A larger share of Americans say they'll be millionaires by 2020 than were millionaires in 2010, according to a new poll.
Twenty percent of Americans say they’ll be millionaires in the next decade, compared with 8 percent of United Kingdom residents, Associated Press-CNBC poll released Monday found. But only one in every 20 households was a millionaire in 2010, the AP reported and more than 60 percent of Americans say it’s “very unlikely” that they’ll be worth $1 million by 2020.
U.S. employers added no new jobs last month, a statistic that could be making it difficult for Americans to imagine themselves getting richer. Home values, which many count on to build wealth, have also been dropping for months. These factors pushed consumers’ expectations for the economy to their lowest level since May 1980.
Even if households defy their own expectations and make it into the millionaire ranks, their outlook could stay gloomy. Wealthy Americans are more pessimistic about the U.S. economy than other Americans, a Gallup poll found.
Still, the number of millionaires in the U.S is growing. The Deloitte Center for Financial Services estimates that the number of millionaires in the U.S. will more than double by 2020. There were more than 5.2 million U.S. millionaires in 2010, the AP reported.
The same factors convincing Americans that they won’t be worth $1 million by 2020 could actually be providing opportunities for potential millionaires to make their dreams reality, according to Steve Seibold, author of the book “How Rich People Think.”
"This is the easiest time to become a millionaire in America than I have ever seen by far and I think the wealthy see that an that is why they are getting wealthier," Seibold told Yahoo! Finance’s Daily Ticker in June. "There are so many new problems to solve. There are so many new opportunities that did not exist before the great recession"
But more than 60 percent of Americans said it’s “very” or “extremely” difficult to become one of the the U.S.'s 5.2 million millionaires, according to the AP-CNBC poll. With few counting themselves as millionaires or likely millionaires, President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on Americans making more than $1 million, unveiled today, may appeal to voters.
If the so-called “Buffet Rule,” a component of Obama’s deficit cutting plan named for billionaire Warren Buffet, is signed into law, millionaires would be required to pay a higher tax rate than that of middle-class earners.