are on track to own more than the other 99% by 2016. In the US, over the last three decades, the wealth owned by the top 0.1% households increased from 7% to 22% even as the wealth of the bottom 90% of households declined. The number of extremely wealthy people has also been climbing. According to research from Spectrem Group, in 2014, the number of US households with $1m or more in assets – excluding the value of their primary home – increased by 500,000 to 10.1m. In 2007, that number was 9.2m. Households worth $5m or more reached 1.3m and 142,000 households are now worth $25m or more. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the income gap has expanded and the situation “has gotten worse for the wealthy”, Cockrell said. The main reason? Not knowing if your friends are friends with you or your money. “Someone else who is also a billionaire – they don’t want anything from you. Never being able to trust your friendships with people of different means, I think that is difficult,” said Cockrell. “As the gap has widened, the rich have become more and more isolated.” These are real fears faced by the richest of the rich. In 2007, the Gates Foundation teamed up with Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy to document what it felt like to be in America’s 1%. For the next four years, researchers surveyed 165 of America’s richest households – 120 of