I started my career as making 12.50 an hour and felt poor. Now I run a 1 person business and my income fluctuate from 170k to 550k and I don’t feel rich. Actually, sometimes I feel as poor as I did at 12.50.

Once you start making money, you end up spending more money.

I have no idea, but I’m better off that a lot of Americans. That knowledge makes me very sad— i don’t even make that much.

I can afford a one bedroom studio apartment on my own AND afford groceries. That is where I am at. That is better than most.

Fuuuuck…

Right where they want me. Treading water at way less than I’m worth.

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Poor. And knowing wealth charts, I’ll feel poor until I can have a helipad on my boat instead of having an icky support yacht following behind the main one.

“Wealth” isn’t a matter of earned income. You can get “rich” off working, if you’re smart and frugal, but true wealth takes at least one generation. Hell, even Bill Gates started merely “rich”.

Anyway, my top pay was $82K American. Even after $1,400/mo. child support, I could basically do whatever I wanted, good enough, live a simple life. I should add, I have a Habitat for Humanity mortgage, small house, big yard, no interest or taxes, $575/mo. My truck was paid in cash, 2004 F150, beat to hell, runs great, Millennium Falcon of trucks.

Unemployed now, but working Lowe’s got me <$30K. After child support took half, and my body was breaking into pieces with no insurance, had to quit. (They call Outside Lawn and Garden in the spring “100 days of hell”.) I was bringing home ~$500 bi-weekly. I can pick free crap off the road and sell if for more than that.

In Dublin, household brings in about 150k euros altogether. I do not feel wealthy, closer to poor. The way inflation has raised up the price of everything is maddening. Lots of money comes in but then goes right back out!

Enough to be able to save 25% of my income and not be in want. I’m wealthy enough.

60k/yr

I’m the income in my household

I feel poor as shit, we live frugally but still barely get by

Savings are not possible

My wife and I combined will make about $220k USD this year. We will spend about $120k and save about $80k and pay about $20k in taxes. We have 2 kids in elementary school.

We don’t have to worry about money, and that does make me feel wealthy. I am self employed and I work about 25 hours a week, and that makes for a pretty chill life.

That said, no I’m not wealthy by any standard aside from quality-of-life. We have two cars but they are 10 and 13 years old. We have a nice house in a nice area and we are lucky for that, but it is 60 years old, has a fuse box instead of circuit breakers, and is deteriorating faster than I can motivate myself to fix it.

Its weird to me that while I make twice as much as I did before college I feel not that much wealthier, since I now have to pay more for insurance, student loans, rent hikes to live in a hcol area, more is drawn out in my 401k, and I’ve spent five figures in medical expenses in that timeframe.

It is easy to spend in a way to feel poor at every level I guess, at least below the millionaire tier. I am not poor but I check my bank account constantly anyway and I have lots of big purchase anxiety.

My net income is about 30k€ a year. I took quite a pay cut going self-employed few years back so I’m barely making ends meet right now but I’m also working less and I’m much more satisfied with what I do. It’s likely that my job prospects will only improve from here so I’ll probably be doing better in few years.

I don’t really consider myself wealthy nor poor. My income isn’t that high but I have decent amount of savings and investments so I don’t really need to stress about finances. I do, but I don’t need to.

78k€ plus yearly bonus. Feels like exactly what we need but not a penny more. We have three kids and live in a hcol area. My insurance is 13k yearly. One week of vacation and maybe enough to have a decent chance of retiring with enough money to live a frugal life. Not enough tobuty a house or afford any luxuries beyond taking the kids to the pool and maybe eating ice cream twice a month.

I make enough that I don’t have to worry about things, but I had shit pay for long enough that I still don’t LIKE spending a lot of money.

$2,300 dentist bill? Fine. I can pay it, but I’m not HAPPY about it. Even after the HSA card, it was still $600 in “real” money.

Just a bit above minimum wage in Spain, I’m lucky enough to not have to pay rent and I’m quite frugal, so I’m doing well enough. I don’t feel poor because I don’t lack anything but I know that I can’t afford lots of stuff.