Net worth is obviously correlated to net income, but those who LBYM, and invest well, can save more than people who are much higher earners. I read about this statistic, and it would be interesting to see how everyone does with this. The simpliest way of determining lifetime net income is to pull out your annual Social Security earnings statement and add up the years. Use the Medicare column, as that income was uncapped in 1994. It was capped prior to that, so some lucky folks would need to estimate how much higher their income was in the earlier years.
So if your net worth (I guess using the definitions discussed in the earlier polls) is $1 million and your lifetime earnings is $2 million, that would be a 50% ratio. Conversely someone with a net worth of $800,000 but lifetime earnings of $400,000 would be at 200%, and somehow managed even after paying income taxes to have accumulated twice their lifetime earnings.
Also, if you are using family net worth I think you should add up the earnings from all the workers in the family who contributed to that.
So if your net worth (I guess using the definitions discussed in the earlier polls) is $1 million and your lifetime earnings is $2 million, that would be a 50% ratio. Conversely someone with a net worth of $800,000 but lifetime earnings of $400,000 would be at 200%, and somehow managed even after paying income taxes to have accumulated twice their lifetime earnings.
Also, if you are using family net worth I think you should add up the earnings from all the workers in the family who contributed to that.