That's rich! Millionaires say they would need $7.5 million to feel truly wealthy

That's rich! Millionaires say they would need $7.5 million to feel truly wealthy

 

Once if you were a millionaire you felt rich, but these days a million bucks ain't what it used to be.

More than four out of ten American millionaires do not believe they are wealthy and would need at least $7.5 million to feel truly rich, according to a survey.

Boston-based Fidelity Investments questioned 1,000 millionaires who had at least $1 million assets, excluding any real estate or retirement accounts.

Feeling the pinch: Millionaires do not believe they are rich unless they have $7.5 million to keep them going

But 42 per cent still fretted that the money would not last the rest of their lives.

Sanjiv Mirchandani, president of Fidelity's National Financial unit, said: 'Every person in the survey is wealthy, but they are still worried about outliving their assets.

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'Wealth is relative and to some extent the more you have the more you realize how much more you need.'

The average age of those surveyed was 56 years old with $3.5 million of investable assets. The threshold for 'rich' rose with age.

Fifty-eight per cent who said they felt wealthy were younger on average and had a greater number of remaining years before retirement.

Mirchandani said that a 65-year-old millionaire is 'looking at potentially the loss of a paycheck as they retire, and 30 years in retirement, with inflation on the horizon.

'So they kind of go, "Well, $3.5 million, $4 million, isn’t what I thought it would be. I’d like to have more."’

Fidelity's survey revealed  the richest five per cent of Americans hold more than 55 per cent of the nation's wealth.

Household wealth was $56.8 trillion at the end of 2010, according to the Federal Reserve with 5.5 million households having at least $1 million in assets.

The survey found millionaires’ outlook for the future is the most positive it’s been in at least four years.

Eight in 10 said the financial crisis didn’t shake their confidence in investing, and 43 per cent said they plan to invest more money in stocks over the next year.

Millionaires planned to give $38,000 on average to charity in 2010, up from $36,000 in 2009.