Im one bad week away from being homeless and several long, gueling years away from being a hundred-thousandaire
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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There are almost 24M millionaires in the US alone. A millionaire in 2026 honestly isn't all that impressive anymore, thanks to inflation. I'm not saying we should feel sorry for them, just that it's not the instant easy classification that it used to be.
As for billionaires, those should not exist, IMHO. A billionaire is a symptom of a broken economy, not a worthy goal.
Edit: fixed a typo.
Assuming we continue under neobliberalism, eventually those billionaires will become trillionares too.
Or a simple currency re-structure could turn those billionaires back into millionaires overnight without changing their relative wealth at all.
Focusing in the word "billionaire" was, in my opinion, a messaging mistake. I always preferred 1% because it scales, though 0.1% or 0.01% might be better.
I don't love how we as a capitalist society have financialized everything into economic terms.
I'm rich now, but I grew up lower middle class (had food security and shelter security, but many aspects of middle class lifestyle were out of my family's reach, like being able to dine at restaurants or go out of town for vacation or afford most of the things or experiences advertised on tv). I was also fairly financially insecure in college and the few years after (playing games with back dated checks to make rent or pay bills, lots of late fees and overdraft fees).
Even in those relatively insecure times, though, I was never anywhere close to 3 (or 6 or 12) months away from homelessness. I had a strong network of friends, family, neighbors, etc., who could keep me on my feet. Some of it was money (where people could chip in to help with an uninsured medical expense or loss to a car or a house), but a lot of it was social, like being able to get a ride from a friend when your car is in the shop, a meal train while someone is sick/hospitalized or bereaving the loss of a family member, etc.
By steering the discussion into purely what can be bought and sold with money in an economy between strangers, I feel like this misses out on what actually makes us secure, and what keeps us from homelessness and food insecurity. Those parts of society should also be protected and bolstered, even if they don't fit cleanly into financial, economic, political, or policy categories.
It also misses who among us are actually the most vulnerable or the most secure. There may be people who have solid net worths on paper but aren't actually resilient against bad months, and other people who might not look like they have much property/wealth/income but actually can manage a crisis just fine.
This won't work on boomers. A lot of them have a property or two with a good amount of equity. My dad for example has a home with 700k+ equity and millions in investments. Granted he's more responsible than most boomers and we weren't wealthy during my childhood.
Polymarket and crypto have some people believing they're only three days from being a millionaire
If the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, polymarket is the lottery for people who are bad at economics. Crypto is a religion for people who are bad at tech.
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Millionaires are working class. $1B - $1M is ~$1B.
$1M ≈ 2 average single family homes
$1B ≈ 2000 average single family homes
Can’t even buy a house for $1m where I live. So not rich.
Yeah, millionaire status is rapidly becoming meaningless. Lots of people who have a mortgage will probably be millionaires when they pay it off, but they can't buy anything for it because they still need a roof over their head.
I think 10 million now is the million of the past. Call it inflation. It's entirely driven by ridiculous housing prices (which are mysteriously not counted in inflation figures).
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Seriously. My partner and I are millionaires. We're almost 40 and have a net worth just shy of $2M. We've a couple of DINKS. We're both engineers, are pretty good with numbers, and understand compound interest. We got on the property ladder pretty early. I bought my first townhouse in 2012 pretty much right at the bottom of the housing market. We've moved twice since then and have benefited from the full rise in house prices.
Our net worth is a little under $2M. About $10k of that is checking and savings. Another $80k in a taxable brokerage account as an emergency fund. $450k in home equity. The rest is in retirement accounts such as 401ks and IRAs.
We are working class. The closest either of us have ever come to hiring someone is when we've hired a plumber or electrician to fix something at our home. I've technically owned a business, but just for my own freelance tutoring work. And the closest either of us have ever come to being a landlord was when I had a couple of roommates at that first townhouse I bought.
We're doing very well; we have no complaints. And while we've achieved some modest amount of wealth, it's not ultimately about living large or in luxury. We live well below our means. We recently bought our first new car in many years, a new Toyota Corolla. It replaced a 15 year old Corolla that my partner bought new. We buy affordable reliable vehicles and drive them til the wheels fall off. I still get most of my clothes at thrift stores. We have a house worth over $600k, but our mortgage payment is just $2k, and that's on a 15-year note. A few years ago when I was in grad school, I was literally a millionaire who road the bus.
But again, we're not trying to get rich for the sake of getting rich. We don't want to own some huge company and lord over a room full of workers. We're not trying to hoard the largest possible amount of money we can. We don't view wealth as a lifetime high score. It's simply a means to achieve stability and safety. We're on the path to early retirement. We hope to retire by the time we're 50. We need to save up a couple of million not because we want to live in luxury, but simply because it's the only way to have a decent stable and safe retirement in this capitalist hellscape we live in. In a world with universal healthcare and a universal basic income, we would have no need for millions in retirement savings. If my partner and I each brought in say, $20k a year from UBI? If we had a paid off house and also didn't have to worry about healthcare? We could live quite well off just that $40k per year.
I'm a millionaire and I support much higher taxes on millionaires. I do this because ultimately the point for us for having a couple of million is not to have a couple of million. The point is to have safety and stability in our lives. And the more secure the social safety net, the less the need to cover those needs privately.
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With 3 million dollars in liquid assets (ie: not a house), you can bring in about $120k from the safest of investments. Just a high yield savings account. Fully insured.
With an index fund, you can bring in $300k.
That's enough to live on, given how many people live on that much or less from their job.
So some millionaires may work, but they're not really the same.
But most "millionaires" are paper millionaires — they have a house and a car and a retirement fund and an emergency fund. Upper-middle-class, for sure, but they're still working or retired from a lifetime of working.
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Well, I'M okay. I'm at least four bad months away from homeless so no sense planning to change the system any.
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Well a million dollars isn't that much anymore.
And no matter how good the facade, I will always reflect my white trash roots.
And now I cant really remember what the point is I was going to make. Damnit. I hate it when that happens.
Oh well, never mind.
Feels like being a millionaire now is what it takes to live without fear of incipient poverty
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Being "a millionaire" is outdated. There are plenty of people who are both millionaires and working class. Because the US doesn't do pensions anymore, people have to invest in 401(k)s and the like. It's pretty likely that someone can hit $1m through a combination of a retirement fund and a house, but still be working class. In fact, you can be a millionaire on paper but still be vulnerable to homelessness, especially if you're at an age where you can no longer work.
It's certainly possible to retire on $1m, but it's not going to be a lavish lifestyle if you're playing it safe with your retirement fund. If you want to live near family, or if you have any medical issues, or if you might need to support someone else, it might really be impossible to retire with only $1m.
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