What would you say if I asked you to define “Rich”? The other day, while conversing with a coworker during lunch, he said “Boy Wayne, if you’re rich, you’ve got money to do what you want, when you want!”
I replied “So (coworker), what is alot of money to you and what do you want to buy?”
He sat in his chair for a moment, gathered his thoughts, and replied “I’d want to buy a nice house, a nice car, and have 1 million dollars in the bank!”
I prodded further. “What kind of car, coworker? and how valuable of a house?”
“A MASERATI!!! and a TWO STORY MANSION!!!” He boomed back.

Let’s quantify his definition of rich.
- Let’s say he has a Maserati. We’ll say he wants a Maserati Ghibli – priced at $70K.
- He also wants a two story mansion. Mansions in our neck of the woods (Southern US) cost 1-2M on average. We’ll average it at 1.5M.
- He wants $1M in the bank.
In summary, Mr. Coworker considers 2,570,000 in net worth as rich. Mr. Coworker is also an entry level employee that makes $100K if he meets his quota (Mr. Coworkers likes to tell people what he makes when he’s drunk).
Therefore, Mr. Coworker’s definition of rich is roughly 25X his salary. If Mr. Coworker works for 25 years, he’ll probably bring in more than 2.5M dollars, due to the large upside in enterprise sales.
Mr. Coworker doesn’t seem to think his 100K salary is alot of money. 100k equates to roughly $8.3K a month. To add some perspective to this equation, the average salary of a Brazilian citizen is ~200$ USD a month, and the average salary of a Chinese citizen is ~900$ a month (source = quick Google search).
Right now, Mr. Coworker is making 40X as much as a Brazilian and 9X as much as a Chinese citizen. By his quantification, he’s RICH in Brazil. There are many other countries where he is also considered RICH.

Before I close out my rambling I’d like to apologize for the misleading title. There is no get rich quick – I just wanted to entertain you with some numbers.
If you want to FEEL rich, move.
If you really want to get rich, be ready for many sleepless nights of grinding your ass off until you’re at the peak.
Funny, I make roughly U$20k a year and to most people here in Brazil I’m really well off for my age. Your math is right.
I think one is only (really) rich when he doesn’t need to work for a living anymore.
Your posts are very insightful. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
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