Rich people don’t even feel rich these days

America’s uneven wealth distribution is skewing perspectives

9/6/24 9:02AM

Sometimes, they say, less is more… but, with money, more tends to be more. Even millionaires these days think they could do with some extra dough: a new survey from Northwestern Mutual, reported by Quartz, found that only one-third of Americans with at least $1 million worth of investable assets considered themselves “wealthy”.

That’s rich

From 2019 to 2022, the average American family’s net worth increased 23% to just over $1 million, per Business Insider. So, is being a millionaire actually the norm now?

Well, no. In fact, the median American family’s net worth is only $192,900.

This huge disparity between the average (mean) and the average (median) is because America’s wealth is skewed by its mega-rich. For example, if Bill Gates got into an elevator with me and 8 of my friends, the average net worth of that lift would work out as a little over $13 billion (once we'd finished wondering why the hell he was there).

But exactly how uneven is wealth distribution in the US?

Household wealth data from the Federal Reserve reveals that, in the first quarter of 2024, the top 1% of American households (~1.3 million in total) held 30% of collective wealth, up from 23% in 1990. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin shows the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% (~66 million households) shrunk to just 2.5%.

It seems that the ever-growing reserves of America’s ultra-wealthy have also tilted perspectives on what a lot of money really is. Now, rich people don’t even feel rich, and a sense of ‘money dysmorphia’ (feeling “irrationally insecure about finances”) is trickling down to the masses: in a recent survey by Qualtrics for Credit Karma, 29% of US adults reported experiencing money dysmorphia, while ~45% of Gen Z and millennials said they were “obsessed” with the idea of being rich.

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Ahead of Mother’s Day, Google searches for “same day flower delivery” have ticked up a little earlier this year

If you’ve already made plans for a Mother’s Day gift in advance of this Sunday, congratulations. But if alarm bells are suddenly ringing, consider this a gentle reminder that, like a sizable share of the US population this time of year often does, you can still scrape together some last-minute flowers for the woman who carried you for nine months.

Data from Google Trends reveals that searches for “same day flower delivery” spike in the US in May every year, when Mother’s Day takes place. As we noted last February, the same query also gains traction around Valentine’s Day.

This year, however, it appears that searches for last-minute flowers have remained elevated in the last two months after the usual peak in February — with the search interest this April actually exceeding that seen around Cupid’s Day.

Honestly, we’re not sure why searches are spiking a little early. One explanation might be that Passover and Easter have overlapped at the start of April, and Americans wanted to celebrate with some flowers. Maybe it’s a host of Claude bots that are now running errands for AI-obsessed execs — or perhaps Americans are just impulse-buying some seasonal spring blooms after an unusually warm March, without a particular occasion.