Number of Affluent Households Soars in 2005

Clint over at Million Dollar Goal has a post about an interesting study done by Phoenix Marketing International on the number of affluent housholds in the US. He does a nice job summarizing it, so I am not going to go into it much.

I find the segments that they cover in the Affluent Market Service interesting. They include:

• Near Affluent: $50k to less than $150k income and less than $250k investable assets
• Emerging Affluent: $150k+ income and less than $250k investable assets
• Mid-Tier Affluent: $250k-$999k investable assets
• Millionaires: $1 million+ investable assets
• Penta-Millionaires: $5 million+ investable assets

My household personally falls into the Emerging Affluent segment, yet I would never consider us affluent by my personal definition of the word. We don't struggle, but it isn't as though we have a ton of money laying around either. It just goes to show that if you aren't disiplined with your money, it doesn't matter how much you make. The more that you make, the more that you spend. This point flows nicely into a couple of posts that I have planned about what I need to do next year to get a better handle on my money.