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Agreed. I’m actually pretty close to being a millionaire “on paper,” since my house is worth $600k and I’ve got about $100k in retirement. But the house is mortgaged, and I can’t touch the retirement for another 25 years. If I had three very good months, I could probably just barely become a millionaire. But if I had three moderately bad months, I would likely default on my mortgage.

Replace the "m"s with "b"s and this is spot on.

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HaiZhung@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If your house is mortgaged, you would have to subtract that mortgage from the calculation, would you not?

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Rich people ignore their debt when making their wealth calculations all the time. I’m just following suit.
  
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Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That’s not how net worth works…

If you have a mortgage, that offsets it and your net worth would only include the equity you hold.

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Rich people do that sort of funny math all the time when stating their wealth, though. It’s all fake and made up.
  
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Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Being hobeless?

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oof, allergy season, eh? I get it.
  
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- exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Hobosexual, when you partner up for the housing situation rather than for romance/love.
  
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  - ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s a fantastic word. I’ll take that, thank you.
    
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merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If your $600k house isn’t paid off yet, you don’t get to count its full value towards your net worth, so you might not be as close to $1m as you say. If it is fully paid off, then you shouldn’t have a mortgage to worry about.

But, 3 really bad months could mean a tree fell on your fully paid-off house. It could mean a family member without good health insurance has a medical emergency and you feel like you have to help pay.

It just seems to me that something like $10m makes John Rogers’ point much better. If this is a class war, $1 million dollar millionaires really are in the same class as anybody else who works. I don’t know quite where the dividing line is. Clearly billionaires are in a whole different class. Same with $100m-aires. $10m is almost certainly set for life. What about $3m? $2m? Maybe age comes into it. How long do you have to make it last, and can you still find a job if you need one? $1m net worth at 25 is different from $1m at 65. $1m at 90 probably puts you back in the “set for life” camp, just because “life” is not likely to last much longer.

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, we poor folks would have to do that, but rich people live on fractional reserve income and stuff, and they never subtract their liabilities from their assets when reporting their wealth. I’m okay with fudging the numbers for the point.
  
  Definitely agree that $10m is the new bar for this.
  
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