If you make $145,00 a year you are taking home like $7,000-7,500 after taxes, 401k, etc. Even if you’re rent is only $3,000 the rest starts to go pretty quickly with going out to eat/drink, any travel/vacations, student loans, etc. I’m not saying that you literally couldn’t afford to pay your bills but I think realistically you’d have to make like $300k as a couple to be able to fully enjoy the lifestyle and be contributing an appropriate level to household savings. So maybe “stupid” money is a bit of an overstatement but it’s certainly a pretty high figure. By the way, a quick Google search shows census data from 2013 that has $140,000 as the 99th percentile for individual income for the 25-29 age group and $186,000 for the 30-34 age group. Now obviously cities like NYC and Boston have a disproportionate share of people in those groups but it’s still a lot of money.