Skip to main content

What It Takes to be a One Percenter

Image
By
What does it take to be a “one percenter?” How much do you have to earn before you fall into this rarified zone?

A new study written by socioeconomists Estelle Sommeiller and Mark Price, looked at state-level tax data from the Internal Revenue Service over the past 35 years. They’ve created a chart which looks at annual income at the threshold of the top 1% in each U.S. state. If you live in Ohio you’re a “one percenter” if you earn more than $316,000 a year. 

The top state is Connecticut at more than $678,000 a year…higher than New York’s threshold of $506,000, the $539,000 threshold in New Jersey, $555,000 in Washington, D.C. or $532,000 in Massachusetts. California ($438,000) and Texas ($423,000), which are considered wealthy states, actually came in behind North Dakota ($502,000).

States with the lowest threshold include West Virginia ($243,000), Kentucky and Alabama ($263,000) and Maine ($274,000).  

Nationwide, the total share of income going to the upper 1% rose by about 12 percentage points since 1979. The one-percenters in Connecticut make a little over 33% of all income in that state, and in New York, the percentage is 32.6%. Elsewhere, the range is generally in the 14% to 22% range, up from the 7-11% range back in 1979.



















Best Regards,

Kevin Kroskey, CFP, MBA

This article adapted with permission from Bob Veres.

Source:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/27/inequality-is-not-just-about-wall-street-its-in-all-50-states/?utm_content=buffere638d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer  

Popular posts from this blog

Diversification: Disciplinarian of Disciplinarians

By
Disciplined diversification works when you do and even when you don't want it to. Diversification in effect forces you to sell the thing that has been doing so well in your portfolio and to buy the thing that hasn't. While this makes rational sense, it is emotionally difficult to execute. Think back to the tail end of 2008--were you selling bonds and cash to buy stocks? Most likely you weren't unless your advisor or some sort of automatic trigger did it for you. Carl Richards of www.behaviorgap.com provided a good reminder of how diversification works in a recent NY Times blog post. The diversification he discusses here is more so related to equity asset-class diversification but also touches on the three basic building blocks--equities, bonds, and cash. He doesn't discuss alternative asset classes -- an asset class that doesn't fit neatly into the three basic categories -- being used to further diversification, but that's a detailed topic for another day.
Read more

The Value of Double-Checking & Monitoring Your Retirement Strategy

By
Motivational speaker Denis Waitley once remarked, “You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.” That statement certainly applies to retirement planning. Your effort must not waver, yet you must also examine it from time to time. 1       Perhaps you may realize that you under-estimated your health insurance costs and will need more retirement income than previously assumed. Or perhaps, with today's low interest rates you are not getting the level of investment returns you counted on. With those factors and others in mind, here are some signs that you may need to double-check your retirement strategy.     Your portfolio lacks significant diversification. Many baby boomers are approaching retirement with portfolios heavily weighted in U.S. equities. As many of them will have long retirements and a sustained need for growth investing, you could argue that this is entirely appropriate. Yet, U.S. equities by some measures may be over-valued by
Read more

65-80 Year Olds … A New and Exciting Demography

By
Should today’s 70-year-old American be considered “old?” How do you define that term these days? Statistically, your average 70-year-old has just a 2% chance of dying within a year. The estimated upper limits of average life expectancy is now 97, and a rapidly growing number of 70-year-olds will live past age 100. Perhaps more importantly, today’s 70-year-olds are in much better shape than their grandparents were at the same age. In most developed countries, healthy life expectancy from age 50 is growing faster than life expectancy itself, suggesting that the period of diminished vigor and ill health towards the end of life is being compressed. A recent series of articles in the Economist magazine suggest that we need a new term for people age 65 to 80, who are generally healthy and hearty, capable of knowledge-based work on an equal footing with 25-year-olds, and who are increasingly being shunted out of the workforce as if they were invalids or, well, “old.” Indeed, the a
Read more