Canadians who earn $200,000 a year don’t consider themselves to be rich and are more likely to think of themselves as either “comfortable” or “just getting by”.

That’s just one of the findings of recent study by credit card giant American Express.that looked at attitudes towards money and lifestyle.

In the study of over 1,000 Canadians, most agree that you are rich when you are in the $500,000 a year income bracket and that earning $100,000 a year is just enough to be comfortable.

Half of those earning as much as $200,000 a year believe they are getting by on their salary. Interestingly, the vast majority of respondents making the national average household income of $58,000 (85%) feel they are living quite comfortably and 10% consider themselves well-off.

As for whether or not Canadians believe money can buy happiness, 72% of all those polled believe that it doesn’t.

But when looked at closely, 31% of affluent Canadians agree that money can buy happiness, compared to only 13% of average earners saying the same thing.

The affluent are also more likely to agree that their money is able to buy them some of the good things in life, while over half of the total survey group said that they don’t have enough spare cash to do or buy the things they enjoy.

While most people say they agree with the perspective that “life is for living, money is for spending”, the vast majority (82%) said that if they received an unexpected windfall, they would use it to pay off debts or to invest. Only 15% said they would spend it.

The 2003 American Express Survey of Affluence was conducted as part of Amex’s overall marketing strategy to determine consumer attitudes toward money and spending. The survey is based on telephone interviews conducted among random samples of 1,000 adult Canadians. Samples of this size produce national results that can be considered accurate within 3 percentage points, 95 times out of 100. The research was conducted by Jigsaw Marketing.