Rich to me means you have a lot of money (which varies by person what you think a lot is). Wealth to me means you have enough money to never work again; you can live off interest and have little worry about financial matters. I think the minimum now would be around $3million to be able to live off of your money, but even that seems low possibly, depending on your spending habits.
My father said to me last year that for the first time he feels wealthy. He is retired with a good pension, everything he owns is paid off. His health care is taken care of and he travels for free quite often and stays very inexpensively on base a lot of the time. He also makes extra money from an internet business that he enjoys doing. He has no worries about money, although he is not rich. His total wealth is less than a million dollars.
Some people have seen me say this before, holding onto money is a BIG part of it, as others here have mentioned. Money gets money. Money doubles every 15 years at 5% interest (so 1 million by age 50, means you will have 2 million by 65 if you never save another penny). SAVE. Also, always pay off your credit card bill in full. Credit card debt is just plain stupid, unless you have a horrible thing happen and it is necessary involving health or some other extreme circumstance.
If you take risks you might get wealthy, maybe not, fairly quickly. But you can also acquire a lot of money slow and steady, the tortoise can win the race. My friends who have saved, only purchased things when they really could afford them, now in their 40’s live a pretty good life financially and can buy pretty much what they want.
Lastly, certain industries just pay better. If you are in a small town it might be much harder to get rich.