Bloomberg: In an era of hyper-wealth, economy-class rich starts at $25M

I am quite honestly sick of articles like this.<p>The original title is: &quot;Here’s How Much Money You Need for Bankers to Think You’re Rich&quot;<p>First of all: who gives a damn what Bankers think about anyone? I entered the labor market around 2007 and since the meltdown not much of the general &quot;Bankers Mindset&quot; has changed. Living in London for 2 years it was quite painful listening to some young bankers on parties or other occasions. Their second question usually starts with something indicating your income. 80&#x2F;20 principle applies but &quot;character shallowness&quot; was a widely spread phenomenon.<p>SV or the tech scene in general should be more forward thinking and measure a persons stance in society by &quot;how many people does your work effectively help&quot; with &quot;monetary net worth&quot; purely as the result of your actual &quot;value added for society&quot;.

Sometimes I feel like these sorts of articles are written as a sort of indulgence to the aspirational class of people who will continue striving for more and more money. For those on a high-net-worth track, but under $25m, this article teases them, and motivates them. But for those over $25m it provides a bit of self satisfaction.

A million dollars was worth the equivalent of $25M today when the term millionaire was first coined so I’m not surprised.<p>I passed a million dollar net worth last year and I hardly consider myself a true millionaire. Just a working class developer.

This is a silly framing. The real story seems to be that below $25 million, it’s not that you aren’t rich, just that you don’t really need customized, private asset management these days. Wonder if that’s due simply to inflation, compared to what absolute values we used to consider rich 50 years ago, or improvement in money management options that are available to everyone, or both. It seems like it could be part of the same trend of etfs growing in popularity over active money managers these days.<p>And I’m completely speculating here but I imagine over that much wealth and you start having some new lucrative (but perhaps ethically dubious) options available that you need a private wealth manager for. Things like being able to exert control on asset prices, getting in on deals that involve some sort of insider info or successful lobbying of the government for special favors, other transactions involving shell corporations and offshore accounts, etc. Or maybe I just watch too many movies.

One of the best books I ever read was &quot;Stop Acting Rich&quot; by Thomas Stanley. It was the follow up book to Millionaire Next Door.<p>The main argument is that almost anyone can become a &quot;simple&quot; millionaire through frugality and--most importantly--avoiding trying to emulate the consumption patterns of the &quot;glittering rich&quot; (e.g. decamillionaires and those described in the article).<p>Combine living below your means with an in-demand skill, a healthy stoic outlook (learn to love what you already have), and you&#x27;ll have a great shot at financial independence.

&gt;Placing investable assets of at least $25 million with a wealth manager—and clients with that amount or more tend to work with a few firms—can bring access to initial public offerings, and having at least $5 million in investments moves a client past one regulatory hurdle to taking part in private offerings.<p>That&#x27;s the crux of their argument. It&#x27;s not about being &#x27;rich&#x27; in any social sense, and I think the article was written pretty shamelessly to imply otherwise.

The cost of living a reasonable low-risk life certainly goes up every year. If you want to send a kid to college, be able to pay for any emergency medical expenses (like cancer), and retire - you probably need to have a lot more than a million dollars in the bank (along with good health insurance, etc). And if you&#x27;re not also earning a lot every year, just the cost to live in a non-rural area will probably eat that money up in the span of a few years by itself.

I wish I could have $25k per year, or $20k really... $25m would be such a dream. What people do with all this money?

The true measure of wealth should be, are you financially independent? Meaning, could you never do wage work again in your life and never have to worry about money? By my calculations that would be in the area of a few million dollars, invested in some bonds, living purely off the interest forever.

Misleading title and article premise.<p>As mentioned in the article itself, $25M is currently an approximate treshold where certain bankers define you as &quot;ultra-high net worth&quot;. Which sounds reasonable to me.<p>That is not economy-class anything by any common definition of the term.

I hate this shit. It&#x27;s kind of unbelievable that this kind of wealth concentrated with such few people is allowed to exist.<p>If it could realistically be capped at, say, $10mil or something, why not?<p>Nobody needs more than that. Yes, you could say the same for one million or a hundred, but you have to start somewhere. It makes me sick that this is the society we live in.<p>This pathetic striving for maximum wealth, in an eternal competition over who has a bigger ficitious number attached to their family emblem, no matter what the societal, ethical and global consequences, is close to the root of all evil in my opinion.

I don&#x27;t like it, but I don&#x27;t understand why reading this article makes me feel good.