Isn't the answer always "a little bit more than I have now"?
isn't the answer "a lot more than I have now"?
It's always felt like a never ending cycle to me.....if the median net worth is less than $100K, maybe half a million seems like a lot, if you have half a million maybe you think you need a million....and it probably depends on what makes up your net worth. I live in the second most expensive city in Canada, and bought my house 20 years ago, that house is worth 3-4 times what I paid for it, that's a lot of net worth.
My husband I talk about this occasionally.....he doesn't even consider us middle class, but based on both net worth and household income we're easily 'up there'. (I don't trust alot of sources because they don't give me adequate background, is it average or median, are you including salaries of 16 year olds, is it joint or individual? Does it include the family home? I want data!) But I think he bases our 'class' by our spend. We spend about a 1/4 of or combined gross income (excluding taxes.....I pay a shit ton of taxes - someone has to pay for our 'free' healthcare).....
I guess this is my long winded way of saying I don't feel wealthy. We have a household net worth of more than $3.5 million, more if I included the commuted value of his defined benefit pension, but $1.5m of that is real estate, 10 years ago, I would have thought a $2 million net worth as wealthy, but now that I have spreadsheets up the ying yang, and know how much I need for 45-50 years of retirement, it's not such a big number (I'm conservative, with a 3.5% WR and 4% return and assume a tax rate of 17% {which is high - but, hey, government thieves } ). In my mind wealthy are the very few that really don't need know the price before they buy, that couldn't spend their billions in 10 lifetimes.