If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
> Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar?
Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved?
The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about.
> If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
I assure you that my hometown in South GA (a cheap city) didn’t have $170K a year developer jobs.
A friend who moved to Columbus GA after college in 1997 I doubt is making $170K now.
I know my friend who still lives in Atlanta and is a lead developer at Home Depot (one of the few F500 companies based in Atlanta) just crossed around $170K and he has been there 10 years.
Ok, so you need 2 people working in tech making near top end salaries for the area? You do see how this simple idea of saving 100k/year isn't so simple for anyone outside of FAANG?