[spfzero]

One thing is, the benefit of IRAs and 401Ks are capped so that you can't put more than (20-25K?) in them each year. Anything else you want to save comes from after-tax income. Still, even with only half of your income available after tax, a lot of professional couples would be able to put aside 75-100K or so if they really stretched and maybe lived a bit below their means.

But I think the real reason you don't see people with 50MM, is that long before that you'd not need to work anymore. Why would you keep going to work every day if you had 10MM in the bank? It's more than you could spend in the remainder of your life. You'd need to spend 700K per year just to keep up with your passive earnings, and that's with a paid-off house and no debt.

Also, if you're a person who has been happily frugal for your working life, you're not going to change into a spendthrift overnight. You already came to the realization that an expensive car is meaningless, you're probably living in a place you are happy in already, near friends and family, etc. You're a person who will be making more per year than they ever could in a job, so why try to make more?

[peter303]

IRAs/401ks are top out at upper middle class. They assuming you are deferring 15% of income until you hit $26,000, i.e. and income of @173,000. Employer match and HSAs save you some more.

Then you start using rich people tax breaks like long term gains, insurance products, real estate, etc.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Why would you keep going to work every day if you had 10MM in the bank?

The question Messrs. Bezos and Musk ask themselves every morning.

[wing-_-nuts]

If they were simply workers, and not business owners, my guess is they would have bailed out long before. Being the owner of a successful business is a far cry from being a 9-5'er. I'd imagine it's intrinsically rewarding to grow your own company

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I think the more salient point is that there is no natural endpoint to whatever it is that you think you're doing.

Sold more EVs than any other company? Go into space, and try to sell batteries!

Built the biggest e-commerce company in the Euro-sphere? Go into space, and sit in on board meetings while it gets even bigger!

[spfzero]

I get it. I'm pretty sure they don't!

Although Bezos has stopped running Amazon in order to do what he loves, Blue Origin.

And Elon is already doing what he loves.

If either of them had been commuting to a cubicle to work for BigCorp instead, they might have stopped at 10MM.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Fairly sure there's a lot of people at amazon and elsewhere who've passed that threshold and are still working. Sure, maybe they "love what they do", but that seems like a relevant point, much more so than the US$10M.