Summer houses. Second or third cars. Big houses. Vacations. Expensive neighborhoods. High ticket hobbies. Yachts. These things can be on loans, or worked for, and often come in at a balance of under a million. Someone has spent money to get them. They are not the measure of having money.

There are at least four factors I can think of that have tremendous sway over how we perceive socioeconomic status: income, debt, wealth, and liquidity.

No one of these is enough to change someone from rich to poor or vice versa, but some are a lot easier to perceive than others.