I'd say a small (single digit) percentage of people are able to accumulate $1.5 million over "a few" (2-3) years of working, but maybe I'm out of touch.
Given you use dollars, I'll use US economics as the benchmark. Your estimate only applies to the 1%, according to https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom..., according to [0], the top 1% earners has a minimal gross income of $682,577 per year; deduct taxes, cost of living and other expenses, there's no way they'd save up $1.5 million over 2-3 years.
Yeah you're very much out of touch, what kind of income are you earning or is this more wishful thinking?
It's doable, but it took me closer to 20 years.
I got to zero net assets in July 2001. Retired from paid work (mainly sw eng contracting) at the start of covid in April 2020.
I should say, at the start I wasn't married and had no dependents. Also, for large parts of those 20 years, I didn't need to own or use a car.
That sounds more like "a couple". Personally I think "a few" would be anywhere from 3-9, which is more reasonable, if still handily above the median national income (like 250k a year if you save and invest well).
How about when a recipe tells you to let something soak / marinate / rise / whatever "overnight". When really should I start? When really does it end? Is 8am one day to 4pm the next day (32h) the same as 9pm one day to 7am the next day (10h)?
I think for a lot of things it doesn't matter, so either 10h or 32h are okay (eg. soaking beans, marinating meat). If it says overnight I assume the time doesn't really matter that much.
Yeah, I use pear to marinate thinly sliced beef (my variant of bulgogi). I wouldn't let that marinate overnight either. An hour or so is enough. Too much pear for too long and the meat becomes so soft it almost falls apart.
My wife and I just discovered that we have different beliefs about "this Friday" vs. "Next Friday". I never even knew there was another possibility, so it's cool to see this mentioned here so soon after.
"This Friday" is the one during the current week, provided it's currently earlier than Friday. If it's Saturday/Sunday already and I want to talk about the Friday that's only 5 days away I would say "this coming Friday" (or just "Friday").
"Next Friday" is always a week+ away. If it's Tuesday and I say "next Friday", I ALWAYS mean the day 10 days away.
If someone says "next Friday" to me and they mean the one in a few days I'll look at them like they're crazy.
My wife and I have a disagreement about "the other day".
I use it to mean, a time up to two years ago. She uses it to mean up to no more than a month.
I think the disagreement is because I have a better memory - two years ago does not feel so distant to me. It is a silly and fun thing to argue about, leading to some agreements on terminology:
A while ago - 2- 10 years
Back in the day - 10+ years ago
And just to troll her, I boldly make the claim, "just now" means any time between now and a week ago.
Oh no, a whole new bunch of time-wimey words I hadn't even considered! :-)
I'm no authority but to me using "the other day" as a phrase is trying to impart a rough reference to a point in time.
Which means we're talking in "day" timeframes where week or month wouldn't be suitable. I would expect "the other day" to be within a week, but accept no more than a month.
Similarly "some months ago" = probably less than 6 months but definitely no more than a year.
The world is a wonderful place and the ways we humans can confuse communication seemingly knows no bounds. But I don't want a proscriptive definition for each little casual phrase as I think this flexibility in language is why it keeps changing and being alive!
Not that I'm any authority but I'd use "several" interchangeably with "few".
The sibling comment suggestion of using it in the [gap] does make sense though...
There was a contestant on a recent season of Survivor who, iirc, gave up on a challenge because the host said it would take "several hours" to finish. Later the contestant explained that "last I checked several means seven", and about an hour into the challenge he realized he wouldn't last for seven hours, so he quit.. (When the host said "several hours" I believe he meant about 4 hours)
This of course led to much ridicule and many memes in the fandom, and Survivor even titled the seventh episode of that season "Episode Several". In post-season interviews the contestant is still adamant that several means seven.
Personally, after having worked in a hardware store, I always confirm. "grab me a couple of those please" - "is two enough, or do you need a few extra?"
I'm one of those people for whom a couple is 3-5, but never 2. I would just say "two".
Despite coming across like I was trying to correct you, I only meant to give my personal understanding of “handful”
I don’t know where I got my idea of handful, but it probably came from how high I can count using the fingers on one hand. So far that understanding seems to work for me when other people say it as long as I do what you said and treat it as an approximation.
On the “several” topic, I used to think it meant “about seven” because of the shared “sev” prefix, but it didn’t take long to realize several has a much bigger range than that.
This is what I love about language. "several" and "handful" have waaay different meanings to me.
In practice my immediate response for "several" would be to use it interchangeably with "few". 3-5.
But all these comments make me think that maybe it should fill my [gap] at "seven-ish". I mean, the "seve" bit does kinda lend itself.
[0] Tangentially, several is from 'Medieval Latin separalis "separable," ' as in '(as in went their several ways)' . So to link it with "seven" would be a weird thing to do but I imagine this kind of thing happens with a living language.
As for "handful"... you and I are worlds apart on that one! :-P Hand has four fingers, five digits. So "handful" is 4-5 for me. But as other comments alluded, if the [thing] is a batch of small something (like sand) then it's simply how much you can grasp.
As I mentioned these words have surprisingly varied definitions between people! One of the wonders of a living language.
So if I said "hand me a couple of screws, would you?" - you'd give me exactly 2? If you know you want an exact number I would always use the exact number. I'd never say "give me a dozen screws", I'd just say "give me 12 screws". Named quantities are almost always a range rather than a definitive number as far as I'm concerned.
Ahh, that's different than referring to a count of things though - you can't hand a couple of married people to someone, for example. But "Hand me a couple of screws, would you?" - I'd pass them 3-4 screws, not 2.
Great! In that case I'll take two handfuls of bowling balls and several wheelbarrows. Maybe I should get a couple (4) more wheelbarrows to be safe, bring it down to under 4 balls per barrow
What if you have a couple of couples? I think if it’s a couple, meaning two, that a couple couples could be two of however many the original couple is for the first couple, and the third one might couple with both members of the original couple, so I could see three as being a couple to a certain reading, though paradoxically four seems like one too many unless they are two couples of either one or a couple of kinds.
Yeah you're very much out of touch, what kind of income are you earning or is this more wishful thinking?
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...