It's important to make a distinction here between someone who is wealthy and someone who has high income. I think the people who this applies to are more in the

It's important to make a distinction here between someone who is wealthy and someone who has high income. I think the people who this applies to are more in the bucket of high earner. E.g. take a typical "high earner" tech worker who brings in $500k p.a. total, but lives in an expensive Californian town. They may have a $2mln mortgage to service and high living expenses. Their debt to income ratio is high, but they can afford it (for a time). At the same time, this person is not wealthy. They need the high cash flow to service their debt load and their net worth may even close to zero (taking the debt into account). There are many definitions of what is a wealthy person, but in my book it is someone with a net worth >$10mln and a low debt loading. Assuming their holdings are in a well diversified portfolio generating 5% net of inflation, they can likely maintain their lifestyle while their wealth will still continue to grow and they are not at risk of being wiped out by income loss or small drawdowns. E.g. someone who has assets worth $100mln but $90mln debt is very highly leveraged and could quickly find themselves being forced to liquidate assets in case they experience just a 10% drawdown. A wealthy person will indeed often use debt as a leverage vehicle or simply to make a purchase without having to liquidate their holdings, but the debt will still mostly be a small portion of their assets and often also a relatively small portion of the appreciation of their wealth.