I imagine a lot of people making that much did exactly what I did. Over-leverage but temporarily. House poor basically.

When COVID hit I was renting in the bay area with my girlfriend. During lockdown I proposed, and after deciding we want a family, decided to take our bay area salaries elsewhere to buy a house.

We traded our 3k rent for a 2k mortgage with 1k insurance and taxes. Even.

But, leaving the bay we needed cars. My one little two seater wasn’t going to do it, we’re starting a family. So we got two larger cars, right when the market was inflated. Financed both of them.

The new big property we got has a little barn, let’s renovate that into an ADU for guests and to generate rent. Didn’t have the cash on hand so took out another loan about the same as a car to fix that up.

Now we’re strapped, basically living month to month. But those secondary loans were all 5 year loans, so in 2 more years they’re paid off, freeing up about $3k per month.

I basically don’t think any of these articles about people making that kind of salary are taking into account how weird a time covid was. Lots of people made big changes while interes rates were low, purposely over-leveraging themselves. It also gave everyone this yolo attitude as well, like fuck it all, treat yourself.

I’d be more interested to revisit this in 2027 when any 5 or 6 year car loans and secondary loans taken out during the record low rates are all paid off.