Walk down the streets of New York City and start counting people. When you get to 25, chances are you walked past a millionaire (or had one drive by in a limo).

A new analysis by Spear's magazine and a consulting firm called WealthInsight found that 4.63 percent of New Yorkers are millionaires — about one in every 25.

MSN/Money described the criteria for membership in this 1 in 25 club: "A millionaire is someone whose net worth, excluding their primary residence, is $1 million or more."

And it isn't just the percentage. It is the sheer amount of millionaires in the city. The Los Angeles Times put the numbers at 389,100 people.

"New York has long been the bastion of wealth not only in America, but the world," Oliver Williams, a WealthInsight analyst, told The Times. "It has the second-largest millionaire and largest billionaire population of any global city."

The Spear's survey found a few cities where the odds of bumping into a millionaire are even higher.

"The new study shows that in city-state Monaco you are only ever a stone's throw from a millionaire — with almost a third of the population (29.21 percent) classed in this financial bracket. Not far behind are Swiss banking centers Zurich (27.34 percent) and Geneva (17.92) in second and third place, with key financial centers New York (4.63 percent) and Frankfurt (3.88 percent) in fourth and fifth."

The Jewish Voice points out that "New York City was the only metropolis in America to place in the top 17 cities with the densest concentration of millionaires." This is because the next American city to be mentioned on the list, Houston (2.09 percent millionaires), was 18th on the list and San Francisco (2.07 percent) was 19th.

"We also always need to bear in mind that (a city) having millionaires isn't itself a good thing if it means inequality — which is damaging to everyone — goes up too," said Spear's editor Josh Spero.

Email: mdegroote@deseretnews.com
Twitter: @degroote