Member-only story

The Difference Between being Rich and being Wealthy

They don’t mean the same thing

Rajeet S
4 min readJun 9, 2020
Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

**Join Medium here to get access to 1,000s of similar articles**

I used to think the terms rich and wealthy were interchangeable, that both meant you had loads of money. I realised I was using the definition of rich for both words.

(To be) Rich: to have more spending power than the average person.

If, for example, the average person in your country earns $40k a year and you earn $400k, you’re technically rich because you have more spending power than they do.

If the average cost of a restaurant meal is $40 and the average person can comfortably afford 2 per week, you can comfortably afford either 10 or two $400 meals per week.

Having more money means having more spending power; when you can afford to spend more than the average person. Being well above average in terms of sheer money supply makes you rich. Conversely, having an amount of money far below the average would make you poor.

To put it crudely, you‘re rich when you have more money than the average person.

This doesn’t make you wealthy though. If you and an average person both lost your jobs on the same day both your incomes would stop. You’ll have more money than them…

--

--

Rajeet S
Rajeet S

Written by Rajeet S

Rajeet enjoys mixing cocktails and bombarding strangers with philosophy.

No responses yet