That's after he bought the house too. A zillow search shows that a 2-bed house in South Hadley, MA is around $150-200k. If bought in cash, his total savings was

That's after he bought the house too. A zillow search shows that a 2-bed house in South Hadley, MA is around $150-200k. If bought in cash, his total savings was probably 750-800k. It may be a good reminder for readers of this to realize that if they want to do something similar to the author, having roughly that order of magnitude of savings is a good start -- and even then, having the expenses of living in a big city (Manhattan, SF) is still unsustainable.