Planning Briefs

Do you consider yourself rich? If you own a couple of mansions, a fleet of luxury cars, and financial accounts reaching high into the millions, it may be easy to answer that question. But other well-to-do people might struggle with the issue of whether they are "rich" or not.

To get a better grasp of perceptions, Yahoo Finance recently posed a series of questions about personal wealth, to which more than 25,000 people responded. The survey concluded that people call themselves rich if they have a median income of $425,000 and a net worth of $5 million.

But this exercise also turned up other interesting results. For instance, the median amounts respondents required to consider other people rich were an income of $500,000 and a net worth of $10 million. In other words, more people called themselves rich than were actually rich by their own standards. On the other hand, it's noteworthy that people earning $300,000 a year with a couple of millions of dollars of assets didn't think themselves rich—far from it.

But even if you're not rich in your own mind, you may get there by sticking to a financial plan designed to increase personal wealth. And, if you're already rich, follow the same approach for preserving your status. We can help you make provisions for the future.