The average American considers a salary of just over $270,000 per year as the benchmark for “financially successful.”
However, expectations about what it means to be rich vary enormously from generation to generation.
Boomers, those born before 1964, on the one hand think that earning just under $100,000 makes someone a financial success, according to one new study from Empower.
At the other end of the scale, Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, claim that only those earning $588,000 or more are wealthy or “successful.”
“The average Gen Z worker makes $45,000, these people have lost their minds,” wrote investor John Pompliano on X in response to the findings.
“I think this is the Instagram phenomenon,” another user wrote on the platform.
“They see that Fake people are Fake successful on Instagram and they set their expectations there as well,” he explained.
However, some commentators were more generous towards the younger generation.
“With inflation hitting hard, I understand why Gen Z would set the bar so high,” one person wrote.
“They have inflation trauma,” agreed another.
“Americans believe that success is about self-determination and not predetermination, which is pretty powerful,” Rebecca Rickert, chief communications officer at Empower, said of the findings.
Despite Gen Z’s highly ambitious goals to be “financially successful,” 71 percent of respondents in that group said they expect to achieve that goal in their lifetime.
While it is unlikely that many will reach that earning potential, younger generations will inherit trillions of dollars in a major generational transfer of wealth in the coming years.
Baby boomers are expected to pass on $53 trillion to their children by 2045, what experts call the “largest wealth transfer in history.”
Boomers seem to have a much more realistic expectation of ‘financial success’
Boomers are known for taking advantage of high social mobility when housing prices were low and working conditions were good.
And now they transfer their money to their economically less fortunate children.
Adults who expect to inherit in the next ten years estimate that they will receive an average of more than $700,000.
Research from life insurer New York Life last year found that about 15 percent of 4,437 adults surveyed expect to receive some of this wealth in the next decade.
However, questions are being raised about whether younger generations can handle the windfall.
Of those who expect to inherit in the next decade, only 21 percent of millennials and 18 percent of Generation Z say they feel “very comfortable” handling the money.
Suzanne Schmitt, head of financial wellness at New York Life, told Fortune at the time: “Millennials, and now Gen Z, have grown up amid global and financial turmoil.
“These two cohorts have witnessed economic changes in their formative years and may be more risk-averse when it comes to financial habits than their predecessors.”