Find Out If You Are Rich With This Quiz
What does “being rich” mean to you? (Financially, not “rich in love.”) The New York Times has developed a quiz to help you determine if your own definition of wealth means you are rich — and the results, as they say, may surprise you.
When you take the NYT Are You Wealthy test, you will be prompted to enter basic demographic information about yourself: location, age, and income. You will then be asked to define what it means to you to be rich. Does he have an income among the 25% of the highest paid people? Top 1%? Somewhere in between?
When you’re done, you’ll get a visual summary of where your income is falling compared to the income of others in your area and age group – and whether or not you are wealthy by your own definition.
Here are my results:
I set the threshold for “rich” at the “richest 20%” because I am a fan of the US Census Bureau ‘s quintile income method . The Census Bureau does not apply descriptive labels to every quintile, but you can easily interpret the top 20% as rich, the next 20% as the upper middle class, the middle 20% as the middle class, and so on.
This, by the way, would give me an upper middle class income in Cedar Rapids, which speaks to what it is like in terms of purchasing power and opportunity.
If I stayed in Seattle instead of returning to the Midwest, my income would put me in the 55th percentile, which would make me middle class. (In case you’re wondering, Seattle’s middle-class income gives you much less purchasing power than Cedar Rapids upper-middle class income.)
It is also worth noting that I chose “individual income” instead of “family income” for the quiz. If I had kept my count as a household, I would have dropped to the 35th percentile of employees in Cedar Rapids, but since I am a single woman who lives alone, comparing myself on an individual level makes more sense. In the end, I have no expenses that a large family could have.
And you? I kind of gave up the game, hinting that it’s your own definition of wealth that will determine if the quiz considers you “rich,” but it’s still worth accepting. Feel free to share your results!