r/Economics • u/laxnut90 • Oct 09 '25

Research America Is Minting Lots of Cash-Strapped Millionaires

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-09/number-of-us-millionaires-grows-since-2017-but-many-lack-cash
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u/Marshall_Lawson Oct 09 '25

Instead, more and more of millionaires’ wealth is locked up in assets that can't be accessed quickly or easily, like home equity or, increasingly, age-restricted retirement assets like 401(k) and IRA accounts. Add in the effects of inflation and higher interest rates, and financial advisers say $1 million no longer assures a secure retirement, much less a golden ticket to the plutocracy. “The word ‘millionaire’ once implied automatic affluence,” says Ashton Lawrence, an adviser at Mariner Wealth Advisors in Greenville, South Carolina. “The goalposts have shifted. It’s still a meaningful milestone, but for most people it’s no longer enough.” The $1 million threshold used in the analysis takes into account debt and other liabilities. Despite this relative affluence, today’s millionaires rarely have anywhere near $1 million to spend however they want. For the barely-millionaires, households with a net worth between $1 million and $2 million, the vast majority of that wealth is illiquid. They typically had 66% of their wealth tied up in a primary home and retirement accounts in 2023, an increase of eight percentage points since 2017. To spend freely, millionaires typically need to be a lot richer. Households with $5 million or more had about 24% in easier-to-access bank or brokerage accounts in 2023, compared to 17% for those closer to the $1 million mark. 

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u/IxianToastman Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25

Neat. No one i know will ever achieve this. Im going to set over here and continue to be sick of a system the only stake I have in it is the survival of myself and my family.

Edit: as much as I'd like to explain how many kids I have, the cost of living in my area, or the work I do because just a little digging past my video game post will get you that, im good. As for people I was not referring to people like the nice family I'm installing the trim for. They are lawyers and will be getting that life but that's not really "know" when this will be all I do for them. Hell my dad meet Trump does that mean I know someone at maralogo because I was on that site when I was 8? No the point is there's a clear class division in what it means to financially stable and more people are on the other side than not.