One Mississippi ( lemmy.ml )

STRIKINGdebate2 , 7 months ago

I think people can’t really comprehend this because a long time ago a million was a lot of money. Like, if you had a million in your bank account you were a rich person. Nowadays that means you are just an average person with a little extra money. Heck, in places like San Francisco having a million means you are just scraping by.

kryptonianCodeMonkey , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

That’s… not accurate. The average American family has $62.5k in total across savings, checking, prepaid cards, money market accounts and call deposit accounts. That’s more than an order of magnitude under $1 million. Those households with $1 million dollars in assets (which also includes investments and homes/property) are in the 87th percentile. At $2 million in assets, they’re already in the 95th percentile. You’re not wrong that a million dollar net worth is not what it used to be, but it is still far far far above average.

The bay area/San Francisco does require an inordinate amount of money to be financially comfortable, but that is an outlier, not the norm. Even other major metropolitan areas like Houston don’t require even half as much money for the same financial comfort. In non-urban areas a million dollar net worth would make you among the wealthiest in the area. The context of the environment, house prices and local cost of living play a major factor in one’s relative wealth in a given area. The inequality of those factors in different parts of the country is as great as the wealth inequality in America in general.