What are Britain’s millionaires actually like? Or why we should get them umbrellas

With questions of taxing the richest in the news in the run-up to the Budget, some of the findings from Skandia’s latest survey of millionaires (carried out for the wealth  management industry) are of much wider interest.

• Just over half (51%) have seen their wealth increase since 2008.
• Property is the biggest single store of wealth they hold: they report that just over a third of their wealth is in property (34%). The property is almost all in the UK. Less than one in ten (7%) own property abroad.
• Nearly a third (31%) of the millionaires became so before they turned 30.
• For two in five (41%) inheritance has given them some of their wealth.
• Amongst those who have acquired all or a significant part of their wealth via work, as many have earned made their money in manufacturing as in the finance sector (manufacturing leads 21%-18%, but that is a statistical dead heat bearing in mind margins of error).
• Almost half (46%) are expecting the economic situation to get worse in the next year.
• 94% of the millionaires living in Britain are British nationals.
• The top reason given for possibly leaving Britain is the weather (just; a killjoy will point out the weather leads by a slim non-margin of error busting 22%-20% over ‘a better standard of living in another country’).

The conclusion? Clearly we should be talking more about umbrellas and less about tax rates. Now, who is up for an emergency motion calling for HMRC to hand out a free sou’wester in return for every top rate tax return…?

Above results based on 436 British millionaires surveyed in January 2012.