There are many paths to getting rich, including here in Germany. But the question is when rich really means rich, and when you can actually say so. This question is explored and answered below.

How much money does someone have to earn per month to count as rich?

An employee in Germany who worked full time in 2017 earned an average of 3,771 euros gross per month. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, those who earn less than 60 percent of the German average monthly salary, namely 2,262 euros, are considered at risk of poverty. That was recently just under 20 percent of employees in the country. When does being rich apply? In terms of salary, someone is rich if they earn at least twice what the average person earns per month. In other words, anyone with a monthly income of 7,542 euros or more counts as rich. As an annual salary, that comes to a total of 90,504 euros gross. So you can see that being rich, by definition, is not reserved for stars and starlets or pilots alone; the (private) business world makes it possible too.

Getting rich through inheritance: an overview

When it comes to wealth through inheritance, the statistics are not entirely reliable. Still, when someone is truly rich can be defined as follows. That is because the statistics only include inheritances that exceed a certain tax-free allowance. For spouses this is set at half a million euros, while for children it is 400,000 euros. So when is someone rich by definition when it comes to inheritance? Only those who inherit more make it into the statistics and count as rich by definition, or in everyday speech, as nouveau riche. In 2017, slightly more than 110,000 inheritances were subject to tax. Another study from 2017 says that just over 15 percent of Germans would inherit more than 100,000 euros.

When do you count as rich



At what level of assets is a person considered rich?
There is even less clarity than with inheritance when it comes to defining wealth by assets. Data is missing here too, especially since the wealth tax was abolished in Germany. So when are you rich if you look at a person's assets? The Deutsche Bundesbank, for example, reports that the average wealth per household in Germany is 60,400 euros (net). Net worth is calculated from the value of all money and possessions, minus all debts. At the same time, this median, this midpoint value, is also the figure that splits our society into a poorer and a richer half. Prospective future entitlements that every German accumulates over a working life through the statutory pension insurance are not included in this figure. When are you rich in terms of total belongings? If you want to express in numbers how many Germans, including their assets, house or car, reach a value above one million euros, it is 1.67 percent of the total population, one in every sixty people.