This is only related, but not exactly to the point:

I don't get the math people here (in the US, where I'm living) use.

People will frequently cite 2M to 4M as a good stopping poing to never work again. This is a LOT of money. It's a completely unbelievable amount of money for 99.9% of humans in history. In a completely stagnant economy, this could sustain you for 200 years in present day Brazil, having a good time.

Then people say they don't eat out because it's expensive. Say you eat every day, for a counterfactual difference cost of 5 dollars per meal, accounting for lost time and cutlery costs. That's 400x5 2000USD per year. In the next 40 years, this amounts to a mere 80.000. This is so much less than the difference between 2M and 4M.

Then people say they don't sign up for cryonics, which costs like 1000 per year.

Then people use lift and uber to go places which on a daily basis could cost half a million dollars over a lifetime.

Anyway, I think the world is somewhat financially mad. I also think I know two classes of Americans, one which earns 100k plus (many of which programmers) and one which earns 17-28k (most of which students or researchers). And I mix their data up in my mind, and come up with a very peculiar idea of the American reasoning about money.