http://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-rich-are-you
There have been discussions on this sort of thing here before, TJ said top 10% is rich elite IIRC.
Do the results seem right to you?
How broke would be more relevant to me I think.
How much month is left at the end of the money?
Well I have my answer but I'm not sharing first 🙂
I did this test the other night. I don't think my wife and i are as flush as the survey would suggest.
Seems to me capital is ignored but relevant - those who have had a property for a few years are in a far stronger financial position than those without.
I was 6% out from where I expected to be but the figures don't take into account any other monthly commitment apart from council tax.
I am nowhere near as well off as suggested
quiz doesn;t really work for me - I'm divorced with 3 kids who live with me 3x days a week.
If I say I have no kids living with me (as they live with their mum the majority of the tme) then I'm richy rich
If I say I have 3x kids living at home then I'm fairly poor
Well anyway it says 89% for me but I live somewhere else
46% are poorer than us, and 54% are richer.
That's about what I'd guess.
So that's it.... how much do you make, what your council tax is and how many in the house? Right.
Won't be watching that then. There again if you need to look at a TV show web site to figure out how you're doing then good luck.
About the same as Miketually
Pretty lame.
Puts me in the top 10%.
However, doesn't account for the ridiculous mortgage I have to pay each month.
Due to having to move at just the wrong time and some bad property decisions, I have ended up with hardly any equity. I was better off 10 years ago.
It does seem to be a ridiculously simplistic calculation. Quite what you're supposed to derive from the figures is beyond me.
However, it did confirm that I'm fabulously wealthy.
44% poorer 56 % richer. I only work PT Though but I thought I was roughly the middle
Interesting to see the wealthy struggling to accept the evidence and saying they dont feel wealthy
IMHO you have to remember that you may be skint* but you still need your income to have your lifestyle. ie I pay a massive mortgage = I bought a phenomenally expensive house I have expensive holidays nice car etc
As for where wealthy starts i would say 2 SD above the norm 😉
* not in the sense of benefits or £70 per week to love on including all bills and food skint is it.
I'm guessing it helps to live alone
So I guessed within 1%. But it's an odd measure of "richness". Seems more like %age of disposable income or similar. Rated quite high (and guessed high cos of the above explanation of what they'd calculate on) but currently sinking all my money into renovating a house, but a couple with no kids.
Not sure if the house makes me rich or poor, mostly I own a massive debt 🙂
83% poorer. Based on my wife's new part time salary, but then I am exceptionally wealthy! This is a joke by the way, I know I am well paid but I also think the calculation was a little basic.
I guessed 65% less well off, 35% better off.
Actual results were 88% - 12% 😯
I certainly don't consider myself 'well off' and don't have a posh motor sat outside a 4 bed detached house.
There must be an awful lot of people out there on the minimum wage to make my income look that good.
I'm hoping the programme discusses why they've chosen this approach, ignoring property seems odd for sure - other assets might provide an income but property/no mortgage saves on outgoings.
Not sure how accurate that is.
Guessed 10% richer, 90% poorer. Stated 3% richer, 97% poorer.
I think there are a lot of factors that are not taken into consideration including retirement, inheritance, other monthly commitments etc.
It does seem to be a ridiculously simplistic calculation.
Its purpose is to get people talking about the programme online, so it needs to be simple...
doesn't account for the ridiculous mortgage I have to pay each month
Mortgages are, generally, proportional to earnings. So, if you know earnings then, [i]for a simple online quiz[/i], you can ignore mortgage payments?
If you take an income and remove the basic costs of living then you have an assessment of wealth. Accommodation cost is area specific but generally you can always live cheaper.
Outgoings are related to income generally.
If you earn more you spend more.
However, doesn't account for the ridiculous mortgage I have to pay each month.
The thing is though - you don't [i]have[/i] to pay it, you have the choice to have a mortgage, no matter how difficult it is for you to pay it and still do fun things. You are able to choose to, which is a choice someone who can't afford your mortgage can't make.
A person can't say they're not rich because they don't have any money left after they've spent it all. Particularly in relation to property as buyers set the price of a property by being the one who offered the most money to buy it. You can make all sorts of choices that can can consider to be essential, but while they're choices then they are just that.
Interesting to see the wealthy struggling to accept the evidence and saying they dont feel wealthy
We do have a significant distortion in public perception as to what and where wealth is, not just on an individual level but on a political and policy making level.
Micheal Blastland used to do a test where he'd ask MPs what the income a household would need to be earning to be in the top 10% of earners. It was a multiple choice answer but he didn't make the right answer an option, so of course they all got it wrong. But they all got it equally wrong in that they answers were all over the place, split pretty much equally between the range options he'd given - they were just taking guesses at it.
That doesn't show MPs to be out of touch, it just shows that even the people who have the most reason to know don't. Thats because its a conversation thats never had. People don't even know where to start guessing where 'well - off' starts. You have clues like the the 40% tax threshold - perhaps that means thats where the bottom rung of rich is? People don't realise you can be well into the top ranks of earners before you even start to worry that threshold.
Part of the reason views are so distorted is at an editorial level the media we consume is shaped by people who are themselves on 6 figure salaries. They actually forgot what ordinary was a long time ago, if they ever knew what it was and that seeps through everything we consume in terms of our culture, entertainment and politics. The media are very bad at reflecting ordinary life back to people in a way that they recognise themselves in, whether they are the ordinary rich or the ordinary poor.
ignoring property seems odd for sure
Why ? In order to have an outgoing you need to be able to afford it and the bigger the mortgage you can afford the richer you are.
Why is this confusing people?
This is what happened last thread folk just said I know I get 5 k per month but my mortgage is 4 k so I am not rich etc. However you need £5k to pay it etc
Is this a good time to mention - yet again - that we paid of our mortgage last week? 8)
Guessed 90% richer 10% poorer apparently 99% are richer and 1% are poorer based on my current (crap) income!
......you have to remember that you may be skint* .........* not in the sense of benefits or £70 per week to love on including all bills and food skint is it.
A few years back the BBC was commissioning a series of documentaries about poverty and had an open submission as part of the Sheffield Doc Fest as the commissioning process. So you could go and sit in the audience and see the pitching and commissioning process. And what was so disheartening was with such a wide call and such a large number of pitches the commissioners shortlisted, invited pitches by, and ultimately commissioned documentaries by .......people who couldn't tell the difference between being poor and being skint. Which means the commissioners themselves (Storyville and the Joseph Roundtree Foundation) couldn't tell the difference either.
Why ? In order to have an outgoing you need to be able to afford it and the bigger the mortgage you can afford the richer you are.ignoring property seems odd for sure
Claiming that you're not rich because you're buying a massive house is like claiming you're poor because you spend a fortune on your Faberge egg collection and fifteen holidays per year.
My wife volunteers for the local food bank: there are people currently sat in the dark in an unheated house, only turning on the electric for long enough to use the microwave for 3 minutes and then turning it off again. Most of STW don't know they're born.
ignoring property seems odd for sureWhy ? In order to have an outgoing you need to be able to afford it and the bigger the mortgage you can afford the richer you are.
Why is this confusing people?
It's the other way around IMO. Some have nice houses and low mortgage (so own most of their house), they are better off than most who have the same income.
You can't ignore the property side of things.
If person A has a mortgage and that mortgage leaves them £200 a month to live on and person B lives in rented (council provided or otherwise) and has £200 a month to live on - I fail to see a difference in their wealth.
Wealth and total value are very different things....
Well apparently there are only 6% of the country less well off than me. 🙂 luckily I have a good accountant and enjoy my life to the full. Oh and no kids helps with living on a low income.
ie I pay a massive mortgage = I bought a phenomenally expensive house
AKA 'a house' in the South. Unless you're 45+ and got in before the explosion and have never moved.
Claiming that you're not rich because you're buying a massive house is like claiming you're poor because you spend a fortune on your Faberge egg collection and fifteen holidays per year.
However buying or renting any sort of house round here would be a significant impact on your income. I honestly don't know how people on 'average' incomes survive. Actually, I do, they both work and have to suck up a childcare bill too.
they are better off than most who have the same income.
They have a greater disposable income they are not better off as they still get the same amount of money.
If person A has a mortgage and that mortgage leaves them £200 a month to live on and person B lives in rented (council provided or otherwise) and has £200 a month to live on - I fail to see a difference in their wealth.
So if person A earns 5 k and is buying a £300k 4 bed detached house house etc and person B earns £500 and pays £300 rent on a one bed bedsit and you cannot tell them apart in terms of wealth and you think they are equally well of 😕 😯
All this debate is is well off folk trying to explain why they are not well off. Again the fact you pay all your money in a very expensive house. coke hookers whatever does not make you poor. Having no money to do that in the first place makes you poor, not what you do with the money.
Calc isn't working for me, but seems dumb and far too simplistic. I imagine I'll be told I'm super rich and wealthy. I'll pat myself on the back, then at the end of the day get into my 13yr old 206 which doesn't lock or have a radio and drive back to my small 2 bed terrace in a roughish part of town....doing okay yes, wealthy - no.
Property ownership / mortgages are of massive significance.
I guessed at 40% poorer, when apparently 63% are. I assume it helps that both me and the Mrs work and have no kids.
And I agree with what the majority are saying, mortgage makes no difference to how well paid you are, which at the end of the day is what this is getting at.
If you've got a massive mortgage surely that's your choice, if you don't like it move to a cheaper house!
Does it matter ?
[b]Everyone[/b] wants 10% more than they've got.
So rich bloke is in just the same boat as you or I .... but he's got a posh watch... whoopie !!
Far too simplistic yes, but kind of interesting all the same.
FWIW, I was within 5% of my guess, it said 51% better off, 49% poorer
And I consider myself to be: [b]lucky[/b]
They have a greater disposable income they are not better off as they still get the same amount of money.
So having a, say, £500k asset isn't relevant?
Well it obviously it is as if I rented out my property I'd now have an additional income but have to pay rent/mortgage on another place. Reduced outgoing is as good as increased income - better as no tax.
"cheaper house"
Not always possible. Unless you move location as well, in which case often the jobs don't exist...
If it included value of assets - house equity, savings, investments - and debts it would be much more accurate. I'm much 'poorer' asset wise than friends with not so well paying jobs because they got on the housing ladder earlier but that's not taken in to account. I'm in the top 10% so I've got nothing to complain about though.
I guessed that I was better off than 91% of people. The calculator agrees precisely, which was a little odd.
It's worth noting that labour income is less unequally distributed than either capital income or capital.
A measure of wealth that basically looks at income and only tangentially captures capital by looking at blended income from labour and capital and at council tax (payable on property regardless of whether you own it and if so how much equity you have in it) is likely to overstate the relative position of someone whose only significant asset is a mortgaged house.
You're going to lose track of the (very large) differentials of wealth within the top 10-15% very quickly.
We'd be better off trying to work out how nice we are to other people and how much we give back to our communities... and willy-waving over that instead.
I think what's being illustrated here is how weirdly skewed the wealth is in this country. Because all the money is so hugely weighted towards the top 5% or so it doesn't take a lot to move you up quite a substantial amount. Strip out those top level outliers and money is actually quite evenly distributed!
I guessed roughly right - around 70%, but until last year myself and my wife were down around 20%. We still live in a one-bed flat next to a motorway and drive the same beat up Mondeo (the exhaust fell off yesterday :/ ) - it certainly doesn't feel like we've just vaulted half of the entire country in terms of wealth. But that's partly because everyone else is skint too.
It certainly doesn't help that this country has the kind of polarised class debate that it does these days. We all squabble about who is or isn't 'wealthy' while the top 1% quietly squirrel their assets away in tax havens hoping we're all too distracted to notice.
You do know that these things are just random number generators, and that 84% of statistics on the internet are totally made up, don't you.
Simplistic? yes. Random? no. Accurate? Dunno - watch the show.
Maybe it'll help some people understand that as much as a struggle things seem for them there are those who are worse off - and those need benefits we throw at them.
Because all the money is so hugely weighted towards the top 5% or so
I'd say the real huge weighting is all in the last 1 percent. We have a very good income, enough to comfortably put us in the top 10% of that simplistic scale, but our lifestyle is still fairly normal - certainly nothing like the true rich and famous. If you look at that scale you only need an income of about £200K net to get in the last 1 percent, which although a nice income well above what most people earn, it's still nothing compared to the real elite earners.
These "calculator" things are brilliant - enough built in inaccuracy to guarantee pages of debate.
Re: property. If it really is a "choice" issue then you have to apply that logic universally.
It's not assets that should count BTW, it's net assets.
If you look at that scale you only need an income of about £200K net to get in the last 1 percent, which although a nice income well above what most people earn, it's still nothing compared to the real elite earners.
True - it's shitloads but it's still not oligarch money.
I found this video quite fascinating if anyone's got a spare 5 minutes - shows graphs that demonstrate what (American) people think the ideal income distribution weighting would be, what they think it actually is, and then what it is in reality. It's kind of scary! Probably not massively far off the situation in the UK, too.
So that's it.... how much do you make, what your council tax is and how many in the house? Right.
Not too daft, council tax being proportional to property value and specific to the area. A person paying that in Teesside paying that probably has a similar lifestyle to someone paying that in London (top 2% or whatever). If I was paying £200+ a month council tax you could proabbly guess from that alone that I was minted, whether I owned the house or not I either have the asset or a high income (or both?).
Then income/person tells you how much money you've got relative to what you need (need being a 2 bed flat in the wrong postcode and the kids shring a room, the big mortgage/rent is your individual decision).
spoon - Try changing your council tax in the calculator. It has very little effect on the results.
mudshark - Member
Seems to me capital is ignored but relevant - those who have had a property for a few years are in a far stronger financial position than those without.
Property perhaps if a net asset, but capital not necessarily so. Gov policy is to effectively steal from those with capital under the euphemism "financial repression." Terrible time to have excess capital with states deliberately mis-pricing potential returns.
Do people think of assets or income when considering how rich someone might be? Even if the assets aren't generating a great return you could live just by burning through it - try not to end up like a bankrupt footballer though....
Ask a farmer!?!
I would have thought 'net worth' is probably the best indicator of how rich someone is at any specific point in time. Although this doesn't take into account potential future wealth. Obviously someone with a newly acquired seriously high income (say a 17 year old Premiership footballer) would not score as highly (at that point in time) as a retired professional with a small property portfolio, no mortgage and decent life savings.
tbh that's fair enough, you choose to have a larger commitment than someone else. It's basically trying to figure our you disposable imcome.gobuchul - Member
Pretty lame.Puts me in the top 10%.
However, doesn't account for the ridiculous mortgage I have to pay each month.
how much you spend on your mortgage is your choice.
incidently, puts me a 48%.
odd that it is interested in what you pay for council tax but dosn't ask about any savings, investments or property equity which I am sure for many people is where their wealth is.
spoon - Try changing your council tax in the calculator. It has very little effect on the results.
I haven't got time for that, I've got money to spend. 😛
Maybe it varies in how much effect it has depending on the other two answers? More kids would cancel out a bigger council tax bill as it would incicate you have a more 'average' wealth as your requirments (more bedrooms) are being met, whereas a single person with a big house is more 'wealthy' as he is living in excess of his requirments, therefore is assumed to have a large disposable income.
I'm just supposing that the formula looks something like:
How well off are you relative to your area (what's your C.tax) + How well off are you relative to your needs (C.tax/dependants) + how much money do you have (income/adults in house) = Scrooge score (TM)
Which is then ranked to give you your %.
how much you spend on your mortgage is your choice.
To a certain extent yes.
However, as I had to move to the South East for work and lost a load of equity when I did so, I had to take a large mortgage to get anything decent to live in. Nothing extravagant, just a 3 bed bungalow that needed doing up.
My car is 10 year old and the Mrs's is 11 year old. No intention of changing them sooner either.
odd that it is interested in what you pay for council tax but dosn't ask about any savings, investments or property equity which I am sure for many people is where their wealth is.
It's assigning you a rough number based on 3 easy to know bits of information, it's not an accountant! If you really drilled down into it then my main car and bieks are a liability (well, a rapidly depreciating asset at any rate), my boat and 2nd car are "more fun than a savings account".
I'm never convinced that property equity is wealth. You can never access it unless you significantly downsize. It's only money if it's a 2nd house making a return via rent. For the most part it's a liability, the market could theoreticaly crash to zero leaving you with a huge mortgage and no equity.
What a ridiculously poor "calculator" to not include property costs, worthless.
how much you spend on your mortgage is your choice.
But that's not the point, its the cost of accommodation which matters and that's highly variable be that rent or mortgage.
@spoon - no the council tax is only used to help work out your disposable income. If you put a higher value in it thinks you are less rich, not more rich as you supposed. So it's not used to define how big your house is or the area you live in.
still entiely up to you whether you decide to spend 500 quid a month or 4000 a month!jambalaya - Member
What a ridiculously poor "calculator" to not include property costs, worthless.how much you spend on your mortgage is your choice.
But that's not the point, its the cost of accommodation which matters and that's highly variable be that rent or mortgage.
People with money trying to claim they are not well off make me laugh! 😆
It should have spaces for debts and assets and that about it. It's irrelevant what you spend your money on.
It's basically a disposable income calculator - but presuming that your mortgage payments are part of your disposable income i.e. a personal choice. Your assets, savings, debts are simply not included.
Damn! You lot are rich! 80% are richer than me! 😯
@spoon - no the council tax is only used to help work out your disposable income. If you put a higher value in it thinks you are less rich, not more rich as you supposed. So it's not used to define how big your house is or the area you live in.
In that case:
How well off are you relative to your area (what's your C.tax) + How well off are you relative to your needs (C.tax/dependants) + how much money do you have (income/adults in house) + (income-C.tax) = Revised Scrooge score (TM)
Either way, council tax is probably correlated to a lot of things (mortgage or rent, utility bills). I am surprised that it works the oposite way arround though. I still think you could correlate council tax failry well agaisnt wealth.
Guessed correctly at 35% poorer.
Hopefully that will be higher after tomorrow! (Job interview 😀 😕 🙁 )
I am surprised that it works the oposite way arround though. I still think you could correlate council tax failry well agaisnt wealth.
I'm not that surprised, I thought it would be just trying to gauge your unavoidable outgoings as it appears to do. To correlate against your wealth, would it not need to know your postcode too? I'm not sure how it could possibly know how well off I am relative to my area if it doesn't know what area I live in?
It was 1% out.. Not bad really.
Just clarifies that kids are bloody costly. I did mine with and without and it made a difference of nearly 20%. Employer pension contributions make a difference of circa 5% too. I actually think it looks like a pretty good ready reckoner. I imagine it's based on a fair amount of statistical information.
Did anyone do the similar thing that was on the BBC a few years ago looking at it in a world rather than UK context? That was quite an eye opener.
(For risk of misinterpretation, I would obviously rate the value of my offspring at more than a 20% difference in comparable income standing. I know what this place can be like sometimes).
I'm not sure how it could possibly know how well off I am relative to my area if it doesn't know what area I live in?
What makes you think they don't know where you are? http://www.geoip.co.uk/
(I suspect they don't, as it's clearly not that clever, but they probably could make a reasonable guess at region using your IP address.)
By the way, clicking the "how does this work?" link takes you to a page explaining [url= http://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-rich-are-you/articles/all/methodology-behind-the-app ]the methodology of the quiz[/url].
I was tempted to watch the programme, but it's presented by Richard Bacon so I think I'll give it a miss.
F*cking B*stard* kids!
*not literally - at least not as far as I know.
I still think you could correlate council tax failry well agaisnt wealth.
Doesn't Kensington and Chelsea have one of the lowest council tax rates in the country ?
still entiely up to you whether you decide to spend 500 quid a month or 4000 a month!
People with money trying to claim they are not well off make me laugh!
Well it's not up to you if a 2 bedroomed place costs £750 or £4000 a month to rent depending where you happen to live ?
I assume that second remark was directed at me, I certainly don't claim to be "not well off" FWIW, have never done that on here for certain.