I recently encountered a situation: "My husband and I are both managers in tech and each make $600k a year" First, good for them, I guess, but also people con

I recently encountered a situation: "My husband and I are both managers in tech and each make $600k a year" First, good for them, I guess, but also people constantly conflate stock-based compensation (which is compensation but very, very rarely a fixed rate of income) or windfall years or capital gains and hand wave them all together as "salary." In the scenario I encountered, the couple lucked out in they both work at the same place and the company stock has appreciated significantly, but what wasn't said is that they cannot sustain that income beyond one year. It's quite possible to make over $1M in a year, at least on paper -- I've done it a few times in my career. Making that much year over year without any windfalls is certainly more challenging. I'd never state "yeah I make over $1M/year" in a windfall year.