Research conducted by CNBC Make It in partnership with Momentive finds that most Americans say they'd be comfortable earning less than $100,000 annually
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. and SAN MATEO, CA, December 12, 2022 – CNBC Make It, the financial wellness website that helps young professionals to be smarter and more successful with their money, work and lives, today announced the results of the CNBC Make It: Your Money Survey. The national survey, conducted in partnership with Momentive (NASDAQ: MNTV), the maker of SurveyMonkey, examined people's financial behavior by surveying more than 5,120 Americans ages 18 and up.
According to the findings, 80% of those surveyed say they need to earn at least $100K a year to feel rich – including 22% who say they'd need to earn at least $1 million.
However, the vast majority of adults don't need millions to feel financially stable. Just 3% of those surveyed say they'd need to earn an annual income of $1 million to feel financially secure and more than half (54%) of respondents say they'd be comfortable earning less than $100K annually, including 18% who say they'd be financially comfortable earning less than $50K a year.
Additional findings from the CNBC Make It: Your Money Survey include:
- Among those who aren't retired, the majority of respondents (42%) think they'll need at least $100K, but less than $1 million to retire comfortably.
- 30% think they'll need at least $1 million or more to retire comfortably while 11% say they could retire comfortably on less than $100K.
- More than a third (38%) of those surveyed say the best way to earn passive income is through owning rental properties while others choose to invest in dividend-paying stocks (15%) or fixed-income assets such as bonds (11%).
- 27% of Americans say they've invested in the stock market in the last year while just 12% have invested in real estate.
- The majority (60%) of Americans rate the risk of investing in crypto as "high", which is up from 45% in August 2021.
- About a quarter (26%) rate investing in crypto as a "moderate" risk while only a few say it's "low" (5%) or "no risk" (5%).
- Only 10% of those surveyed say they invest in cryptocurrency, nearly the same as August of last year (11%).
- Millennials remain the biggest fans of crypto (15%), followed closely by Gen-Z (12%).
"With inflation, layoffs, and a potential recession all top of mind for Americans, financial stability is more important than ever," said Laura Wronski, director of research at Momentive. "And what Americans are overwhelmingly saying is they don't need to be millionaires to feel financially stable. The research also shows that Americans aren't interested in taking risks at this particular moment in time, as seen in the flat interest in cryptocurrency and the uptick in seeing the crypto space as a high risk."
Results from the survey will be featured during the CNBC Make It: Your Money livestream, taking place on December 13 at 12pm ET. The event, which will be available on the CNBC Make It YouTube channel, will offer attendees the tools and actionable information to level up their earning power.
For more information on the survey, including the full results and methodology go to: https://www.momentive.ai/en/blog/cnbc-your-money-nov-2022/.
Methodology:
This Momentive online poll was conducted November 29-December 5, 2022 among a national sample of 5,122 adults. Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2.0 percentage points. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.