a SAHM, we go on 3-5 vacations throughout the year and I think we are middle class. Def not rich

Try having £10 in your purse to last you 11 days.

How do you know she hasn't tried that? Lots of rich people used to be poor.

I hate all this "you should see what it's like living on blah blah blah", when they may well know perfectly well what it's like.

I don't consider you rich OP. Comfortable but not rich. There are so many more affluent people out there.

Im on my 2nd marriage. Dh already owned his house outright when we married so no mortgage. He works and earns about 17k, I choose not to work and live on money from the sale of my house approx. 60k. I pay for food, he pays for bills. No dependant children anymore. I consider myself rich in all sorts of ways and very,very lucky.

To me, Rich would be no need to worry if I get made redundant.

So I guess mortgage paid off, and sufficient savings for the family to survive comfortably for five years.

I've had cousins call me the rich bitch when I refused to pay his rent for the year on the basis "I can afford it so why not"

Where is that supposed to end? Do you have to buy him a new car after you've paid his rent?

That's really cheeky.

I actually think that 'rich' means not having to work, being able to live off investments or savings and inheritance.

Clearly the OP is very comfortable. She has obviously never had to worry about buying food or a utility bill but to me 'rich' is what i'd use to describe those who have second homes in monaco or buy up property in central london.

there really is a very very wide gulf between poverty or just scraping out of poverty and being 'rich'. every level has their worries - saving for a rent deposit is out of reach for some families, saving for a house deposit is another level up, many families have bought a house but have monthly stress about paying the mortgage plus necessary bills, other families pay for private school but struggle to do that, once you can pay for any level of schooling you choose then you enter 'money no object' territory and are heading towards being rich.

Hmm. It's all relative. I was earning £65k before quitting to travel. I own two flats in London. I don't feel that rich though. Especially now I'm funemployed and only income is rental.

Thanks everyone.

I know we're very comfortable but I would never have said we're rich. I just wondered if I was being blinkered and actually my "dear" family were correct rather than as I suspect, having chips the size of a forest on their shoulder.

The OP's questions was in the context of rich paying more taxes not the Sunday Times Rich list which is really only the seriously mega wealthy

any household paying higher rate tax is better off than approx 81.8% of population in the UK

about 14-18% of population pay normal higher rate tax ( depending on source) and only 1.2% of population pay higher still rate of 45/46% on incomes of over £150,000 so only 1 in 6 people earn more than 45K and only 1 in a 100 earn more than 150K
in the UK and even in London most people earn less than 45K, the average salary in London being 34K

1. Nicola Sturgeon and SNP define it as a higher rate tax payer as the allowance has not gone up compared with England so it starts at about 45K not 50K
2. The labour party also think higher rate tax payers and especially those on more than 100K
3. Even the conservatives believe that the better off should pay more taxes albeit on a lower sliding scale at roughly 50/100/150K

so it seems in conclusion that in terms of politicians and tax that rich starts at about 50K for an individual

My husband is on 95k with a £30k annual bonus (approx). I'm on 33k for 4 days per week (so 41k FTE). Our mortgage on a two bed flat in London is £1350 a month. Approx 45k in savings.

We are comfortable but I would not say we are rich.

My husband makes 250k+ a year, we have 3 kids in private school, I'm a SAHM, we go on 3-5 vacations throughout the year and I think we are middle class. Def not rich

I'd consider myself rich if I could afford all that.

It depends where you live I suppose

I am in London, from elsewhere in the U.K

I would consider perhaps (per person ideally);

Need to be careful as £2k and under for outside London
Need to be careful as £5k and under for London

Comfortable to be £2.5-3.5k take home.
Comfortable to be £6k-10k take home in London

Very comfortable to be £4k-7.5k take home
Very comfortable to be £10k ish in London

Wealthy would be beyond £7.5k take home
Wealthy to be beyond £10k a month in London

Very wealthy to be £15-20k per month take home.
Very wealthy to be £25k a month in London and beyond

Rich again comes in stages

I think firstly, rich is being able to frequently increase property portfoilio and buy a luxury care without much problem or concern

Further to that, is another scale, those able to frequently purchase million pound properties, owning jets, owning yachts, owning a collection of luxury cars, owning exquisite pieces of jewellery, having shares, investments and own businesses that run themselves and generate an income for the rest of your life so you wouldn't need to worry.

I'd be interested in a reverse thread - what do you consider poor?

I agree with the poster who said that most rich people aren't PAYE so the relatively small number of taxpayers (1%) who actually pay the 45p rate of tax will never increase tax revenue significantly. Most "rich" people ime are self employed rather than PAYE employees

It's irrelevant. The mega-rich who don't pay taxes through PAYE are so small in number (comparatively to national population I mean) that they won't affect what percentage us normal folk fall into by very much at all. Maybe a percentage point or two.

I don't like perpetuating this idea that because the mega-wealthy earn tons, people on 250k a year are not rich. They may not be THE RICHEST but they absolutely are rich, regardless of the size of the mortgage on their 6 bedroom barn conversion in the home counties or how many times they go on holiday to the Caribbean per year.

I don't like perpetuating this idea that because the mega-wealthy earn tons, people on 250k a year are not rich. They may not be THE RICHEST but they absolutely are rich, regardless of the size of the mortgage on their 6 bedroom barn conversion in the home counties or how many times they go on holiday to the Caribbean per year.

You speak sense.

I manage perfectly well on the income I have, give or take my dismal prospects for retirement and as along as I don't get made redundant or have to survive unemployed for long

I would feel rich if I had or could:

Pension/ savings big enough to retire on same income as when working.
Capital that earns or creates income - property or significant investments.
Mortgage free, and probably a second property also mortgage free, or paying for itself in terms of rental income etc.
Able to walk into a dealership and buy the car of your choice (within normal on-the-road cars) without making other budget considerations
Able to support offspring through Uni without incurring a student loan
Easily able to put down a deposit on first home for your offspring.
Can go on holiday to a reasonable degree (long haul 4* hotel , 2 weeks and a few half term and mini breaks without tight budgetting

I don't discuss our income with friends at all. May occasionally be mentioned in passing with family, but none of them would question us about it, or us them. Op, your family/friends can only know what you earn if you tell them, although I suppose the cat is out of the bag now. I always thought it was bad manners to talk, unprompted, about what one has, but I am probably being old fashioned.
I remember reading about Saudi princes and their top of the range cars. They are/were so loaded that even if they got just a flat tyre they would abandon them and order another (this story may be apocryphal!) If true that is what i would call rich (and stupid).
However much money you have, it is useless unless you also have your health. I am retired and I was hoping to once again buy and keep a horse, like I did in my youth. Arthritis has put paid to that. If you are young and have money, make the most of what you can do while you still have youthful vigour.

To put it in perspective, I'm single and my income is about 1/3 of your combined income but I have the same mortgage. So yes you're a lot richer than many people. But there will be a lot of people richer than you. However you don't have to be earning very much to be doing substantially better than a really very large proportion of the country, inequality is a growing problem.

To me, rich is not working and living off interest and not having to touch your principle

Lots of people are very comfortable financially. Very few are rich.

Essentially, somebody who lives on 4x as much as you do will definitely seem rich. Whereas somebody who lives on a quarter of what you do will always seem poor.

In between those you can usually identify just enough with the person that even if you think "They're well off" or "They're struggling" it won't quite tip the balance.

It's an interesting formula which was pointed out to me and I think it's quite well done TBH.

I’d say it comes down to if you own your property and what your disposable income is.
In the op’s case they would be in a position pretty quickly to pay if their mortgage and be left with disposable income after all costs of at least £6k a month which I would consider rich.