You Might Be An 'Upper Class' Retiree If You Have This Net Worth

A retiree's quality of life depends on a lot of factors, including their location, income, and financial assets. But to be considered upper class in retirement comes with some pretty specific criteria: According to Yahoo, you need to be between the 75th and 90th percentiles in wealth, enjoying net worth figures ranging from $714,000 to $2.1 million. That's a lot of dough, certainly, but it's a little less hefty than it seems when you consider the entire weight of your lifestyle. Building toward a sizable retirement fund is always crucially important for workers who hope to enjoy a fulfilling and successful retirement lifestyle, but the strategy you employ to extract capital from your nest egg is equally important, if not more.

In retirement, this funding will need to continue providing stability and potentially growth through the years, even as you sell off assets and draw out value. Additional support systems will help your money last: Your Social Security checks offset some of the burden, as can other investments like real estate or annuities that deliver contracted retirement income. Even so, this drawdown approach will likely still make up the bulk of your retirement income. It's also worth noting that only the top 10% are considered wealthy, which means those near the top of the upper class may still only be scratching the surface of leverageable wealth in retirement.

Assuming, for a moment, that a $2 million nest egg accounts for the entirety of your savings when you retire, you would have around $100,000 in annual income to draw from that reserve (assuming a 5% drawdown). This will contract some if you're deploying the 4% rule, but still account for around $8,300 per month in retirement income. That's quite a bit of money, to be sure, but for those in the 75th percentile, that number plummets to around $2,975 in sustainable monthly cash from retirement accounts.

These figures place people much further down the financial ladder than the idea of 'upper class' tends to represent. Even someone with $2 million who strictly adheres to the 4% rule would only have about $6,666 in monthly income. In some metropolitan areas, that's considered middle or even working class. This all means that financial 'classes' are more nebulous than simply adhering to basic monetary figures. To find yourself ascending the scale, you'll need to save, of course, but numerous lifestyle decisions that separate out superfluous things you don't need or want will also be instrumental.