Oh, heck if I know ;). I'd be fine with the $200K between those numbers, personally.
But I suspect there are people who use those numbers for scorekeeping -- the relative mattering more than the absolute. And I know from my teaching experience that people can and do live staggeringly expensive lifestyles. I'm sure I've met people for whom those differences are salient. But as I, personally, do not have five children in private school, a nanny for each of them, first-class trips abroad in every major school vacation, a ski chalet in Colorado, a house on the Cape, a designer wardrobe, et cetera, I can't quite get my head around it.
(Not, by the way, hypothetical examples, although I'm not sure that I know any single family that did *all* of those things. But the five kids/five nannies/private schools thing I know happened in at least one, and probably multiple, instances. And the other things were common enough.)
no subject
But I suspect there are people who use those numbers for scorekeeping -- the relative mattering more than the absolute. And I know from my teaching experience that people can and do live staggeringly expensive lifestyles. I'm sure I've met people for whom those differences are salient. But as I, personally, do not have five children in private school, a nanny for each of them, first-class trips abroad in every major school vacation, a ski chalet in Colorado, a house on the Cape, a designer wardrobe, et cetera, I can't quite get my head around it.
(Not, by the way, hypothetical examples, although I'm not sure that I know any single family that did *all* of those things. But the five kids/five nannies/private schools thing I know happened in at least one, and probably multiple, instances. And the other things were common enough.)