How Much Money Do You Need to Be Wealthy in America?

America is often seen as the land of opportunity, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, the average American only has about $121.7 thousand dollars in personal wealth. This is far short of the amount of wealth required to be financially stable in most American cities with all things having been considered and taken into account. However, what does this number actually look like?

It turns out that San Francisco was the most expensive city of all. Living in this city can be a costly proposition because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up requiring you to have at least $1.7 million dollars just to be comfortable. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that you need around $4.7 million to be considered truly wealthy in this city.

Of course, it bears mentioning that San Francisco is a bit of an outlier. The second most expensive city, Los Angeles, requires $1.5 million to be comfortable, and $3.5 million to be wealthy. Coming in third is New York with a $1.2 million being required the bare minimum for comfort, and $3.3 million being considered the threshold beyond which people would be wealthy in realistic sense of the term.

Following this, two more American cities need its citizens to possess at least a million dollars to live in comfort, namely Seattle and Washington DC. The wealth threshold in these cities turned out to be $3.1 million and $3 million respectively.

Overall, $2.2 million is the median amount that Americans need to have access to if they want their wealth to be enough to provide as much luxury as they would like. One thing that is important to address is that the cost of living has dropped somewhat in San Francisco. Last year, the wealth threshold stood at $5.4 million, and it has decreased by $700,000 to reach $4.7 million in 2023. It will be interesting to see where things end up in the future as the wealth gap continues to increase in America.


H/T: Visualcapitalist.

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