March 28, 2006, Tuesday
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON (NYT); Business/Financial Desk
-The number of American households with a net worth of $1 million or more, excluding their principal residence, grew to a record 8.9 million last year, the British market research firm TNS Financial Services said in a report to be released today.
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By ROBERT TRIGAUX, Times Business ColumnistPublished November 29, 2004
Gas prices are up. Housing prices are up. Health care prices and interest rates are up. Even the poverty rate in this country is up.
So are the numbers of millionaire households - way up to a record 8.2-million from 6.2-million a year ago. That's a whopping 33 percent gain of 2-million new households to achieve millionaire status in just the past year from June 2003 to June 2004.
Gaining millionaire status surely is not what it used to be. For those of us old enough to recall TV's early drama The Millionaire, in which the unseen and wealthy John Beresford Tipton sent his patrician messenger to deliver a $1-million cashier's check per episode to one of us needy, normal folks, a million bucks sure seemed the ticket to the good life.
Now that we are bombarded with the annual Forbes lists of America's billionaires, and now that the media have turned Bill Gates and Warren Buffett into financial superheroes, a mere millionaire feels almost second string. After all, there are just 278 U.S. billionaires amid the swarm of 8.2-million millionaire households.
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