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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2402 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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At what stage would you say the household is rich?

  • you don't have to worry about running out of money as long as you don't retire prematurely and don't upgrade your lifestyle
  • you can retire early
  • you can retire early and leave a nest egg for your children
  • you can retire early and your children won't have to work for a living either

All of these are defining "rich" relative to your expected level of spending, which is not how the general public think of the term. Someone who FIREs into a lower-middle class lifestyle which they need to clip coupons to maintain may be "rich" in some spiritually meaningful sense, but Joe Public is going to think of them as a bum.

The stupid think of rich as "currently enjoying a lifestyle above upper-middle-class". (Complicated in the US context by very high salaries and share options in some upper-middle class career fields such that a lot of upper-middle-class people can support a lifestyle above upper-middle class, particularly if they retire to a low COL area). The smart think of rich as "able to support an upper-middle-class lifestyle indefinitely without being subject to the grind and risk of an upper-middle-class career" - and so do most of the rich.

The other point is that if you define "upper-middle-class lifestyle" as a fixed income, then the gap between 2 and 4 is quite small - the difference in PV between "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle for 40 more years" and "maintain upper-middle-class lifestyle in perpetuity" is small because of discounting. So the real difference between 2,3 and 4 is about the cost of grandchildren. 2 implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for retired couple" whereas 3 (partially) and 4 (fully) implies "upper-middle-class lifestyle for family probably including private school fees".

So what do I think? Well if you have grandchildren who receive a lower-middle class upbringing, whether because you can't afford to help your kids or because you refuse to, then you failed at being rich. And if you don't have grandchildren, then Darwin has found you wanting and selected you out. If, as Gordon Gecko said, greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit, then I suppose you have failed at greed.

So to answer the original question, I think the ordinary English meaning of "rich" is most consistent with 3, but with the proviso that you can maintain an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Rich is the last one, in my book. You may keep working but it's for status/personal reasons not to cover costs.

This is a wealthy first world nation conception of rich, I think. My parents thought hot potable running water, not having to see other people's shit floating down the river, and a job as being rich. Now that they've adjusted to a higher standard of living they (and me) would say #2.

Two. Anyone who says anything higher is suffering from the financial equivalent of hoeflation.

Agree with the below, option 2 is the correct answer. The trick, of course, is that our lizard brains will conspire to convince us that we can't really retire just yet, now can we, not with $Bill to pay for and $Thing to afford.

Objectively option 2, but I wouldn't feel comfortable until option 3.

Option 2

IMO, every retiree should consider himself rich.

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