I'm in the top 1% by income and assets but would by no means consider myself wealthy. Comfortably off, I suppose. An awful lot vanishes in taxes. If I travel on my own money it's in Economy. I have quite simple tastes, so I can accommodate those without worrying about money. I'd sooner spend a day playing a board-game with friends or a week walking in the hills and dales, or just reading a book with a glass of whisky, than staying in some ghastly luxury hotel in somewhere like Dubai and eating pretentious food. I doubt that my lifestyle would change greatly, or at all, if someone kindly gifted me a billion.

There have been times in my life when I was completely broke (apart from an inaccessible pension) and I wouldn't recommend that, but you survive.

How to reply politely 😤.... Not sure I can but here goes!

I find this type of question self-absorbing and narcissistic. With poverty on the increase, people really starting to struggle to buy basic goods, a nasty war to the east, this line of thinking is an anathema for me.

The thought of benchmarking my wealth against the UK or global wealth distribution is repugnant. I have zero desire to define "well-offness" and/or "rich" in monetary terms. I will always struggle to see any benefit in doing so. For what it's worth I measure well "well-offness" and/or "rich" in terms of happiness, my own and family well-being.

Maybe I'm in the minority here and I must be missing something...

It is tricky. I was looking at property prices the other day, you can see houses for £1Million now that people might just think of as a decent size family house someone in the top 30% ought to be able to live in - but I suppose only a much smaller fraction can afford. Other large houses go for multi-millions and you wonder who on earth can afford them and the running costs that go with them. About £6000 a square metre.

A net worth of £1 million only gets you income around average earnings.

The gap between the truly wealthy and the rest keeps getting wider. Some people get completely disproportionate rewards - it is hard to justify why someone should be a billionaire just because they wrote and performed a handful of pop songs, kicked a football around for 10 years, or read the news on TV. People that would have told jokes in pubs for £100 a night a generation ago, now pull in £10’s of millions. And everything is levered up. A ‘celeb’ will get £10k for appearing on TV, and a paid travelogue show where they take holidays of a lifetime worth £10’s thousands, and a book deal with a ghost writer. The glorious lucky few live in absolute luxury while almost everybody else has some level of financial worry.

We get expensive stuff thrust at us by non-stop advertising which doesn’t help. Nowadays every single product advertisement is set in a beautiful house put together by an interior designer and a luxury kitchen with immaculately dressed model actors. People in car ad’s drive themselves to fancy cocktail bars and restaurants where they meet perfect partners and gaze out over New York or Paris. Anyone driving a 5 year old car to stay at a B&B in Blackpool is made to feel like they live on the bread line and they should be doing better.

There is a thread on Mumsnet today where posters have shared some of their financial experiences and trust me it is a world apart from the types of conversations that pop up on these boards. The reality for many is not "Little in the way of financial assets", more endless stress, worry, anxiety and lack of control in trying to make ends meet, combined with debt from an uncontrolable imbalance of income Vs expenditure to cover a subsistence level of need.

I put myself in the "very privileged" bracket. I don't want for anything - I never have to go to the supermarket with a strict list and a calculator - if an unexpected expense pops up (kids school trip, vets bill, broken fridge) I have enough capacity to just pay for it outright - if I fancy a night out / new dress / flowers for the house I just buy them. My mortgage is minimal, my housing secure. Yes I could do without higher gas bills, but I'm not choosing between heat and food. Yes I could do without increased petrol costs, but I'm not running on fumes just to get to work. Touch wood we remain in good health and don't have to deal with the financial (as well as emotional) implications of long-term illness either of a physical or mental health nature.

I really hope the above doesn't come across as smug, I honestly don't mean it to. Just that I appreciate every day how fortunate i am with my lifestyle and, to go back to the original question, to me that makes me rich indeed.

'Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery. '