There are many paths you can take to get rich. Here in Germany, too. But the question is at what point you're really rich, and when you can actually say so. This question is examined and answered below.

How much money does someone have to earn per month to count as 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 recently just under 20 percent of employees in Germany. At what point are you rich? In terms of salary, rich means earning at least double what the average person earns per month. Converted, that means 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 being rich, by definition, isn't reserved for stars, starlets or pilots, but that the (private) business world makes it possible too.

Getting rich through inheritance - an overview

When it comes to wealth through inheritance, the statistics aren't fully developed. Still, at what point you're really rich can be defined as follows. That's because the statistics only include inheritances that exceed a certain tax-free allowance, which applies in each case. In Germany, it's set at half a million euros for spouses, and 400,000 euros for children. So at what point are you rich through inheritance, by definition? Only those who inherit more make it into the statistics and count as rich 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 says that just over 15 percent of Germans would inherit more than 100,000 euros.

At what level of assets is a person considered rich?
There's even less of an overview than with inheritance when it comes to defining wealth in terms of assets. Data is missing here too, especially since the wealth tax was abolished in Germany. At what point are you rich when 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 all possessions, minus all debts. At the same time, this median is also the value that divides our society into a poorer and a richer half. Prospects of future assets that every German builds up over the course of a working life through statutory pension insurance are not included in this figure. At what point are you rich in terms of total belongings? If we want to express in numbers how many Germans, including assets, house or car, reach a value higher than one million euros, it's 1.67 percent of the total population, one in every sixty people.