The exact number of years of saving it would take for the average worker to claw out of the middle-class bracket has been revealed—and it’s nearly half a century.
In fact, the average worker would need to save their earnings for 52 years, to raise £1.3 million ($1.7 million), the amount needed to move from the middle and become as wealthy as the richest 10%.
And it gets worse: That’s with zero bills being paid.
“Wealth gaps in Britain are now so large that a typical full-time employee saving all their earnings across their entire working life would still not be able to reach the top of the wealth ladder,” Molly Broome, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation and the lead author of the report, wrote.
And for those who happen to be born in the working class, the odds are increasingly stacked against them.
“Wealth mobility in Britain is low. People that start life wealthy tend to stay wealthy, and vice versa,” Broome added.
As the saying goes, money makes money. The report revealed that the key driver of widening inequality is the “passive” gains. Essentially, those who bought property and invested their money have seen their wealth balloon since 2010.
In fact, Investopedia did the math and calculated that achieving those milestones would cost over $1 million more than most Americans will make in their lifetime.
It would take the average American worker nearly 70 years without a single expense being paid to reach that $4.4 million benchmark—far longer than most people will work in a lifetime. And that’s without even considering inflation, any unexpected financial shocks, or automation’s impact on the future of work.
