If you’re really making $500k/yr, you’re probably bringing home $300k/yr after taxes. That makes you able to afford at least one $100k down payment on a property per annum, say at 50% down. If each one makes $10k/yr, you’ll have a $100k/yr income in ten years. At that point you’d be using it to increase the pace of buying or start slowing down and stepping off the treadmill.

I bet’cha that your friends who got their extra fingers burnt weren’t putting 50% down 🙂

Have to say that’s one advantage of East Coast. Not having to keep up appearances as much. I grew up in a small city in NJ that was a mixed bag but had quite a lot of wealthy people living there. Went to public school with kids whose parents were bringing home several mil per year, yet still lived in the same house that was in the family for 100 years and drove 15 year old cars.

Excess income was either invested, saved for kids’ college, or used for travel to some very interesting places.