If you earn 80k$ USD but live in a city where your costs are 30k$USD for rent and food, and you pay taxes of 40% (leaves you with 48k$USD), that's 18k$USD. That's 1.5k$ /month that still has to pay for insurances, transport, etc. Where I live, it's at 400€/month at least just for the car because public transport sucks ass here. Insurances are about 200€/month for me but I assume that can be more if you're at 80k$USD.
All in all, about 1k$ or less per month disposable income. Is that really 1%er life?
That means that I'm in the top 10% along with nearly everybody in my country and my life isn't glorious. Far from it. If 80k$USD is 1% and just 12k difference means you have to start cutting back on stuff like sharing the apartment, getting cheaper insurances, living in a cheaper place further away from work, buying cheaper groceries, not going to the restaurant or ordering in, cancelling subscriptions and so on, then 1% really doesn't mean much.
And all that is a single person! Imagine having a family. 80k would be nowhere near enough to start a family, raise children with activities, pay for tuition or anything else. That's 1%? No way.
If I earned 80k in the middle of bumfuck nowhere where I live, sure, that would be amazing. That's not going to happen though.
IMO statements like that are from napkin calculations that use averages or medians that do not correct for anything and ignore exponentials. I'd really like to see classification of 1% by net income. I bet it would be very different than just gross income across all countries.
I really think that's misinformation.
If you earn 80k$ USD but live in a city where your costs are 30k$USD for rent and food, and you pay taxes of 40% (leaves you with 48k$USD), that's 18k$USD. That's 1.5k$ /month that still has to pay for insurances, transport, etc. Where I live, it's at 400€/month at least just for the car because public transport sucks ass here. Insurances are about 200€/month for me but I assume that can be more if you're at 80k$USD.
All in all, about 1k$ or less per month disposable income. Is that really 1%er life?
That means that I'm in the top 10% along with nearly everybody in my country and my life isn't glorious. Far from it. If 80k$USD is 1% and just 12k difference means you have to start cutting back on stuff like sharing the apartment, getting cheaper insurances, living in a cheaper place further away from work, buying cheaper groceries, not going to the restaurant or ordering in, cancelling subscriptions and so on, then 1% really doesn't mean much.
And all that is a single person! Imagine having a family. 80k would be nowhere near enough to start a family, raise children with activities, pay for tuition or anything else. That's 1%? No way.
If I earned 80k in the middle of bumfuck nowhere where I live, sure, that would be amazing. That's not going to happen though.
IMO statements like that are from napkin calculations that use averages or medians that do not correct for anything and ignore exponentials. I'd really like to see classification of 1% by net income. I bet it would be very different than just gross income across all countries.