Average American: $150,000 Per Year Would Make Me Rich



Money bag and gold coins - IllustrationAccording to a recent Gallup poll, Americans "say that they would need to earn a median of $150,000 a year to consider themselves rich".

Gallup conducted a poll and asked this question - "Just thinking about your own situation, how much money per year would you need to make in order to consider yourself rich?" Here is how the answers broke down:

Less Than $60,000 - 18%
$60,000 - $99,999 - 12%
$100,000 - $150,000 - 23%
$150,001 - $299,999 - 18%
$300,000 - $999,999 - 14%
$1 million - 11%
More than $1 million - 4%

Gallup reveals that they conducted the same poll back in 2003, and the median "rich" level at that time was $120,000 per year.

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Gallup broke down the answers by subgroup, and some of the results were pretty interesting.

For instance, men tagged $150,000 as the amount of money that they would need to make per year in order to feel "rich", while women listed a median amount of $100,000.

Respondents between the ages of 18-49 years said that they would need to make $160,000 per year in order to feel "rich", while people over 50 said that they would need just $100,000 per year in order to feel wealthy.

College graduates said that they would need to be making $200k per year in order to feel "rich", while college nongraduates said they would need just $100k.

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In terms of net worth, the median figure that Americans said that they would need to feel "rich" was $1 million.

Interestingly enough, a full 22% of those surveyed said that they would feel "rich" with a total net worth of $100,000 or less.

On the other hand, 14% of those surveyed said that they would need a net worth of at least $5,000,000 in order to feel rich.

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So - how much money would you need to be making per year (or have in the bank) in order to feel like you were "rich"?

Source: Gallup.com - Americans Set "Rich" Threshold at $150,000 in Annual Income

Filed under: General Knowledge

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