Love & Fresh Water

“ To a surprising degree, feeling rich or poor is a state of mind. There are people who pull down $3 million a year who are miserable and feel strapped for cash and people who make $30,000 a year who believe they have everything they need. But income data can surely tell us something. And they tell us that $250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company, especially after the collective pratfall the economy took in 2008. The Census Bureau last summer reported that real median household income was $50,303 in 2008, down 3.6 percent from 2007. It’s likely that figure fell further in 2009. So a household that’s making $250,000 today is making about five times the median. In fact, as this chart shows, only 2.476 million U.S. households, the top 2.1 percent, had income greater than $250,000 in 2008. (About 20 percent of households make more than $100,000.) ”