[BeetleB]

>I really dont get why you would need 100k to do the things you need. Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal?

No one said you need it. They're saying at that income a lot of pain points go away. As others pointed out, much of it has to do with a reduction of stress. A lot of small problems can be solved with money. It doesn't mean that people will solve them with money - but knowing that you can eases the brain quite a bit.

And then of course, there's health care. With good employer paid insurance, the deductible for a couple is about $3300. So if you have any kind of chronic medical condition, you'll pay that much each year at least. If your employer did not pay and you had to purchase it (e.g. you are self-employed), it'll cost perhaps $500/mo for the premium, with a deductible anywhere from $6000 to $10K.

>Perhaps people need to become a bit more frugal?

There is that as well. People here tend to change their smartphone every 2 years, and always buy a brand new expensive one. They'll pay a pretty high fee for cable TV. They'll insist on 50-100 Mb/s Internet, when, in my experience, 15Mb/s was fine for a couple (no degradation in quality for services like Netflix). They'll generally pay $15-30K for new or recently new cars. And many people change cars too often.