Top 1% Say They Are Poor Apparently, the wealthy one percent still feel poor. While those of you who are scraping by on one-tenth of some of these posters' incomes might feel outraged by their claims of dire straits, it helps to remember just how easy it is to fall into the money comparison trap. Indeed, many of the posters who claimed to be struggling feel that way because they pay for an expensive private school, which can cost up to $40,000 a year, sucking away much of their income.