So quickly my definition of wealthy is when your investments or passive income can cover your retirement basic living expenses. That is when you have financial freedom to chose if you want to go to work.

Rich means not having to budget or watch your spending at all.


Wealthy can vary by individual and their lifestyle expenses. Higher expenses need more investment to cover them.

So for me and my expenses one could be wealthy on 40k, 50 with some extra for unexpected expenses or vacation.

So depding on your lifestyle, expenses, and investments/portfolio returns my definition of wealthy could be meet on 40 to 50 k.

The reall kicker is what people think when they hear a person is worth a million or a millionaire. The general population thinks thet means they have a million they can spend when in reality they could be worth a million and have not much liquid accessible cash available. The number of millionaires has exploded with the increas in housing and the market growth. And most of them.

All that worth may be tied up in their home, land, business, retirement accounts or other wise hard to utilize.

Everyone perception is based on their life experience. Often those perceptions are distorted.

40 K Doesn't sound like much but takes a million dollars at 4% to obtain it. And that takes time and dedication.

All that said if you have a warm home, food, healthy family and job that covers your bills you are historically rich well beyond most throughout history. Being born in America we have won the loto. Even the poor here live better than a large % of people in the world.

Went to a few funerals lately that make me reevaluate. A fellow retired friend said it best..."Health is Wealth"

I can agree with that PF.

Really depends on where you live and your comfort level.
When i lived in Michigan 25 years ago the 70 g a year i made put me in the upper middle class just living basic with a family and 4 kids moved to Nevada at the same pay and was upper poor. Housing was double as were food and gas costs.

Nevada where i live median housing costs are over 500g. Can only build out so far before its public ground out here which keeps costs high.

I could sell my 70 acers an 2 bedroom house here for just over 500g and buy something in the midwest or south and have 100 acres and a 2500 sq ft house shop and barn for 500g.

So here poor is 75g a year
Middle is 75 to 200g
Rich is 250 to 500g
Wealthy is 1 milla year and up

Know some wealthy folks and the ones that earned it and didn't inherit it look like you should offer them a coffe or a buck to help out.

Remember one thing............Money Talks ..and Wealth Whispers

Poor is having to rub two nickles together to make a dime, middle class making enough to live to the next pay check, wealthy is having more money than the first two classes to pay the cost of living with enough left to buy extras, Rich ya dont care because you got the money to do what you want cost of living is a no worry,

All these questions are of the same ending, one cannot judge another by what they feel makes them worthy of happiness, wealth or having health, for me any way. It's all the same outcome, what ever makes you survive, or move one, or just be !

That's what makes us so different from animals, they are beholding to survival and have to change daily to survive on what they do to have it. We as humans for the most part handle that fairly well to continue to survive, the extra we do or get makes things more enjoyable, better or worse how ever your temperament is

We all can say well I need this or I can get by with out that at one time or another, that to me has no bearing of whether you are living well, or have more than most, what's more than most LOL, who feels better than another !

I'm just happy to be able to enjoy what I have, whether I attain more or lose something of what I have, sure it makes one feel a lot about good things or sad about bad things, we all have that, how can you determine thats good for another or bad for another by comparing ?

One thing is certain.......poor or rich ......you aint taking non of it with you

Anti has it correct never seen a hearse with a,trailer

Being Poor, Middle Class, Rich or Wealthy, are the differences, IMO, of knowing you’re stable in YOUR priorities of life and living and having a FAMILY that is NOT just related by blood, but by LOYALTY. . . which appear to be rare in today's world. :-(

Money is just money.

We all wanna make it, myself included.

But in the end, it means little........

I'm one of the richest people I know, but we don't have a lot of money.

… you spent it all on Christmas decorations big man

That's part of the richness.

"Living poor is like being sentenced to exist in a stormy sea in a battered canoe, requiring all your strength simply to keep afloat; there is never any question of reaching a destination. true poverty is a state of perpetual crisis, and one wave just a little bigger or coming from an unexpected direction can and usually does wreck things. Some benevolent ignorance denies a poor man the ability to see the squalid sequence of his life, except very rarely; he views it rather as a disconnected string of unfortunate sadnesses. Never having paddled on a calm sea, he is unable to imagine one. I think if he could connect the chronic hunger, the sickness, the death of children, the almost unrelieved physical and emotional tension into the pattern that his life inevitably takes he would kill himself."

-From Ecuadorian Peace Corps volunteer Moritz Thompsen who lived on Ecuador's north coast as a volunteer in the 60's.

But one of my favorite lines was from an old boy that used to work for us..."If at present it cost five cents to poop I would have to vomit instead".

Not sure where in the Midwest you're going to have all that for 500 grand. It sure isn't going to be in southwest WI which is not around any large cities. I'm pretty sure you couldn't buy the 100 acres of land for 500K let alone the house, shop and barn. I know of 175 acres of land for sale some crop ground and some woods. Asking price 1.8 million.

Been looking at Missouri and Around there, Wi is upper midwest

Not in this part of the Midwest lol. South of me about an hour just had 4 tracts of land sell for 4.7 million dollars and not positive but I believe it was maybe 400 acres total. The house went for 125,000 which needed a lot of work and came with 2 or 3 acres

Some people are so poor, all they have is money.