There are many ways to become rich, in Germany too. But the question is at what point being rich really counts as rich. This question is explored and answered below.

How much money does someone have to earn per month to be considered rich?

An employee working full time in Germany in 2017 earned an average of 3,771 euros gross per month. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, those who earn less than 60 percent of the German average monthly salary, namely 2,262 euros, are considered at risk of poverty. That was most recently just under 20 percent of employees in Germany. So when does being rich apply? In terms of income, someone is rich if they earn at least twice what the average person earns per month. Converted, this means that anyone with a monthly income of 7,542 euros counts as rich. As an annual salary, that comes to a total of 90,504 euros gross. So you can see that, by definition, being rich is not reserved for stars and starlets or pilots alone; the (private) economy makes it possible too.

Getting rich through inheritance - an overview

When it comes to wealth through inheritance, the statistics are not entirely reliable. How rich is really rich can still be defined as follows. The reason is that only inheritances exceeding a certain tax-free allowance are included in the statistics. For spouses this allowance is set at half a million euros, for children at 400,000 euros. So when does inheritance make you rich by definition? Only those who inherit more make it into the statistics and count as wealthy by definition, or in everyday language, as nouveau riche. In 2017, slightly more than 110,000 inheritances were subject to tax. Another study from 2017 states that just over 15 percent of Germans would inherit more than 100,000 euros.

When are you rich



At what level of assets is a person considered rich?
There is even less clarity when it comes to defining wealth in terms of assets. Here too, data is lacking, especially since the wealth tax was abolished. So when are you rich if you look at a person's assets? The Deutsche Bundesbank, for example, states that the average wealth per household in the Federal Republic of Germany is 60,400 euros (net). Net worth is the value of all money and possessions minus all debts. At the same time, this median, this midpoint value, is also the value that divides our society into a poorer and a richer half. Prospective assets that every German builds up over the course of their working life through statutory pension insurance are not included in this figure. So when are you rich in terms of total possessions? If you want to express how many Germans, including their assets, house or car, reach a value higher than one million euros, it is 1.67 percent of the total population, one in every sixty people.