Being Rich in America Depends on Where You Live

A large influencer on how to answer the question of “How much money does it take to be considered wealthy?” is where the person asking the question resides. Being wealthy in Denver does not mean nearly the same thing as being wealthy in San Francisco, or in New York City for that matter. To be rich in the San Francisco Bay Area, a person needs to be worth $4 million, but if you ask baby boomers rather than the Average Joe, the number jumps to $5.1 million, according to Charles Schwab’s Modern Wealth Survey.

Almost everyone has heard that housing in San Francisco is hard to come by, and even then it is notoriously expensive. A ranking by housing website Trulia of the 100 largest metro areas found that, in late 2018, 81% of homes in the metro San Francisco area were worth $1 million or more. Across the entire country, only 3.6% homes were worth that much. Trulia reported that the percentage of homes worth $1 million or more in New York City and Washington, D.C. were 10.3% and 4.9%, respectively, far below that of the Bay Area.

Denver, far away from both coasts, had the lowest average dollar figure for what it would take to be thought of as wealthy, coming in at $2 million. 75% of people surveyed in Denver said that feeling personally wealthy is more about how they live their lives than about a particular dollar amount.

Better to be rich in Denver than average in San Francisco.

See Suzanne Woolley, Being Rich in America Depends on Where You Live, Financial Advisor, May 15, 2019.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.