Wealthy people are apparently also feeling increased financial strain as the cost of everything has gone up, with about 60% of investors with $1 million or more of investable assets categorizing themselves only as upper-middle class, according to a recent Ameriprise Financial survey, Yahoo reported on Tuesday.
In addition, 31% of this group consider themselves decidedly middle class.
"There is no standard definition of what it means to be wealthy, but in general, investors associate it with having the means to live life on their terms," Ameriprise senior vice president of financial advice strategy Marcy Keckler said in a release.
Household credit card debt has gone past $1 trillion as an increasing number of people use this means of payment more often in order to manage higher prices, and the savings rate of Americans is dropping, according to recent Fed data.
Kim Maez, a certified financial planner and private wealth advisor at Ameriprise, told CNBC that "many people feel squeezed between higher prices and lower asset prices."
Another sign of changing attitudes is that while having $1 million in the bank has long been considered a benchmark of financial prosperity, some people are now saying that this sum is no longer enough to retire on considering the country's current economic climate, Yahoo reported.
A quarter of the "regular rich" in the U.S. — defined as those who make at least $175,000 a year — consider themselves either "very poor," "poor," or "getting by but things are tight," according to a more recent study from Bloomberg.
Close to 60% of these high earners say they still stress about their finances due to, among just a few major examples, paying off their mortgage, as well as funding daycare expenses and college education for their children.
Some rich professionals living in areas with an especially high cost of living, such as New York and California, are responding to the situation by moving to another part of the United States that has similar amenities but an overall cheaper cost of living.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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