I’m sure for part of the privileged bubble the author is in, but it’s super common for 20-something US tech workers to save >50% of take home. Some certainly c

I’m sure for part of the privileged bubble the author is in, but it’s super common for 20-something US tech workers to save >50% of take home. Some certainly choose to take on more expenses like living by themselves, choosing luxury housing, having a nice car, spending on nice clothes and vacations. But it’s pretty common for people to live with roommates and otherwise not “ball out” while eschewing most of that - it’s very common for tech college graduates to follow the money mustache/boglehead financial strategy of avoiding lifestyle inflation and living like college students for a while. And if you do that, you could easily have living expenses at 40k/y or less even in an expensive city like SF, Seattle, LA, NYC. And you don’t need an outlier income to save 40k+ per year (including 401k) on 40k of expenses either. The 401k contribution limit is 22.5k. Per smartasset’s calculator, you’d only need an income of about $100k to save $40k on $40k of expenses while living in California, (that’s without employer matching while maxing 401k). And $100k is a totally reasonable figure for new grad tech TC in California.