In Tokyo Japan, with a very high COL, our family unit makes just shy of 100,000 USD. By our living standards we are lower middle-class. We don't own house, car, assets. We can't afford a pet yet (cat maybe, but I am allergic) and no major vacations except day trips.

Yet this site says I am in the top 1%. Makes me hard to believe such stats sadly.

If you asked people around the world where they would like to live, Tokyo, Japan would be near the top of the list. That's what you are paying for. If you made a choice to live in Detroit, USA you'd have more money for cars, etc.

Choosing to live in a very expensive place doesn't alter how wealthy you are, only how you spend that wealth.

I think this is partly true and partly not. If we view living in a HCOL area as a benefit, then it should offset other compensation. People should be willing to live in these super-desirable areas at lower salaries than they would get elsewhere. This dynamic definitely exists: rural healthcare facilities have to pay quite a lot to attract doctors who would prefer the big city. But we also see the opposite. The compensation packages necessary to entice e.g. tech workers from the Midwest to the worst coastal markets are like 300% higher. This suggests people are not exactly seeing a huge subjective/experiential benefit to living in those markets and it is more like a localized form of inflation.

You are on a very high salary for Japan, are you living in a very expensive area? 100k GBP is a ton in the UK but won't go far in Central London.

Well yes, $100k a year is going to put you in the top 80 million earners.

It doesn't take into account the cost of living, especially the cost of land, that said living in Tokyo you'll have a far higher standard of living than someone living in rural China even setting aside cost of housing.

I think that the website tells you to provide yearly income in yens, but it treats the number as if it was USD. I got the info that I'm in top 1.2% when I input my salary in PLN.

Well, only 0.05 % of the world’s population live in Tokyo, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t make sense.

Slight correction: It’s closer to 0.2 % (assuming a population of ~14 million), I miscalculated in my head.

Maybe you live in enough big home in too convenient zone? Japan locals families tend to live smaller home where not too convenient to commute.

income rich but asset poor, yes, i am in the same situation here in germany.

either you inherit or you made some very smart (lucky) investments or you stay "poor".

and then there is the purchasing power and the size of the middle class in an economy.

i could live in china and be there the top 20%, but would be able to afford massages on a daily basis. i am here in germany the top 10% (nominally top 1% in china) and yet, i need to think if i can spend 500 euro per month on massages (once a week).

The only way to amass wealth is by investing a significant amount for a significant time. For example, when I worked in Vienna, I saved half of my income for 2 years.

Then, with that money I took a 3-year break in Romania just like that. Not the wisest investment, but I could have lived 4 years off that money.

In any case, saving is difficult with so much inflation, don't hold cash but something giving you a return. (Don't fall for bank products with 1-2% fees; they are no better than a 0.2%-fee index fund).

A basic book on personal finance that I recommend is The Richest Man in Babylon.

People are blown away because they think “How can anyone live on $3000 per year?”

There’s a whole market of cheap consumer goods produced for that income level. Household goods, electronics, clothing, etc.

As an example, if you are reading this your kitchen is probably stocked with ceramic plates. Why did you buy ceramic plates rather than plastic plates? Probably because at your income level, ceramic plates are an insignificant expense. However at $3000/year having a kitchen full of ceramic plates would be an extreme waste of money for insignificant benefit.

Multiply this by every purchasing decision. Why did you buy a $1000 phone instead of a $150 phone? Why do pay for eggs instead of keeping chickens? Why do you buy branded clothes instead of unbranded clothes that cost a fraction of the price?

I’m not saying that you should go out and buy plastic plates and a chicken. Just that not everybody on $3000 a year is living in poverty.

The biggest issue with earning that much is healthcare, which doesn’t scale well with income. Even if the doctor may be earning 5x less than they would in a rich country, the MRI machine certainly doesn’t cost 5x less.

Not to mention used goods. There are whole categories where I/we are used to spending money that poorer people will round to zero.

Take mattresses: My parents just bought a $700 mattress. My own mattress is a $200 IKEA model. Meanwhile a guy who does odd jobs for me sleeps on a hand-me-down I got him for free. We're all equally comfortable at night I'm guessing.

Another example: I tried to get rid of an old armoire from the 50s some time ago. Had to throw it in the garbage, couldn't give it away for free. I tried.

I'd much rather be wealthy than not, but you can definitely make a no-frills budget work if you get rid of the niceties as long as you have your health.

> As an example, if you are reading this your kitchen is probably stocked with ceramic plates.

Well actually it is plastic plates for us in Tokyo. Good ones, not the dollar store kinds - but not ceramic. We use consumer grade items.

The biggest chunk goes into rent & insurance along with city taxes (separate from income taxes). It scales non-linearly with income.

I wish instead of just counting tax it would e.g. add rent, too. Living in a big city your salary can look much more impressive than if you look at disposable income.

If you do it that way very wealthy people can appear to have average income.

"Yeah I make 2 million a year, but my mortgage is 25 thousand and my Aston Martin costs 4 grand!"

Truth is places are expensive beacuse they are desirable. Living in a tin shack in Africa without indoor plumbing isn't comparable to living in a posh flat in central London. We like to pretend that it is and call it cost of living, but it's really the standard of living that is different

With globalization this is even more true, with the rise of remote work doubly so.

Places are expensive because many people want to live there, not because the standard of living is higher. Income already accounts for most of the benefits.

Plug in the US poverty line for one person, $12,880, and you're in the richest 16.3%.

American poverty for a family of four, $26,500, and it's 6%.

This is more making the point that West is incredibly wealthy than anything about you in particular.

After going through several of these comments, and looking up some wealth statistics/wiki etc., I feel the overlooked/relevant metric is "Where do you stand within the 1%?" (or 10% if you choose a more generous economic bracket).

Looking at my own info (previous comment in thread), and therafter going through public data, I believe most of us in HN are already in that bracket due to disproportionate poverty seen in S Asia, Africa, S America & LATAM. That 1% number is presenting itself as a feel-good-number. We share the same bracket as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk - which does not make much sense, because they are 6-orders richer than us.

Wealth isn't seen in any linear/quasi-linear scale. The last few percentages are incredibly dense. Maybe the lifestyle near poverty line to moderate wealthy is easier to model from economics PoV, but beyond some thresholds, is hard to rationalize.

>The 1% number is presenting itself as a feel-good-number. We share the same bracket as Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk.

I don't think that's the point at all. The point is to show perspective that many people lack on how their income lines up with the majority of the world. I don't need a application to tell me that I make less than Jeff Bezos or where he ranks in terms of global income.

And makes perfect sense that we share the top 1% with the hyper rich because... We do!

really amazing, but unfortunately it caps out at the top 1%. Looking at the source data from 2013

The mean is around $2,000

The top 10% is around $15,000

The top 1% is around $44,000

The top 0.1% is around $100,000

The top 0.01% is around $200,000

the top 0.001% is around $350,000

USA 2 adults, 2 kids and $160k/year (post tax) puts you in the top 1%. USA 2 adults, 2 kids and $10 billion/year (post tax) also puts you in the top 1%.

To me, 160k vs 10 billion should show some difference. Do they do this to make as many people as possible have "one percenter" guilt? ( $130k returns 1.7% so there's at least one decimal point available )

"If you have a household income of $33,000 (in a household of 2 adults) You are in the richest 9.9% of the global population"

Really, almost 1 in 10 households with 2 people in the world make more than $33,000 USD/month after tax?

Not convinced, this isn't even close.

Edit: yes, I see now this is monthly. Leaving it as-is so the replies make sense.

This website asks for annual income, it says so below the income field.

Haha, thanks, I should read. My gut was it was off by a factor of about 10.

It is annual not monthly