To be fair though, in places like Sydney, the 1% are buying most of the houses, having most of the good experiences, and living a very much better quality of life. You could be in the 90th percentile and still not afford any better than ‘house 90 minutes commute away’ thanks to $1.6m median prices.
I am very much an upper income earner and yet I could not afford any ‘average’ house in any suburb I’d actually want to live in.
Or maybe chalk it to youthful exuberance and optimism :). A lot of my kid’s elementary school friends thought they would become the President of America :)
Gen X isn't that young for the most part. My take would be more: they've grown up with capital interests consolidating and commodifying every aspect of life and thus they're realistically looking at the costs and knowing they need more than what feels intuitively reasonable.
The delusion, or naivety, is that they'll find success. Then again what's the alternative? Death.
It's kind of ironic the concept of a whole generation considering success as being part of the 1% and still being optimistic about it. By definition, the vast majority won't be successful.
Yup it's like being a millionaire was years ago. These days if you have a net worth of $1 million it means you have a house with a mostly or partly paid off mortgage
One reasonable definition of financial _success_, an acceptable endgame state, is "you have enough that you can live a baseline lifestyle that doesn't feel impoverished through passive income / interest".
In the UK as a single person 1-2M GBP is probably enough and for a family depending on expectations maybe 3-4ish. 3% a year withdrawal gives you 30/60/90K/120K pa, then you pay taxes. Nice, but not footballer private jet crazy life money, depending on the banding there you'll rent a house, have a nice car, the odd restaurant, and not worry about the price tags at the supermarket.
If you look at it another way it ends up being about as much as the median person earns throughout their working life. Basically, if you manage to front load that same amount of earnings then you're "successful".
Those numbers work out around the 1-5% mark in the UK, I imagine the same is true in the US.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 38.2 ms ] threadI am very much an upper income earner and yet I could not afford any ‘average’ house in any suburb I’d actually want to live in.
The delusion, or naivety, is that they'll find success. Then again what's the alternative? Death.
I'm honestly kind of shocked that a half a million dollars per year is insufficient to be in the top 1% of earners in 18 states.
One reasonable definition of financial _success_, an acceptable endgame state, is "you have enough that you can live a baseline lifestyle that doesn't feel impoverished through passive income / interest".
In the UK as a single person 1-2M GBP is probably enough and for a family depending on expectations maybe 3-4ish. 3% a year withdrawal gives you 30/60/90K/120K pa, then you pay taxes. Nice, but not footballer private jet crazy life money, depending on the banding there you'll rent a house, have a nice car, the odd restaurant, and not worry about the price tags at the supermarket.
If you look at it another way it ends up being about as much as the median person earns throughout their working life. Basically, if you manage to front load that same amount of earnings then you're "successful".
Those numbers work out around the 1-5% mark in the UK, I imagine the same is true in the US.
They are by definition also the youngest in the survey. Youthful overconfidence is a thing so may not have anything to do with generations