Research say 1 in 21 people are millionaire in New York how true is that?

[Anonymous]

Do you know any millionaire New Yorkers

[Goforit1010]

Is that millionaire in cash available, or net worth?

Owning some of the apartments/condos in NYC will bring your net worth up several hundred thousand dollars easily. After that, it doesn't take much more to reach that million club.

[Asker]

Im not sure maybe net worth

[Goforit1010]

That's what I would think too, from the statistic you quoted. Most people's financial status is based on their net worth.

[BeMuse]

In New York City the median "household income" is $67,046. Most people are very poor in NYC and struggle a lot due to high cost of living and low wages.

[Asker]

Yeah why is that? Why low wages

[BeMuse]

I grew up in Boca Raton, FL a much smaller city that is roughly 100K in city limits and 200K if you include West Boca. We had no income tax or any of the city or borough tax you get in NYC and our median household income is $84,445 which is much better than NYC, but still there was a very large middle class even if there was a lot of wealthy people that lived there. Definitely not 1 in 21 millionaires even with better earnings.

[BeMuse]

Most people that live in NYC work regular jobs keeping civilization running. They run the stores and restaurants, they teach the children in the school, they put out the fires, police the streets, fix the pot holes in the roads, rent the apartments, etc. Most jobs don't pay high enough salaries for people to have tons to invest and squirrel away for retirement.

[BeMuse]

Generally most people's wealth ends up tied up in their homes. In more expensive areas, homes can get up in the million plus area so if you've lived there for 30 or 50 years then maybe you can walk away with that if you sell in move into the middle of no where, but usually people have mortgages and need to live in cities to keep jobs. They have to pay off their debt and then take on new debt to pick up a new place to live if they move. On the day to day the average person with a roughly million dollar house is just living a middle class life style trying to pay their bills. When times are good maybe they pay down a little principal. When times are bad, maybe they take a home equity loan to get through a rough patch so they don't become homeless.

[BeMuse]

*and

[BeMuse]

Your NYC research is probably based on that simple number... Median house value in NYC is $789K. The problem is everyone is mortgaged to the hilt. They don't really own those homes. The bank owns it until you satisfy the loan.

[BeMuse]

I think a lot of people buy into the myth that there is a lot of money to be made in NYC with high salary jobs. It's nothing more than marketing hype. The US median household income was $67,521 which is slightly higher than NYC, yet NYC is the most expensive city in the USA and the taxes are ridiculous. It's a bad place to live for average people. So unless you are very wealthy, or you want to be basically a serf for the very wealthy, you can probably find better opportunity elsewhere where there are reasonable salaries and lower cost of living which means more money in your pocket at the end of the month.

[BeMuse]

Even if you are very wealthy and have a realtively high household income, you probably don't want to live in a filthy city like NYC. You'd go live in Pound Ridge, NY or something like that and commute into the city when you need to.

[jennifer_bloom]

Where I live, it's probably 4 in 7 are millionaires.

[Guy13]

1 million is equivalent to 250,000 in say the South. NYC is crazy expensive.

[Anonymous]

Heard that in general, probably higher certainly if you count assets on paper