How your income stacks up

[Zanza]

Nice little calculator for UK household after-tax incomes and where that puts you relative to other households :

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

What's a realistic number for council tax?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I pay £1,570 a year for council tax.....that's levied on the house you understand. A small flat might pay £800, a huge mansion £3,000; it is quite a regressive tax.

[Sheilbh]

Nice little calculator for UK household after-tax incomes and where that puts you relative to other households :

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

I'm far higher than I should be on that

Partly saved by sharing a flat and living in the second lowest council tax area in the country, but still 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Sheilbh, I just checked and it does default to a comparison between your household and other households of the same type. So it will be comparing you to other single households. Households with several members have higher incomes in general.

Having said that I'm always surprised by how many people are poor (and I mean working poor as well as state-dependent) and how many people are quite well-off. The comfortable "middle" turns out to be a rather small group.

[Neil]

Lawyers may be rich, but they aren't really part of an "upper class."

Indeed.  If you have to work, you're not upper class.

I'm fairly certain my current income of $0 doesn't qualify as rich. 

Depends on how much accumulated wealth you have.

[Rasputin]

Lawyers may be rich, but they aren't really part of an "upper class."

I'm fairly certain my current income of $0 doesn't qualify as rich. 

high income does not equal rich

rich people earn more off of the stuff they own than they do off of their personal labors

I know many rich people and the one truism about the truly wealthy is that they own things for a living--the rest of us (especially those that believe income equates to wealth) are all posers

[Malthus]

Yup, people may be high income from what they do, but by and large (excluding rock stars, actors, athletes and the like) one is either rich from what one owns, or from who one knows.

[Eddie Teach]

Nah, rich is not synonymous with upper class. It is wholly dependent on how much money you have, not how you got it. Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Cruise- all rich. You may choose to draw the line at a different arbitrary amount of wealth, but anybody with even a couple hundred thousand in the bank *could* eat, drink, and be sheltered from the elements the rest of their life without working another day.

[Malthus]

Nah, rich is not synonymous with upper class. It is wholly dependent on how much money you have, not how you got it. Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Cruise- all rich. You may choose to draw the line at a different arbitrary amount of wealth, but anybody with even a couple hundred thousand in the bank *could* eat, drink, and be sheltered from the elements the rest of their life without working another day.

$200,000 isn't nearly enough, unless one has a very low opinion of what constitutes adequate provisioning.

Thing about people who earn a lot from working is that they have to keep working. I'm a high earner myself, in the top 5% if I was in the US (can't find the Canadian equivalent), but I sure don't feel "rich" because I spend so much of my time slaving away at the office. Yet I cannot save enough as of yet to simply stop and live off of it (I could tomorrow if I was willing to live off of $200,000).

When I picture "rich" I picture a lifestyle more devoted to leasure.

[katmai]

I like how all the lawyers come rushing in and saying "we're not rich!"

[Malthus]

I like how all the lawyers come rushing in and saying "we're not rich!"

Would you like it better if we came rushing in to say that we are? 

[katmai]

I like how all the lawyers come rushing in and saying "we're not rich!"

Would you like it better if we came rushing in to say that we are? 

I just want you to be happy, and living in self denial isn't it Mal!

[MadImmortalMan]

Rich is relative. Depends where you live and other stuff. North American poor are extremely well-off by African standards, blah blah...

I agree that anyone who is working for their money doesn't really classify in my mind as wealthy. Working doesn't make you rich. Ownership does. You can't go from working--->rich. But you can go from working-->ownership--->more ownership-->rich. When you have an income in the top 1%, it shouldn't take you long to get to ownership if you're not stupid about money.

[katmai]

Someday I hope to be as well off as El jefe Anger.

[Berkut]

I define "wealthy" as having enough assets that you can quit working if you wish and still maintain your habitual lifestyle, said lifestyle being at or above the "norm" for where you live.

It is possible to be wealthy without actually ahve a impressive amount of liquid capital, and it is possible to have a lot of income without being wealthy.