A decent house in San Francisco, for instance, would be around a million (and it would be smaller than your house in Iowa). You'd have to spend 40k/year just on

A decent house in San Francisco, for instance, would be around a million (and it would be smaller than your house in Iowa). You'd have to spend 40k/year just on mortgage payments. It's great that your house payments are less than half, but for certain areas of the country, your house payments aren't viable. I don't believe 250k would give a family of four a wealthy life in the Bay Area. A comfortable one, but not a wealthy one. Does anyone know what percentile 250k would be for SF? It was in the top couple nationally but I bet it might not even be top 10% here.