My thesis was the opposite of your statement; those at the cut-off point are not travelling, they are not eating a nice restaurants, and they do not have kids l

My thesis was the opposite of your statement; those at the cut-off point are not travelling, they are not eating a nice restaurants, and they do not have kids let alone kids in good schools. They are working longer and harder than they did at the beginning of their career, and hence do not have a feeling of having obtained wealth. To restate, I posit that while they have recently acquired a high income; with that has not come wealth in any sense that has made an impact on their lifestyle. Concretely, having a 30 year mortgage on a 1500 foot house isn't a significant change from a 900 sq ft apartment. A 6% pay decrease for a 401k account might not be noticable, but when an investment can't be touched for 29 years there isn't a feeling of wealth attached to it. I would assume that 10 years at this salary level may change that, but with the transient nature of tech this is not something that it assumed by most. I am also working under the assumption that that the distribution of people with earnings in this range is skewed towards those having reached it within the last decade.