Apartment Finder: Stop Acting Rich

Thursday 22 November 2012

Stop Acting Rich

The authors define an as having a net worth equal to one-tenth their age multiplied by their current annual income from all sources. E.g., a 50-year-old person who over the past twelve months earned employment income of $45,000 and investment income of $5,000 should have an expected net worth of $250,000. An "Under Accumulator of Wealth (UAW)" would have half that amount, and a "Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth (PAW)" would have two times. This metric has been criticized since, for example, a 20-year-old making $50k a year should have a net worth of $100k to be considered an "average accumulator of wealth". That makes little sense since it would take a new graduate years of strong savings and investments to accumulate that amount. The formula fails to take into account compounding interest; younger people up to age 45 or so will generally have much less as a % of income than older wealth accumulators due to compounded growth.Most of the millionaire households that they profiled did not have the extravagant lifestyles that most people would assume.