Wow, I have a lot of money

Two periodicals that I read, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, always have full page ads for wealth management firms and private banks. Some of them are very annoying, even for ads. One has a photo of an avuncular, trimly-bearded and bespectacled gentleman, one of the private bankers whose phone numbers are included, above what I can only guess is some phony Q & A copy:

"Q. Is wealth always a burden for the next generation?
A. It doesn't have to be."

Well, thank God.

One ad that I saw in the New York Times this week for the Bessemer Trust includes the tag line that their services are for those families with a minimum of $10 million in liquid assets to invest.

I used to wonder, how many wealthy people must be out there for these ads make sense for the companies to run them? Then I found out.

The number of Americans with $30 million or more in investable assets is about 30,000. I think we can assume that a good number of these people read the New York Times. So there's the customer base.