Comment Re:You're being flippant and dismissive (Score 1) 138
So you are in the top 20% of earners in the USA, and globally, you are somewhere in the top 0.1% of earners (to put some perspective on it)....
So now that you realize you are not only part of the 1%'ers (you are well beyond it from a global point of view, as you only needed ~$34,000 a year to join that club), you need to seriously rethink and put some perspective on a six figure income. You also need to put some thought into the difference between high wealth and high income. If you are simply p!ssing it all away and living paycheck to paycheck trying to "keep up with the Jones's lifestyle", you are absolutely doing it wrong. Trying to follow the latest fad, or fashion, or car craze, or instagram vacation lifestyle just isn't possible without a high wealth, not a high income. When your wealth is such a way that the money you have saved, and invested in stocks, bonds, real-estate, rental properties, and/or businesses simply grows on its own to the point that you don't need to do anything, and it well outpaces what your traditional 6 figure income, well, then you can do things like buy that latest fashion outfit, or go on a six week vacation around the world.... And you get there by working your @ss off when you are young and saving everything you can, eating things like ramen noodles for $0.50 a meal, and drink tap water or home made tea, and only going out to eat a couple times a month, as well as drive a modest car till it is well into it's teenage years of age and finally ditching it when a repair bills to keep it going for the year begin to exceed ~1/8th the price of a new one, and save/invest every remaining dollar you have. You manage to do that in your 20's and 30's and you will be set in your 40's and older, especially if you were earning 6 figures, or even the median US income. The 30 years of interest and growth on properly invested savings should have allowed it to compound ~16x. So if you earned $100,000 and simple saved the approx $16,000 that would have dropped you down to the median income in the USA, in the first year, in 30 years even without saving a single penny more, it would be around $256k, and at around 45 years it would be over $1million. Now image you had been saving $16k each and every year of those 45 years, and never touched it for another 45 years, if you started that at 20 and went until you were 65 year old, you would have effectively 1 million dollars each year showing up in your bank account each year from age 65 until you were 110.