How Americans define being ‘wealthy’ has changed drastically during the pandemic
Attitudes to wealth have changed in the pandemic—but views on happiness have not.
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The pandemic has changed people’s perceptions of how much money it takes to be “comfortable.” Americans now claim, on average, they would require $655,000 in net assets to be comfortable, while they would need $2 million to feel “wealthy.”
Those figures, shared in an annual wealth survey by Charles Schwab, mark a sharp fall from before the start of the COVID outbreak. Before the pandemic, Americans claimed it took $934,000 to be comfortable and $2.6 million to be wealthy—drops of 30% and 23%, respectively.
The survey also found that 57% of Americans say that they or a close family member have been financially impacted by the fallout from the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of people who say they are confident they’ll reach their financial goals has fallen from a third of those surveyed to just a quarter.
The study was not all doom and gloom, however. Charles Schwab found that the number of Americans who say they have a fund to cover emergency expenses has risen 36% while four out of ten are saving more.
Some things have not changed. People were still twice as likely to say their primary source of happiness was relationships compared to money. These and other factors are unchanged from prior to the pandemic, the survey found:
As for how the pandemic is affecting generational cohorts, the survey found baby boomers to be relatively the least stressed, while millennials—41% of whom say they or a family member has experienced layoffs or reduction in salary and hours—are the most stressed. Overall, 15% of Americans said their level of financial stress is higher than prior to the pandemic.
This year’s Charles Schwab survey, unsurprisingly, focused on a very different set of concerns than that from 2019. Last year, the company’s questions focused on how social media images affected people’s perceptions of wealth. The new survey did not inquire about the impact of potential future waves of the pandemic—which could be economically devastating.
The 2020 Charles Schwab findings were based on two online samplings, one from January and one from June and July, of 1,000 Americans age 21 to 75.
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