Why work? Borrow, leverage and hope for asset inflation. Thats what this whole game is. Its going to work until it doesn't.
Quote from Businessman:
I can believe it.
The figures are hiding something obvious (big mortgages on the primary property!).
If you say 5% >500K is reasonable to believe.
I can believe that another 10% have bought at least one more property or started a business by extracting equity from the primary home, some of them mortgaging the primary home to the hilt.
Some may even have withdrawn equity and invested in the stock market.. And be showing a nice profit (for now atleast).
Quote from deviltrader:
The article says they are not including the primary residence, and in any case it's based on net worth so the size of their debt is irrelevant.
They're saying that 1 in 97 households has a networth over $5M outside their main home. I know probably 15 millionares personally and I don't think any of them would qualify.
The survey is overstating.
Quote from Businessman:
Nah more like 10 million.
In the seventies being a millionaire was a big deal.
The stock market and house prices are up 10 fold since then.
Quote from johnpinochet:
5,000,000 is yesterday's 1,000,000.
The above is true for 1971.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Assuming no catastrophic accidents or health issues, the average person should be able to quit their job with 5 million. 1 million on the other hand, while nice, would not allow the average middle class wage earner to never work again. I'm assuming that the above figures are net, i.e. after tax.