Though many Americans are struggling in the face of stubbornly-high inflation, a new survey showed that those in the top wealth bracket are more stressed out by disfunction in Washington.
A staggering 90% of the most affluent Americans — defined as those with household assets between $500,000 and $3 million — said the current political environment is their greatest worry heading into next year’s presidential election, according to Edelman Financial Engine’s 2023 “Everyday Wealth in America” report
Overall, of the 2,000-plus American adults aged at least 30 who were surveyed, less than half, just 31%, say the same of the political environment.
Of the high-earning respondents, 81% also expressed concern over the impact of the 2024 election on their financial security, compared to 73% overall, per the data, which was first reported by Fox Business.
Former President Donald Trump is the Republican front-runner to get another shot at Joe Biden. Trump leads in several battleground states — including in Georgia, where he’s under indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election result, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
Inflation still ranked as a stressor for 84% of all Americans. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that November’s stubborn inflation figure cooled a mere 0.1% from the month prior, to 3.1%.
Credit card debt was cited as one of the leading threats to building wealth, with one in three respondents admitting that they racked up an uncomfortable amount of credit card debt in 2023.
The dismal figure makes sense considering the national credit card debt topped $1 trillion for the first time ever this year — rising from $986 billion at the end of the first quarter to $1.08 trillion in the latest quarter.
Meanwhile, borrowing money hasn’t been this expensive in over two decades, as interest rates sit at 5.25% and 5.5% with little surety that they’ll be coming down following the Federal Open Market Committee’s Dec. 12 and Dec. 13 meeting.
The housing market has also ditched pandemic-era price discounts in favor of jacked-up rents and mortgage rates that run the risk of pricing out consumers — something that also proved to be a significant source of financial stress in 2023, Edelman reported.
In the survey, 45% of respondents said that if they were on the market for a new home, the current housing market would discourage them from making a purchase. The same was true of 37% of affluent Americans.
These economic headwinds have made US consumers believe that they need greater sums of money now more than ever to feel wealthy, per Edelman’s report.
In 2023, 67% of the overall respondents believe they need at least $1 million to feel wealthy — up from 57% last year. A smaller share, 19%, believe they need over $5 million.
However, affluent Americans appear to need even more money to feel wealthy. Of the high earners with over $500,000 and as much as $3 million in assets, 36% say they’d need over $5 million to actually feel rich.
This data point echoes a similar conclusion drawn by Ameriprise Financial last month, which found that of 3,000-plus millionaires surveyed, just 8% — or roughly 240 — said they considered themselves wealthy.
Among those millionaires, 31% put themselves in the middle class and roughly 60% of respondents said they are among the upper middle class.
The remaining 1% of the one-percenters actually said they were poor or very poor.