<prompt> Human: After searching Google, Ive found out that individuals are considered to be middle class if they make anywhere between 25,000 - 100,000 a year. It is quite obvious that there are many factors that may shift this number higher or lower. For example, someone who lives in Manhattan may not be considered middle class if they make 35,000 annually, however, if they lived in a rural part of Mississippi or Georgia they might fit that description. My question is a little bit different though. I cant imagine that middle class can be defined, at least not entirely, by salary alone. What about their net worth? Lets say someone inherited 1,000,000. If that 1,000,000 is invested in a mutual fund that accrues 50,000 a year in interest, and assuming they had no debt, would they still be considered middle class? This level of income would still cause an individual to fall within the category of middle class as far as the definition that Ive found is concerned, but theyre certainly in a much better position than someone who makes the same amount from their job alone and has inherited nothing. TL;DR What level of net worth would be considered middle class and what amount would be considered upper class?  <response>: Theres no consensus as to what middle class means, other than somewhere between poor and rich. Theres lots of ways to define poor -- theres a federal poverty line, theres a point where you qualify for government assistance, theres the level where you have no income beyond the cost of food clothing and housing,... lots.Whats rich? That could be where your assets are enough that you can live off just their growth dividends, it could be when more than half your income is disposable -- It could be all sorts of things.Personally, I consider people with no savings to be lower class, those with a pattern of saving at least 10 of their income each year as middle class, and those whose assets exceed more than a person earning average income could achieve in their lifetime currently a bit over 1.5 million as upper class. Thats actually very naïve in many ways. But most definitions of middle class focus on either assets or income.At some level, people have no assets, and what money they receive fully goes to sustaining them food, shelter, clothing. There is no future, just the now. Further up the continuum are people that receive more than they need to sustain themselves - those people can save, to they can spend on non-essential goods and services. Further still, you get to the point where people can save AND spend on non-essentials. Further up the continuum, those saving save sufficient amounts that with time they accumulate assets that grow through interest, investment, and dividends - essentially their income becomes income derived from having excess income in the past. Continue farther along the continuum, their are people where the assets generate a substantial part of the income and compete with wage earned income. Go farther still and the assets become self-sustaining generators of revenue, and wages or earned income are unnecessary. The next step is an asset pool so large, that theres no risk of exhaustion save for something truly extraordinary.The thing is, along that continuum, there arent hard breaks -- each level blurs into the other. 