Just looked into something that's been bugging me - how many people actually make 100k a year? Turns out it's way less dramatic than I thought.

So if you're pulling in six figures individually, you're definitely above the median (around 53k), but you're nowhere near the top 1% which sits at like 450k. That's a huge gap. When I started digging into how many people make 100k at the household level, the numbers were a bit different - about 43% of US households hit that mark, which puts you around the 57th percentile. Still solid, but not the flex I expected.

Here's what got me though - it totally depends on where you live and who you're supporting. Someone making 100k in San Francisco is basically middle class with housing eating half their paycheck. Same money in rural areas? That's comfortable upper-middle territory. And a single person earning six figures lives completely different from a family of four with the same income.

Turns out the whole 'six figures = made it' thing is kind of dead. You're doing better than average for sure, but you're also not rich by any real measure. Just stuck in this weird comfortable-but-stressed middle zone. Curious how many people actually realize how many earn 100k once they look at the data themselves.