True, but at $500k, being frugal means living a $250k standard of living, which is still way more than most people have. I guess it comes down to what you see

True, but at $500k, being frugal means living a $250k standard of living, which is still way more than most people have. I guess it comes down to what you see as negative impacts. I'd never been further than maybe 1500 miles from home until my mid teens, so I don't feel like my kids miss out by not having the kind of globetrotter holidays that people on $500k can do. If I had that kind of money, I'd rather save it and escape the grind ten or twenty years earlier. But I guess if your $500k peers are all going to Dubai and Singapore with their families you might feel differently. Same with cars, clothes and so on. I'm not talking about barebones ramen living, more trying to take an objective view on the relationship between spend and quality of life, and outside of a few of the most expensive cities, there's a pretty sweet spot well below the 500k mark.