I am Polish and I am assuming most of you are Americans… Therefore, your standards are going to be different, as your country is more expensive to live in.

But what kind of money makes you TRULY wealthy, in your view?

By this, I mean:

  1. You own a MASSIVE flat in the center of a large city (200 m² and above)

  2. You wear top tier bespoke suits, have a collection of Patek Phillipe's, Richard Mille's and Rolex's

  3. You can travel to Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, Dubai etc. several times a month and it's completely spontaneous. You don't even think about it.

  4. You've got people in your vicinity who refer to you as "Master" or "the Principal"

  5. You can afford to maintain several women bearing your children

  6. You can own good cars and say thingsike "yeah, I am not that big on Ferrari. I am more of a casual Rolls-Royce enjoyer"

  7. You can meet with politicians, presidents, Hollywood actors and it's not a massive deal

…Etc.

At what point do you think one becomes truly wealthy? Is that achievable for most people or not?


31 comments

  1. I buy food and fuel without worrying about the cost. I send my kids to school and university and still have enough money left over to go on holiday every year.

    Really doesn’t take much to be wealthy in South Africa.

  2. 1. No amount of money is gonna make me want to live in the city center, wear suits, travel all the time, have multiple women, be referred to as master etc

    2. 10 billion dollars

  4. The moment you stop thinking about money and start thinking about time – when you can say no to anything without calculating the cost, that’s when you’re actually wealthy, everything before that is just rich.

  5. I feel like you got it all checked up, maybe even a bit earlier

    I feel like wealthy when every problem money can fix, gets fixed by money

    its more about security and safety than status, of course those problems can include, not having multiple women bearing your children, so money can fix that too

  7. I do regular things without checking my bank account

    ease of mind is the true wealth

  8. In Canada in Toronto where I live, I think 50 million CAD invested gets you there. You can take out 1.5 million- 2 million a year on that amount without really ever going broke. 1.5 million – 2 million a year is enough income I think to really live luxury. That amount of money is definitely not achievable for everybody. It’s hard to get 1 million alone imo.

  9. I feel like you’ve seen a lot of movies and tv shows based on 4 ànd 6. Your wealthy when you have so much money that you don’t know what to do with it first. From there all that happens is you get more and more wealthy.

  10. Most banks, financial service institutions, and wealth management agencies don’t classify someone as “high net worth” until the ~$30 million dollar range. 

    But for the life you’re describing, you’re probably in the $100mil net worth range. 

  11. If this dude is Polish I’m definitely unhappy that he is and would like to exclude him from the Polish community, multiple of the points he mentioned are just sick

  12. I am not American but Hungarian and I would not define wealth in material wealth alone. Wealthy is when I don’t have to worry about my bills and living conditions. When I don’t have to work my ass off or make sacrifices to make ends meet. True wealth is when I can afford what I need when I need it without serious compromises. Having supporting friends and a loving family is much greater wealth than a Patek Philippe. 

    I don’t care about luxury cars and expensive accessories. I have some expensive hobbies like cigars and pc gaming and obviously I would like to travel to loads of places but I dislike luxury hotels. I have had the fortune to visit a few accessible to the common man, not just the ultra rich and I don’t like how insulated they are. I would not want to lose touch with reality because of money. 

    I inherited my old family home. My most luxurious dream is to be able to buy the neighbour’s lot that lies abandoned and neglected so I could double my garden’s size and carve out a quiet retreat 10 minutes away from the city center. My dream is to add a couple more rooms to the house for storage and future children. I’d tear down and rebuild the house if I could afford it to modernize the foundation and the water insulation, make it more ecological and energy independent. 

    How much would all of that cost? I don’t know. I’d say it would be perfectly doable for around 1 million € (1.2 million USD).

  13. It isn’t about goods or services you can buy. You aren’t focused on what you can buy because it is a luxury or to show others but everything becomes about time.

    Your time is so valuable that you engage professional services for anything you can get away without doing because you can make more than it costs.

    How you invest your time may vary to a degree.

    Money becomes fluid. You might actually have very little of it but you have such significant investment and assets that you can use a line of credit for just about everything.

    People want to lend you large amounts of money at minimal rates. This is where a lot of people go wrong, they think debt and loans are for them but in most cases they are for people who can utilise their money to make more than the debt costs.

    Even if you are wealthy by means of a lottery win (in the US it goes into the hundreds of millions regularly) you would be wealthy but not necessarily truly wealthy until you cross that bridge of understanding that money is meant to move constantly.

  14. Number 4 is unhinged lol.

    we’re probably talking about $100 million

  17. I was wealthy when I had a deck fridge full of beer and ate a steak every evening and my friends could stop by before I got home from work.

    Now I’m wealthy because when I ask my kid if they want a steak and they say no so I just make one and then they want some so I give them mine.

    Maybe I’m confusing wealthy with happy. But for me being wealthy is just me being happy.

    It would be cool to not have to figure out bills and who gets to get paid this month but that’s just adulting, otherwise happy is wealth to me.

  18. I don’t want most of that stuff, but… I live in a nice area of Central London. A three-bedroom (seems enough to me, a single guy that might want friends or family to visit) apartment here would cost ~£3.5million (~17million złoty). I like to travel, but wouldn’t want to be extravagant about it on most trips. It might be cool to get a small apartment in Utrecht and a flat in Cyprus. I’d still get the tube, but something like a classic Jaguar C-Type (circa £60K) for day trips would be sweet. Maybe one or two Brooks Brothers suits and a couple of pairs of Dior loose fit trousers would be nice, but I’d mostly continue to wear the clothes I already buy. I wouldn’t flash my wealth around, especially in front of women, but if I met one woman that seemed right for me that would be enough. I’m probably too old to start a family, though.

    So… I think £50million (~£245million złoty) would keep me happy for the rest of my life.

  19. I have 1 beautiful wife, 2 lovely healthy children, 2 annoying cats and 2 watches (one’s a Timex). We have friends and hobbies. We have enough money for all basics and plenty after that for pleasure, including extras for our children. We own our own house. We are truly wealthy.

  20. Truly wealthy? its the moment when the price tag doesn’t matter for you, its the moment you don’t have to check your bank account, its the moment where you know you can quit or stop working and your lifestyle won’t be impacted.

    Is it achievable? yeah. Because ‘true wealth’ is self-defined, a retired IT expert who now owns a duck farm in the suburbs and knows that no matter what, if he needs to replace the entire car, he can afford it, is more wealthy than some dude driving a leased Ferrari, iced out AP and posts it on instagram.

  21. American here.

    If you want a number, then no number is going to be “enough”.

    As I’ve aged and approached retirement, I’ve realized that wealth is not so much about a number, it’s more about having enough to where you can enjoy your time doing the things you want to do, while still young enough and healthy enough to do them, without worrying much about money.

    Of the seven things you listed, I’m not interested in having or doing any of those. I don’t covet having stuff that impresses other people, and don’t crave validation from other people in that way. And if I were chasing those things, I’d still be working, trading time for money, to buy things that ultimately don’t make me any happier.

    Time, health, and financial independence. Once you realize that this is wealth, the number to achieve these three things doesn’t have to be all that large.

  22. Somewhere between 10-25million is what I would call “wealthy” now, you could live a top 10% income lifestyle anywhere in the USA or most of the world, and if invested your wealth would grow even though your peeling off $200k a year.

  24. To me, you’re wealthy when employment income becomes optional. Your capital, investments, ownership, rental income, dividends, whatever, produce enough money that you don’t need to sell your time to survive or maintain your life. You might still work, but it’s no longer compulsory. You’re doing it because you want to, not because the whole machine falls apart if you stop.

    That’s why I don’t really define wealth by suits, watches, cars, or access to powerful people. That stuff is just consumption and status display. Real wealth is when your assets generate enough freedom that your labour becomes a choice.

    Is it achievable for most people? No. Not in any meaningful sense. Some people can get there through business ownership, high income, inheritance, luck, extreme discipline, or some combination of those. But most people are structurally going to spend their lives needing employment income.

  26. Top-tier bespoke outfits are not a thing. If you have money, but you are fit and tall, there’s no reason for you to buy a tailor-made suit. You can walk into Neiman’s and just pick out a Tom Ford suit and after two or three fittings it’s fine. I can basically wear off the rack because I was a model. They may have to take in a little on the sides and shorten sleeves a little bit. But nobody will know that I’m wearing off the rack simply because of the way I look. My body type.

    If you’re if you’re wealthy and you’re concerned with the latest trends, collar, etc., bespoke is not the way to go. Simply because they use bolts that are aged. They’re out of style usually. Especially if you go to Asia or whatever they just use whatever they have. They will show you bolts that the average person has no idea is an out of style or out of fashion look.

    The one about travel is spot on. I do well, but the girl I’m seeing is in this stratosphere. Spontaneous travel is common. I dated women before like this. Years ago, when I was just doing OK, financially, the woman I was seeing would call me and say she missed me and she wanted me to see her. I was in Philadelphia working in television news, she was in Tuscany. Decorating her new renovated farmhouse in one of the nicest sections of the region

    So it’s not even a concept to the very wealthy that there are people who have to rearrange things and plan things and get time off etc. etc.

    Luckily, in this case, I was working freelance at this station. I was on a plane in the next day. Landed in Rome took a train to Southeast Tuscany and met her at the train station. Very romantic by the way. One of the top five things I’ve ever experienced that was on that level of romantic.

  27. You’re going to get different answers depending on where people live in the US. People in the so-called “flyover states” are gonna give you low low low figures on what is wealthy.

    People who live where I live – the New York City area are going to give you very high numbers. I’ve seen comments here from people who say $10 million is very wealthy. Where I live, $10 million is average. Might even be below average if you live in a place like Fairfield County Connecticut. And it’s definitely not wealthy if you live in Manhattan.

  28. None of that screams wealth to me. Not having to look at my bank account before making a medium sized ($2k+).

    Granted I don’t make those very often. That’s usually just dumping money into the stock market casino.

    But if I saw something on my want if I hit the lotto list, has many things in that price range.

  29. In my opinion true wealth is having enough money that it’s there for you and your whole family essentially forever, barring some kind of epic fuckup. Enough money that it can weather some bad business decisions or a son with a drug habit or an addiction to Faberge eggs. If those things could leave you bankrupt you’re just rich.

  30. To me wealthy means I have so much money the only reasonable way I could reasonably run out is if someone stole it from me. I don’t think that would necessarily buy me access to famous people so I wouldn’t necessarily need to be jaded about doing so, but the other stuff would be things I could choose to do without much consideration. I mean I guess I wouldn’t have to be able to purchase ever flat available in a HCOL area without eventually running out of money, but I could own them in any places I stayed for long periods of time and afford to stay at high end hotels indefinitely everywhere else.

  31. I have $5M in stocks. I typically spend a few months each year in Australia and Europe, although we pre plan that rather than just say “How about dinner in Paris tonight?” I have all the designer suits I want (zero), and all the flashy cars I want (also zero). I don’t have a budget; I just run a balance sheet every quarter to be sure my net worth is still going up.

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