Something I was thinking about before, and now because of boredom I decided to make a thread about it.

The definition of being a millionair in China, for example, is when you have one million RMB, simple as that. But, the same value of those 1 million RMB would be €120 000 or US$160 000, far from one million in those currencies.

So what's the definition of being a millionair in your country?

Most interesting for me would be to know from current Euro currency countries, whom formerly used another(weaker) currency. For example France or Finland.

1 million FRF (was) €150 000 or $210 000 and 1 million FIM (was) €170 000 or $230 000. So, do you define people with €150/170 000 a millionair in France/Finland today?

Having over $ 1,000,000 USD, although I wouldn't consider them a millionaire personally, because as soon as they buy something they no longer have a million bucks. I'll go with 2 million then.

Since the Euro a lot of inflation has been going on. Here in Germany we're almost at 1:1 now apparent by the prices of common goods. Before the Euro it was about 2:1.

So 1million Euro would be the standard now when it was 500000€ 15 years ago.

Being a millionar in my country means being one hell of a corrupt bastard ( most of the time at least).

In the UK there's two definitions of millionaire. There's what are called "high net worth individuals" and "true millionaires", a HNWI is someone who's total property, so this would include your car, your house, your furniture, your property etc. plus your money, minus your debt all comes out to more than £1 million. Now, if your house is worth £500,000 that already gets you half way there. Considering the average house in the UK is currently valued at almost £300,000; this definition is rarely used. By this definition there are aproximately 805,000 millionaires living in UK today.

In legal and financial situations, millionaire in UK assumes you mean a "true millionaire", which is defined as someone who could float £1 million on the open stock market at any given moment. That means you have more than £1 million in cash, in the bank, that isn't currently tied up in purchases, trusts, funds, stocks or assets. A millionaire who invests that money in £1 million worth of stock is no longer a millionaire unless they still have more than £1 million left over after their purchase, or until they sell their stocks and get more than £1 million for them.

For reference £1 million uses the "financial million", not the "scientific million", (ie, 1,000,000 not 1,000,000,000). £1,000,000 is £1 million. £1 million is $1.65 million USD.

In France, there were a period where people perhaps translated, some people even confused with old francs, but nowadays millionaire is about having 1 millions euros. Since euro, we got high inflation for common prices, real asset value inflation and rich people getting a lot richer (in part thanks to the asset inflation).  1 million Franc for an house was quite something 20 years ago, nowadays I can't even imagine buying an house for less than 400.000€.

In Japan, it's very different since 1$ is about 100 yens, so 1 million yen means nothing for private assets. But there is a direct use of the word millionaire (ミリオネア millionea) or the japanese direct translation (百万長者) to talk about annual revenue. It's quite a thing, like 100.000$ salary. There even is movie I would translate to "how to marry a 100.000$ revenue man".

If it's about assets, it will translate to 100 million yens instead of 1 million. It's very simple because there is a word for 100 million : oku (億). So, there are words like okushon (億ション), which means "a 100 millions yen condo" from the contraction of 100 millions (1億円) and mansion (マンション) which is inproperly used for condominium.

£1 million translates to about $1.65 million, which would comfortably make you a millionaire.

You do also hear the term "dollar millionaire" for anyone with £600k.

Depends what you buy, really. If you spent it all on cocaine and champagne, then sure.

But if you spend it on property, you haven't really lost the money at all (especially if it's in an area with high housing demand and you can be fairly sure it will keep appreciating).

I was a little kid when we changed our currency to the euros, so nowadays when I see some old articles with FIM prices I need to translate them into euros. When the currency change happened, an euro was roughly 6 FIM, so the euro was way more stronger than FIM. Due the inflation I'm not sure what is the exact translation today. 

There are two things I have noticed after the euro became the currency:

1. No more dropped money on the ground - when I was a kid I found very often small coins scattered on the ground that I could easily buy some candy with it. Nowadays, you can consider yourself lucky if you found even 5cnt lying there. I guess this shows how much the value of the money has increased. 

2. The thing that used to cost 2 FIM costs now 2€. I bet this is mostly because inflation, but also they have raised taxes lately alot. I would be interested to hear an opinion from the countries that have recently changed their currency to the euro, such as Latvia and Estonia. 

Also, interesting that you chose France and Finland (especially Finland) as an example. Thought no one outside of Europe knows our country exists xD

Now to the main point: Yes, a person with one million FIM was called as a millionaire :D 

Oh, I actually thought that Finland had changed recently to Euro, France too. Shows that I don't know all too much about Europe after all. So yeah, Latvia and Estonia would be interesting. :P