HN is a bubble of very rich folks compared to the vast majority of the global population. It's easy to fall into the trap of how people here talk about money, like a US$ 150k salary is too low, or like having less than US$ 300k in savings makes you poor.

Just remind yourself this place is an extreme outlier whenever you hear someone here treating life-changing sums of money for 90-95% of the global population as "inconsequential".