I voted 150K+ (or 250K + if we're talking about a couple) for my personal perspective. At 7-8K/month clear you can have a pretty awesome condo in the city, a very nice set of cars, afford eating out often, go on nice trips.
But it's definitely not enough to do anything extravagant.
if that's your definition of baller, then it's more like dozens of million per year.
only a very few people on Earth are this king of rich... we're talking Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, etc.
Exactly, 500K is not even close to enough to buy Veyrons just to throw them off cliffs for fun. There's only a handlful of people who can do that....i'd say 500mil net worth + people. And there's only a few thousand of them in the world.
Even making 500K you're not a baller.
At 500K, you wish you were making 5M.
At 500K, you hang around people making 10M you feel poor and have a hard time keeping up with them
Exactly. It's all a matter of perspective and comparison. Like OP said, if the person in question comes out of a poor family, grew up in a 3 1/2 with 2 siblings corner Ontario et Frontenac and had a diet mainly comprised of KD, rice, potatoes, onions and the occasional chicken drumstick....if they get out of that and make 40-50K in their 20s/30s without spending it all on drugs and alcohol, then they will seem like their balling, by comparison with their parents status at the same age and to their entourage that maybe did not get out of that situation.
In the same time, even if you make 10M you might feel poor in the company of others making 50M.
But, in very general terms, given the avg income is about 35-40K in the Montreal area (30-35 in Quebec as a province), when you're making double that or more you'll often get the "ey t'es riche toe" comments.