Asia, I agree that it is theoritically possible for someone to save that much. However, the frugal living and high income combination you speak of are very unrealistic. You are basically making the point for me, the percentage of people in this boat is extremely small.
Asia's viewpoint is probably skewed somewhat just like mine because I guessing a good portion of her friends are asian. My observation is that a good portion of Asians do tend to be more penny pinchers than others. Not saying all are like this, but a good portion of them. Several of them also have pretty decent jobs, so i think that's way they can sort of stretch to buy. To put it in prespective both my wife and I were close to about $200k by mid 20s, but we also saved like mad (no cable, 1 cell phone, no land line phone,etc very rarely do we eat out). Today our salaries have stagnated to about $300k (and will probably decline gradually as we are gradually replaced by younger talent…) but we still only only get the $12.99 cable, no land line, and shop at bargain basements. In fact I'm considering getting rid of the cable because most of the TV channels stink these days and I can get HD signal over the air. Also, we rarely buy anything that isn't on sale, even when it comes to food. The main expenses we have are a large mortgage and paying for childcare. The former was because we wanted a place to live and didn't want to buy outright because we felt we could beat a 5.7% mortgage. The later is because neither she or I wants to give up our careers completely.
