wealth?
 

I've always thought that I had some pretty large ideas about what the good life could be like. I don't live the good life. To me a 7000 SQ FT house and maybe a couple of fine vintage sport cars in garage. That was until I found out the guy a few offices down the hall has all this as his wife does very well. Actually this whole conversation started with a coworker whose in-law had left them a estate worth about 400k. When he called a recommend investment planner and stated the net worth of the estate there was a pause. In a very kind way he was informed that this was a very small sum (400k) and that they would need north of 1 million to consider taking him as a client. He was advised to do home renovations or invest in reality.... So I wonder what is considered wealthy by 2009 standards?

Dunno about what level means wealth...but if you ask me, he was lucky to have avoided this "investment planner".

Did you know that many such "planners" are not licensed...they just call themselves that? No law against doing so, either...one can hang a "financial planner" shingle with no credentials at all.

Depends on where you live. $400K does not go very far in a lot of places.

Entry level to the club $5,000,000 usd

However about $1,000,000 in liquid assets is a pretty strong statement.

Consider that the wealthiest 400 in America took a $300,000,000,000 haircut in the past year.

+1000.

I personally (went to school with the guy) know of a guy right now working as a "Financial Planner" that I wouldn't let plan my next purchase at McDonald's!"

IMHO any good financial guru should be able to take 400k and make someone a nice little nest egg out of it. May take a while, may not get stinking rich, but have a nice bit of change to fall back on.

Just sayin'.

I'm starting to get the feeling that basically only the old money club will prosper. The self made millionaires are a thing of the past. Kinda like when your a young boy watching colorized cowboy and indians movies. It just doesn't exist today, a grand them of the past.

I think you are wrong there, look at the guy who came up with the idea for Snuggies.. Plus, hard work & wise choices go alot farther than a McMantion & leased Lambo...

There was a book published back in the 90's called "The Millionaire Next Door" Most of them were small business owners, they also lived WAY behind the curve. If you make it and spend it you don't have it...

For example they cited 2 MD's both made about $700K a year. One bought a 2 year old MB which he intended to keep for 7 or 8 years and the other bought a brand new Porsche and lived the Country Club life . The one with the MB was worth about $7M and the other about $300K...

Also most Millionaires live average middle class lives in middle class hoods, and if you were to know them you wouldn't be able to tell they had that kind of money.

+1

I agree with Byron. I think you're WAY off. I think that there are lots and lots of self-made rich these days. I'm, unfortunately, not one of them, but I pay attention enough to know that they are still around.

Steve...it doesn't cost anything to pay attention. ;)

Steve, did you see on the news the 25K sq foot place for sale in the Piney Point area? Yeah, the woman who owns it is recently divorced and she wants to move on with the 2 kids. It's too big for her now. She did show off Ken Lay's desk.

The house has been CRUSHED in the market and is now ONLY going for $10M. They previously had it on the market for $20M. They have had 40 people look, but no offers...

That is wealthy. She will walk away from there with a cool $7-8 million, and we don't know what else she is left with. And the Husband is now bankrupt.

Most big $$$ guys that I know (multi-millionaires) live in middle class homes, drive pickup trucks or simple cars, and 99.9% of the people on the street wouldn't know that they have bucks.

Crazy, I can't imagine what I'd do with 25,000 feet of house, unless 20,000 was garage like Leno. I guess if I was crazy rich, I might have a crazy big place. But I think I'd have to be worth 9 figures before I was ready to go for something like that. And it would have to be on a hefty chunk of land away from the city.

I've been in debt for years. I've still got a little bit. I could pay it all off by Christmas, but for the last year or so, we've been trying to build a savings (just in case, in these economic times) and get the stuff paid off. A year from now, we're going to have a healthy savings and be debt free (except the house which will get accelerated payments). As long and difficult as it's been to get out from under this crap, I've/we've learned a big lesson. We're going to live way within our means. I plan on saving a huge portion of my income from here on out.

I'm not happy with how long it took me/us to get to this point, but I'm going to make the most of it from here on out.

Steve, Cindy & I have always lived within our means. Zero regrets here. I applaud your efforts...keep it up!

Up until the day he died, Sam Walton drove a late 70's Ford F150.

Thanks.

In the course of about 2 years, my income tripled. We started fixing up our house (built in '67 and needed lots of work), and I bought my old 911. I had a great salary for a year, and then March of 2001 hit. The dot-bomb happened, and when the stock market crashed, the crazy money that companies were spending on networks and network engineers dried up. I didn't default on any of the credit cards that we had or the Porsche or anything else, but my income dropped by 80% for about 5 months, and then after that it was about 40%-50% down from what it had been. Over the course of the next 7 years, my salary gradually increased, but we had enough debt that we weren't making much, if any, headway against it. In the last 3 years or so it's been going down by leaps and bounds, especially the last 1.5 years. Assuming I keep my job, I should be set in a year. We're very, very much looking forward to it.

I plan to get another Porsche eventually, but I'll be paying cash for the next one. If I can't pay cash, then I can't afford it.

"love; it's more precious than gold, it cant be bought, and cant be sold."

who sings that song? i loaded it on my wifes Ipod.

It is all relative ... That guy with the 7000 square foot house looks as wealthy to you as you probably do to a person making minimum wage cleaning your office building. It never hurts to step back and remind yourself how well you do compared to others in our society and leave alone, people in other places.

Of course, I always strive to make more money as does everyone else. Key is not to become bitter because there will always be someone that has more.

George

Measure your wealth not by what you can buy but rather by what you have that you would not sell at any price.