Who wants to be a millionaire? 1 in 10 Americans already is but the status loses its luster

NEW YORK AP As a child Heidi Barley watched her family pay for groceries with food stamps As a college candidate she dropped out because she couldn t afford tuition In her twenties already scraping by she was forced to take a pay cut that shrunk her salary to just a year But this summer the -year-old hit a milestone that long felt out of reach She became a millionaire A surging number of everyday Americans now boast a seven-figure net worth once the domain of celebrities and CEOs But as the ranks of millionaires grow fatter the significance of the status is shifting alongside perceptions of what it takes to be truly rich Millionaire used to sound like Rich Uncle Pennybags in a top hat says Michael Ashley Schulman chief capital officer at Running Point Capital Advisors a wealth management firm in El Segundo California It s no longer a backstage pass to palatial estates and caviar bumps It s the new mass-affluent middleweight class financially secure but two zeros short of private-jet territory Inflation ballooning home values and a decades-long push into stock markets by average investors have lifted millions into millionairehood A June assessment from Swiss bank UBS discovered about one-tenth of American adults are members of the seven-digit club with freshly minted millionaires added daily last year Thirty years ago the IRS counted million Americans with a net worth of million or more UBS using input from the United Nations World Bank International Monetary Fund and central banks of countries around the globe put the number at million in the U S last year a nearly -fold increase The expanding ranks of millionaires come as the gulf between rich and poor widens The richest of Americans hold two-thirds of household wealth according to the Federal Reserve averaging million each The bottom hold of wealth with an average of just to their names Federal Reserve information also shows there are differences by race Asian people outpace white people in the U S in median wealth while Black and Hispanic people trail in their net worth Barley was working as a journalist when her newspaper ended its pension operation and she got a lump-sum payout of about A colleague convinced her to invest it in a retirement account and ever since she s stashed away whatever she could The investments dipped at first during the Great Recession but eventually started growing In time she came to find catharsis in amassing savings going home and checking her account balances when she had a tough day at work Last month after one such day she realized the moment had come Did you know that we re millionaires she questioned her husband Good job honey Barley says he replied unfazed It brought no immediate change Like various millionaires much of her wealth is in long-term investments and her home not easy-to-access cash She still lives in her modest Orlando Florida house socks away half her paycheck fills the napkin holder with takeout napkins and lines trash cans with grocery bags Still Barley says it feels powerful to cross a threshold she never imagined reaching as a child But it s not as glamorous as the ideas in your head she says All wealth is relative To thousandaires million is the stuff of dreams To billionaires it s a rounding error Either way it takes twice as much cash in the modern day to match the buying power of years ago A net worth of million in is equivalent to about million this day according to the U S Bureau of Labor Statistics A seven-figure net worth is to specific as outdated a yardstick as a six-figure salary Nonetheless millionaire is peppered in everything from politics to popular music as shorthand for rich It s a nice round number but it s a point in a longer journey says Dan Uden a -year-old from Providence Rhode Island who works in information hardware and who hit the million-dollar mark last month It definitely gives you various room to breathe No other country comes close to the U S in the sheer number of millionaires though relative to population UBS detected Switzerland and Luxembourg had higher rates Kenneth Carow a finance professor at Indiana University s Kelley School of Business says commonalities emerge among at present s millionaires The vast majority own stocks and a home Most of live below their means They value training and teach financial responsibility to their children The dream of becoming a millionaire Carow says has become more obtainable Jim Wang a system engineer-turned finance blogger from Fulton Maryland says even if hitting million was essentially a non-event for him and his wife it still held weight for him as the son of immigrants who saved money by turning the heat off on winter nights The private jets he envisioned as a kid may not have materialized at the million-dollar threshold but he still sees it as a marker that brings a certain level of defense It s attainable even with a regular job he says You just have to be diligent and consistent The resilience of financial markets and the ease of investing in broad-based low-fee index funds has fueled the balances of countless millionaires who don t earn massive salaries or inherit family fortunes Among them is a burgeoning region of younger millionaires born out of the movement known as FIRE for Financial Independence Retire Early Jason Breck of Fishers Indiana embraced FIRE and reached the million-dollar mark nine years ago He promptly quit his job in automotive marketing where he generally earned around a year but managed to stow away around of his pay Now Breck and his wife spend several months a year traveling Despite being retired they continue to grow their balance by sticking to a tight budget and keeping expenses to a month when they re in the U S and a scarce hundred dollars more when they movement Hitting their goal hasn t translated to luxury There is no lawn crew to cut the grass no Netflix or Amazon Prime no Uber Eats They fly financial market They drive a Toyota It s not a golden ticket like it was in the past Breck says For us a million dollars buys us freedom and peace of mind We re not yacht rich but for us we re time rich Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky ap org and https x com sedensky Source