this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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You're conflating "not having to work" with "not having to work to hold onto a middle-class standard of living", plain and simple.
My mother-in-law retired with $30,000 in her retirement account, and only gets $1300 a month from Social Security. She has a two-bedroom apartment and she is constantly buying DVDs and crafting stuff she never uses. I won't deny there's probably some money there we don't know about, I honestly don't know how she does it, but compared to that, you're saying $100,000yr is a struggling wage-slave?
It really depends on where you live. For example, in my area, a 1BR studio costs $1400/month, meaning ~$17k/year is going to rent alone. If you have kids, then you need more space, and 3BR apartments run $2k/month+ ($24k/year). After tax, that's pushing the 20-30-50 ratio (20% savings, 30% housing, 50% everything else).
My area isn't all that expensive either. If we look somewhere like San Francisco, triple those numbers (no, I'm not joking).
So yes, you can absolutely be cutting things close on $100k, depending on where you live. $100k in Mississippi would put you in the upper class, whereas $100k in SF would have you struggling for a lower-middleclass lifestyle. This site says $50k in Mississippi is comparable to $100k in SF. Here's an interesting article that compares income to be in the top 20% in each state (i.e. upper class):
Like I said before, $100,000 is in the top 16% of earners. Sure, nationwide, but even in San Francisco, that's enough money made in one month to relocate and start over comfortably across 99% of the globe.
People aren't static fixtures, much as privileged people in privileged cities like to pretend they are victims of circumstance, that its the rest of society disconnected from any notion of the true worthlessness of a measley dollar.
Personally, I grew up in California and have camped in Utah. Your numbers are pretending Salt Lake City, SF, LA and more don't skew the numbers for their states to a ridiculous degree.
Even minimum wage could get you there, assuming your budget is such that you are able to stay afloat. $10/hr is about $1800/month. If you stop paying rent and other bills, you could probably save more than half of that for 2-3 months before getting evicted. That's enough for a couple airplane tickets and a month or so expenses assuming you have an apartment lined up. Couple that with selling all your stuff and you should make it okay. You could probably even qualify for a new credit card to further juice your cash stockpile.
Whether you can flee a country isn't the proper metric here, at least for developed countries. The real differentiator is whether you're in the ownership class or worker class (i.e. if you stop showing up to work, what happens?).
I stand by my original sentiment here: OOP himself is likely not even making $100k/yr. This owner/worker class discussion is tangental.