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Your income tells only part of your financial story. Many people spend as much or more than their income, even with high salaries. For example, about 40% of people earning more than $500,000 in the US still say they live paycheck-to-paycheck, according to a goldman sachs survey.
If this is the case, you may find yourself in a difficult situation when your income in retirement stops, unless you are able to withdraw a lot of money.
To better understand where you stand compared to people your age, and whether you can consider yourself rich after you stop working, looking at net worth can be a better indicator.
Here, we’ll take a closer look at the minimum net worth you need to be considered upper class at age 67, a time when many people are just starting or about to enter retirement.
The total wealth of the upper class is 67%
To get an idea of your net worth versus peers, you can turn to resources like the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). The most recent SCF data is from 2022, but keep an eye out for the 2025 survey, which is expected to be published in late 2026.
From the 2022 survey, data shows that the average net worth in the 65- to 74-year-old age range was $410,000. harness wealth SCF then conducted its own analysis of this data and determined that the top 10% of people in this age group have an average net worth of $2,997,300.
To narrow down what this looks like at age 67, we can look at how net worth changes with age. Generally, there is little decline in net worth later in life, as you can generally expect less income during retirement while spending more of your savings and investments.
If we consider the upper class to be the top 10% of people, Harness Wealth data shows that for 75- to 99-year-olds in the top 10%, the average net worth is $2,681,400.
The math gets a little tricky, but let’s assume this net worth refers to the midpoint of these age groups. So, at age 70 the net worth of the top 10% would be $2,997,300, and at age 87 it would drop by $315,900 to $2,681,400.
On a simplified, linear basis, this means that net worth for the upper class falls by about 0.6% every year in retirement. So, if we assume this trend held from age 67 to 70, we can estimate that net worth was 1.8% higher at age 67 than at 70.
This means that at age 67, those in the top 10% have a net worth of $3.05 million.
Granted, mathematics may not be so linear in reality. And a lot depends on your individual situation, such as at what age you stop working.
Still, it may give you a general idea of what it means to be upper class at age 67.
reach upper class
Although $3 million or more may seem like a fortune, it may be more attainable than you realize, especially if you’re able to get started early.
If you put $500 per month into a retirement account at age 22, by age 67, your nest egg will grow to more than $4.3 million, assuming a 10% average annual return. Inflation may eat away some of that, but your contributions may also increase as your salary increases.
If you started at age 32, you would have to invest $1,000 per month at the same return assumption to reach about $3.3 million—a huge sum, but about $1 million less than if you had started a decade earlier.
Although you can’t go back in time, the point is that the sooner you start investing for the future, the easier it will be to reach a sufficient sum. You don’t need to live in the upper class to feel content in retirement, but you can potentially make life more comfortable for yourself if you plan in advance and invest for your future.