In the words of a genius with uncombed hair and tongue sticking out, everything is relative. According to Albert Einstein’s famous theory of relativity, the speed of light, gravity, and the laws of physics in space mean that different forces act in different ways in different places. Amassing more money after his life than in his time, Einstein’s very existence proves his theory. Taking Einstein’s teachings and applying them to money instead of space, you’ll find that it tracks – how much money you have depends on where you are and when you live. Suffice it to say, it’s all relative. Knight Frank, a real estate agency and consultancy group, releases an annual report on the 1% worldwide. Looking at billionaires in more than 200 regions and 100 cities, Knight Frank also measured current attitudes toward wealth by surveying 500 high net worth individuals as well as 500 wealth advisors and bankers around the world. Making the 1% has its own theory of relativity, it turns out.
Monaco, the tiny country where Grace Kelly became a princess, is probably the hardest place to be amazingly rich. (Come on, it’s Monaco.) It takes $12.4 million to be considered a 1% share in the land that goes to luxury, real estate agency Knight Frank, its annual wealth report found.
In a time of widespread financial concern, many people in America think that the benchmark for comfort or security while living in the country is set too high. According to a 2022 survey of 1,000 Americans by Charles Schwab, people generally think you need an average net worth of $774,000 to be financially comfortable and $2.2 million to be wealthy. Both numbers are higher than the number of respondents who said they were wealthy in 2021 ($624,000 and $1.9 million, respectively). Some of it is based on uncertainty, as even wealthy individuals reportedly feel some anxiety about their situation, but it is also about the current cost of retiring comfortably that is slowly rising to more than $1 million. Has been
That being said, the pandemic allowed for some record-breaking wealth creation for the American middle class, but when their golden age faded, the wealthy did really well. According to Oxfam, the wealth of billionaires now accounts for a large proportion of wealth in the world, equivalent to 13.9% of global GDP. And reaching the 1% takes longer during an age where CEOs are compensated at a higher rate than everyone else, with an average salary of $27.8 million a year.
Wealth inequality is particularly high in the US, although a growing number of the ultra-wealthy account for most of the world’s wealth worldwide. According to Oxfam, a new billionaire has been created every 30 hours in the past two years. The richest 1% have almost twice as much wealth as the rest of the world since 2020, the charity finds.
Below is a shakedown of what the elusive 1% must be up to for the following 10 countries.
- Monaco: $12.4 million
- Switzerland: $6.6 million
- Australia: $5.5 million
- New Zealand: $5.2 million
- United States: $5.1 million
- Ireland: $4.3 million
- Singapore: $3.5 million
- France: $3.5 million
- Hong Kong SAR: $3.4 million
- United Kingdom: $3.3 million
“Now the bottom half of the global population will have to work hard for an estimated 112 years for the top 1% to earn in just 12 months now,” wrote fate’s Christian Hetzner. While millionaires enjoy the rest of their days nestling away, the rest of us can dream of Monaco. It is all relative.
