News How Accurately Do Income and Wealth Statistics Reflect Reality?

[Bystander]

but at $200k they should be able to make it work anywhere.

"Instant gratification" is the new American dream rather than the old which was "land of opportunity."

 

[jtbell]

Having a lot of debt and not saving is really not uncommon for my demographic from what I see.

I believe it has to see with an overall lack of trust Millennials have on the future ( whether well-founded or not). Live and enjoy now, no telling if you will be able to 20+ years from now.

Take it from this old geezer, there have always been people who didn’t save much money even if they had the resources to do it, and ended up living off Social Security and/or a pension. Probably even more common back in the days when pensions were more common.

 

[jtbell]

By chance, before I saw this re-awakened thread today, I happened to be reading a news article which made me wonder where we stood in terms of percentile of net worth. A Google search led me to these calculators.

First, one that gives the household net worth percentile relative to the entire US population:
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/
Second, one that gives the percentile relative to a specified age group:
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/
The site also has similar calculators for household income.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I can see $100k, with a family to support, in San Fran being a struggle, but at $200k they should be able to make it work anywhere.

Let's say your techie hipster spends 36% of his income on housing. That's a mortgage of $1.26M, close to the median house price. Remove that from his income and replace it with $1100/month, close to the national median. (Charlote, NC is around there) and you still get $141,000. That's 3.5x the median income and the 93rd percentile according to jtbell's calculator. How can this not be enough?