If you are making $400k in California, in places where you are likely to make that much, quite a lot of that is going to taxes and expenses. Sure, you might be able to save $2M over a decade, which makes you well off for sure, but "rich" is a bit of a stretch when all it affords you is paying a mortgage on a mid-century formerly middle-class house vaguely within commuting distance.
Calling that lifestyle "rich" just serves to muddy the water. This is soundly in the category of upper-middle class and decades away from being financially independent.
This is a staggering lack of perspective. The average American takes around ten years to make that amount of money.
Tell them at the end of the year you’re going to give them the next nine years of paychecks as a Christmas bonus and then ask them if they feel financially independent.
This is a bizarre take. The average American is more likely to live in the equivalent of Flyover, Kansas than Sunnyvale, California. I've lived in both, more the former than the latter. I'm sure the person living in Sunnyvale would love to pay $55k for a nice brick two-story house (current price for one I grew up in) but that doesn't seem to be an option in Sunnyvale.
Tell that hypothetical average American to buy a mediocre house in Sunnyvale and see what reaction you get.
Nobody cares what lifestyle $400k can buy in Mississippi because very few people are making that much in a locale that cheap.
> The average American is more likely to live in the equivalent of Flyover, Kansas than Sunnyvale, California.
Or, 90 minutes from Sunnyvale, an amount of time they are keenly aware of as they commute there every day to clean the clothes, cook the food, and maintain the real estate of the “not rich” people you are describing.
> Tell that hypothetical average American to buy a mediocre house in Sunnyvale and see what reaction you get.
They would say I’m sorry I can’t, because the prices of those houses have been bid up by the rich people who currently live there and make $400k a year.
> Nobody cares what lifestyle $400k can buy in Mississippi
People in Mississippi do. They also get a say in setting tax policy for the U.S. which is the topic of current discussion.
You're ignoring the people who make nowhere near 400k who also work in California, but have to do things like living in a trailer park, or winning a FAANG lottery for teachers in the local school district to have subsidised housing, or commute dozens of miles.
Calling that lifestyle "rich" just serves to muddy the water. This is soundly in the category of upper-middle class and decades away from being financially independent.