Would you rather be Super Rich… or Super Wealthy?
The terms "rich" and "wealthy" are often used interchangeably, but are they the same thing? New York Times columnist Paul Sullivan, author of the 2015 book The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy, suggests that while these two terms might seem similar, they are not. Sullivan spent decades researching and writing about money. From 2008 to 2021, he wrote a column in the New York Times named "Wealth Matters," exploring nuances of finances and wealth.
For The Thin Green Line, Sullivan interviewed over 1,800 people to help understand how wealthy people live and exist. What he discovered was nuanced. Earning lots of money didn't necessarily equate to having a peaceful easy feeling about life. Instead, he found that there is a difference between being rich and wealth: "Wealthy [is] ... having more money than you need to do all the things you want to do. It's not a number so much as a psychological feeling: you aren't worried about running out of money because you have more than enough, even if it might be less than someone who is worried about going broke. Wealthy is different from being rich. Rich is a number, and as we saw in the Great Recession, one that does not equate to being financially secure. Wealthy could be a successful corporate attorney; it could also be a teacher who lives on her pension and savings."
Sullivan identifies numerous people in his research who were high-income earners and lived in dream neighborhoods but were so maxed out on debt that they ultimately ended up needing to sell their home and leave their neighborhood in shame. According to Sullivan, this is being rich. Wealthy, on the other hand, involves a peace that comes from minimizing debt and maximizing experiences. This is what Sullivan calls the “thin green line”—the divide between being rich and wealthy.
He suggests, based on data, that being rich can come and go:
"[Researchers found that] 12 percent of Americans would be in the top 1 percent [of wage earners] and 39 percent would be in the top 5 percent for at least one year of their life. Over half would crack the top 10 percent—with an income greater than $115,000 a year—during their lives... half of the people who earned more than $1 million between 1999 and 2007 did so for just one year; only 6 percent did it for the entire period."
Instead, wealth is established and endures.
