Most people have a rough sense of whether they're doing well financially, but very little sense of where they actually sit. “Top 10%” sounds like a distant club, but in some countries it starts much lower than people assume. In others, it's an unreachable summit. The same net worth can put you in the top 12% in Germany and the top 28% in the United States.
What this measures
Net worth: everything you own minus everything you owe. Cash, investments, property value, pension entitlements, on the asset side. Mortgages, consumer debt, student loans on the liability side. This is the standard measure used by national wealth surveys (HFCS in the Eurozone, SCF in the US, WAS in the UK).
Household vs individual
Most wealth surveys are conducted at the household level, because finances are mostly shared. If you and a partner have joint accounts, a joint mortgage, and shared investments, the household reading is the natural one. If you're single, or you want to see just your own numbers, switch to the individual view. Individual values are approximated as household divided by adults-per-household.
Age matters
A 28-year-old with €100k saved is unusual. A 58-year-old with €100k saved is below the median. The same number means different things at different stages. That's why the calculator shows your percentile in your own age band alongside the overall figure. Both matter.
Cross-country comparison
This is where the calculator becomes interesting. Wealth distributions look very different across countries. Italy has a high median because most Italians own their homes. The United States has a high mean but a low median because wealth is heavily concentrated at the top. The same net worth puts you in wildly different positions depending on where you measure.
What we don't model
Future earnings: a high-earning young professional with low net worth has potential not captured here. Quality-of-life factors: €100k in rural Spain feels different from €100k in central London. Inheritance expectations: not in your net worth today, but real for many people. The calculator is a snapshot, not a destiny.
Data sources
Headline figures (median net worth, top-10% threshold) are taken directly from the major national wealth surveys: HFCS Wave 4 (2021) for Eurozone countries, SCF 2022 for the US, ONS WAS (April 2020 to March 2022) for the UK, SFS 2023 for Canada, and FSO 2023 for Switzerland.
Finer percentile breakdowns (P25, P75, P95) and age cohort details for some countries are interpolated from the verified medians and top-10% anchors. Switzerland is the weakest dataset of the ten because it has no single HFCS-equivalent survey. FX rates are approximations used purely for cross-country comparison; the calculator does not claim those conversions are precise.