3 ms·

I always defined "rich" as being independently wealthy, and 5M is plenty to achieve that.

• tesseract 18y ago
  Taking that line of reasoning further, a reasonable definition of "independently wealthy" might be, "able to maintain an upper-middle-class lifestyle on investment income alone, while also growing one's capital at or above the rate of inflation". (That last part is to distinguish the truly "independently wealthy" from retirees who may be living off their investments, but can only do so by drawing down the principal.) Under that definition, $5M seems to be around the lower limit of wealth necessary to achieve this. As others have mentioned, you will be paying for your own healthcare, and you will also be paying capital gains rather than regular income tax on all of your income. To sustain a flamboyantly "rich" lifestyle on investments alone, the lower limit of necessary wealth is probably more like $30-$50M. That's, of course, significantly harder to achieve (Wikipedia says 95k people worldwide are this wealthy). In fact, the groups of people I can think of who are typically associated with such flamboyant lifestyles (Fortune 500 execs, financiers, entertainment icons) do not, as a rule, do so based on their investments alone - rather they continue to work and are merely paid large salaries.