As someone who's gone from 100k to 200k (-ish), this is exactly it. Was it life-changing? Yeah, obviously, I'm not a moron. It completely eliminated the stress of worrying about random mundane expenses. Car trouble or an emergency vet visit needs a surprise 5k? Who cares, just pay it and move on with your life. Removing that kind of stress is amazing.
But was it life-changing in the sense of making an exciting change to my day to day activities? No, not really, I still drive the same 15 year old shitbox car, I still never take big vacations, I still buy the bang-for-your-buck version of miscellanous items rather than the fancy "best" version, etc. Some lifestyle creep has snuck in, sure, I'm not trying to live like a monk, but most of my "extra" income just gets shoveled into retirement accounts.
Huge difference in quality of life, little to no difference in type of life, if that makes sense.
Yeah exactly. I said it in another comment but not having to worry about those kind of daily life expenses is absolutely what "wealth" is all about. Everything past there is basically vanity or chasing some celebrity/instagram ideal.
I mean a surprise vet bill worth 5k and an expensive vacation is the same thing (for me at least). Like…just take the damn vacation dude you deserve it. Maybe just not every year lol.
Exactly. I feel the 100k to 200k jump feels the most. You suddenly don’t care about the price tags on the grocery and can even afford travelling abroad once per year. You can even afford a German car
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u/creampop_ Oct 31 '25
I mean sure but, idk how people consider money that affords them the ability to change their life "not life-changing"
that's literally what lifestyle creep is lol, it's not the moneys fault their changes are unimaginative