Of course, rich is a relative descriptor, like tall or heavy, some people are richer than others.

I would call anyone who doesn't need to work in order to live (i.e. who can live off investments and interest) rich.

There are two thresholds that matter: "rich" is where you no longer have to really think much about money on a day to day basis, and "wealthy" is where you no longer have to work for a living. Both thresholds depend on your expenses and the lifestyle you're looking for, I guess

When you could stop working and just coast off of what you've got till you die. At that point, making more is a luxury.

For me, being wealthy would mean that if they never intentionally earned another penny for the rest of their life, that would not prevent them from doing anything that they wanted to do within reason.

For normal people that would mean between two and five million dollars in liquid assets available to them.

I liked it back when the aristocracy was just called the "leisure" class. At least they didn't spend their time playing at being an executive and pretending they earned what they have.

If you can basically do whatever you want and the cost is of little to no concern, you're rich.

If you could retire and have enough to keep you comfortably housed and insured until you're 90, that's wealth enough.

My definition for myself to be rich is:

I have enough money that I can pay someone(s) yearly wage to manipulate my wealth into enough money to cover their salary and then some.

Personally, I'd consider myself rich. I live in Germany which is already among the richer countries in the world giving me access to an insane amount of infrastructure and opportunities. Furthermore, I work for an IT company and make more money than average and more than I need to satisfy my immediate needs (shelter, food, transportation etc.) and pay for my hobbies (mostly outdoor stuff). I might not be a millionaire and I can't just retire tomorrow but still I'm very aware of what a huge privilege I have compared to a vast part of humanity.

Personally, I think already my taxes are too low. Not to start about millionaires or billionaires.

$5 million of spare money. Not net total wealth but actually $5 million investable dollars.

At that point, I'd you stick that money in a very conservative and safe brokerage account allocation, 5% return per year is $250k. That is a higher salary than almost anyone needs, meaning you can live very comfortably without working. You can't buy a yacht but you can be "done" and so can your children and their children if they aren't stupid.

If you choose to work, then you can just reinvest that $250k and let compound interest do its thing and get richer. Lucky you.

The tiers for me are: Doesn't worry about money -> Doesn't work -> Can afford a US senator to protect money. There are not titles for this kind of thing.

I consider anything above $500k to be "well off". Once you start to pass $10M, that's truly wealthy. $1B rhymes with obscene

Someone for whom the normal and inevitable experiences of suffering (illness, death in the family, natural disaster, etc) have no real economic consequences.

Anyone who can forego any form of future income and live off their current wealth for the rest of their life in relative luxury/comfort.

We need a new word beyond rich. Everyone takes rich as a personal achievable goal.

We need a word for someone who has more money than is healthy. An easy to use word.

They are so rich they no longer know the cost of things. They can't relate to their neighbors. They no longer need to be a part of their community to survive.

Second house is immediately qualifying.

not having to work and still get to live comfortably and afford most of the things you desire

Someone who has everything they could possibly need and no bad debt. Does not need to be rich.

Being able to not worry about food, gas, standard bills and actually have something in savings

Access to a warm fire to dance around, food and libations, and friends to share them with.

Anybody who doesn't have to work for the rest of their life because it's voluntary + they don't really have to look at the price tags of the things they want.

You can cure rich with a weekend in Vegas, Wealth is terminal.

Bezos is not wealthy. He just has a lot of money. I can't imagine he's found any real happiness with it. Sure a brand new Ferrari every week can buy you some happiness, but that's short lived.

The man has a serious mental illness that will not be addressed, because he has too much money and power for anyone to be allowed to tell him he's ill.

Billionaires are a danger to themselves and others. They should be admitted into a mental hospital against their will and they should be treated until they are cured.

This isn't even a "CEO bad" joke. I honestly believe it's a mentally disorder. Or maybe a specific mix of different disorders and unfortunate environments, circumstances and enablers.

Living in London and working in the City so long really skewed my view on this. I guess because I worked with so many people earning six figures (and double that for household income) who were still very much "workers", were paying off the mortgage and hated commuting like anyone else. They didn't seem rich to me. Maybe if they sold up and moved out of town, sure, but just trying to live day to day they were counting the cost like an average person just up-scaled.

I feel like being able to live off passive income / interest AND living where you want is where "rich" starts for me. I could live off passive income now, in a basic place far from London but I'm not "rich". I can live pretty much where I want in London, but I'd have to continually work for it. Being able to do either of these things would put me in many people's "rich" bracket but for me it's when you can do both at the same time.

It's always "wealthier than us", isn't it?

But I'd say whenever you have no money worries, that's wealthy. Like you could retire today if you wanted and not just survive but buy a new car or house if you wanted to, go on a long vacation, anything that just needs money to do is within your reach. Never have to say no simply because of money. That is what I define as wealth (financial wealth) and it's different amounts in different places.