Percentile Ranking

A percentile locates you in the distribution rather than against an average. The 50th is the median, the point half the cohort sits below. This is the more robust statistic for wealth precisely because a handful of very large balances drag a mean upward and leave it describing nobody.

Promi reports percentiles separately for income, assets, debt and net worth, and the four rarely agree. A high income percentile alongside a low net worth percentile is the ordinary signature of an early career or a recent move, since income arrives before accumulation does.

Percentile movement carries different information from percentile level. The level is a position in a distribution that is itself shifting as the cohort ages. Moving up a decile means outpacing peers who were also accumulating, which is a stronger signal than any single reading.