The word millionaire has been associated with wealth for decades. However, $1,000,000 today has the same buying power as $400,000 in 1990. I know we’d all like to be millionaires, but it doesn’t have the same meaning that it used to.
A million today may not be worth as much as a million 35 years ago, but a million still undeniably makes you wealthy even today. Heck… even 400k in 2025 would make you decently wealthy. You can live a quite comfortable life with that kind of money
I’m not exactly a fan of pretending that millionaires are somehow struggling, and if they don’t “feel wealthy” they should take a good hard look at the lives of people in the middle class or lower.
Edit: This all feels very similar to that claim I’ve been seeing going around recently that somehow an income of 100k per year would be a poverty wage, even though it’s twice the mean income of US housholds.
If you can’t make ends meet with 100k per month in income or one million in the bank, you might just need to spend a little less lavishly. Your life will still be comfortable, I promise.
An annuity is a good estimate of the lowest-risk rate of return on a given sum. You can only do better by increasing your risk profile. If you need a reliable source of income over the long-term, increasing the risk is a bad idea.
Assuming the annuity is tax-free (a big if), your rate of return on a million would be $60k/year. But that’s ignoring the fact that you need to live somewhere. Assuming you live in a non-shithole urban area, you’re not going to find much that’s under $500k that’s worth living in. If you use $500k on property instead of taking on a mortgage, you’re down to an annuity of $30k. And a sizeable chunk of that will go on property tax and health insurance.
$30k is nice, but not life-changing. Having $1M in net worth is somewhere in the middle of middle-class. It’ll help you retire without having to live on pet food, but you’d still better be maxed out on your Social Security contributions if you want to live semi-comfortably.
Source: I’m retiring soon and have done lots of planning, and have had my plans reviewed and validated by financial planners. It takes more than $1M in net assets to live in a decent house, have some discretionary income, and keep some reserves to cover possible long-term care, car replacement and other contingencies.
Having said all that, you’ll never hear me whine about my financial situation. I’m in my present bourgeois position due to a combination of hard work, deferred gratification and luck, and few of my peers have been as fortunate. An unexpected layoff, a divorce, or a health crisis in our family, could have left me far worse off.
Won’t someone think of the poor millionaires?
The word millionaire has been associated with wealth for decades. However, $1,000,000 today has the same buying power as $400,000 in 1990. I know we’d all like to be millionaires, but it doesn’t have the same meaning that it used to.
A million today may not be worth as much as a million 35 years ago, but a million still undeniably makes you wealthy even today. Heck… even 400k in 2025 would make you decently wealthy. You can live a quite comfortable life with that kind of money
I’m not exactly a fan of pretending that millionaires are somehow struggling, and if they don’t “feel wealthy” they should take a good hard look at the lives of people in the middle class or lower.
Edit: This all feels very similar to that claim I’ve been seeing going around recently that somehow an income of 100k per year would be a poverty wage, even though it’s twice the mean income of US housholds.
If you can’t make ends meet with 100k per month in income or one million in the bank, you might just need to spend a little less lavishly. Your life will still be comfortable, I promise.
Not really, no. Look at this: https://www.annuity.org/annuities/rates/
An annuity is a good estimate of the lowest-risk rate of return on a given sum. You can only do better by increasing your risk profile. If you need a reliable source of income over the long-term, increasing the risk is a bad idea.
Assuming the annuity is tax-free (a big if), your rate of return on a million would be $60k/year. But that’s ignoring the fact that you need to live somewhere. Assuming you live in a non-shithole urban area, you’re not going to find much that’s under $500k that’s worth living in. If you use $500k on property instead of taking on a mortgage, you’re down to an annuity of $30k. And a sizeable chunk of that will go on property tax and health insurance.
$30k is nice, but not life-changing. Having $1M in net worth is somewhere in the middle of middle-class. It’ll help you retire without having to live on pet food, but you’d still better be maxed out on your Social Security contributions if you want to live semi-comfortably.
Source: I’m retiring soon and have done lots of planning, and have had my plans reviewed and validated by financial planners. It takes more than $1M in net assets to live in a decent house, have some discretionary income, and keep some reserves to cover possible long-term care, car replacement and other contingencies.
Having said all that, you’ll never hear me whine about my financial situation. I’m in my present bourgeois position due to a combination of hard work, deferred gratification and luck, and few of my peers have been as fortunate. An unexpected layoff, a divorce, or a health crisis in our family, could have left me far worse off.