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Comment by inside65 | Hacker News Reader

Where do people live that think having 1.2M in assets is no big deal? Where I live you're making big money if you make 80K a year.

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There are many cities where a 1M house is really just a basic house that would be worth a fraction of that 100 miles away.

Being wealthier on paper doesn't always translate to a more wealthy lifestyle.

At the end of the day, they can still sell their house and have 1M. I can sell my house and have 150K. There is definitely more to it than just being wealthier on paper.

It depends where you live. If you live in the US, you can sell your house, have 1M, move to a low cost housing part of the country, buy a house for 150k and have 850k leftover for retirement.

I live in Singapore. If I have a 1M house, I can sell it, have 1M. Now I have two choices. I can either choose to be homeless, or I can buy another house for another 1M and be stuck in the same position as I was in in the first place. That 1M is really just "on paper" if you live in a country where housing is equally expensive everywhere.

That may be the case, but this article is about Americans. If we're opening up to the world, then just as well you actually have three options: move to a different country.

Which is also an option for Americans? Middle class city Americans are rich compared to middle class rural Americans, and the later are rich compared to other places in other countries still. Shrug.

Sure, I agree with that and that's my point. You can have your basic 1M house, but your 1M house sells for 1M at the end of the day. My 150K house will never be 1M. There's more involved than regional cost of living (such as salary, value of assets, value of work performed in relationship to where you live). You can move anywhere and some jobs will be the same or similar enough in pay, but my job will never pay enough for me to own a 1M house.

In summary, some of these wealthier on paper people you mentioned way back may in fact just be wealthier. They can also live a wealthier lifestyle if they so choose.

I don't think anybody is saying $1.2 is no big deal, only that it's not remotely the same as $20.

$1.2 isn't an unusual amount of assets for a pair of professionals in the US, once you include house and retirement accounts, neither of which can be easily converted into cash for spending.

San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, DC, and their suburbs.

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