The article stated that half of the American population earning over $100k/year lives paycheck-to-paycheck. They’re spending everything they’re making, aren’t directing funds towards building a cushion.

I am sure that there are some pathological cases where a individual winds up compelled to do that. But I think that it’s pretty safe to say that rather more than half of the $100k+/year population can probably manage to put some level of funds away.

You can pull in a whole lot more than that and still go through it.

https://bestlifeonline.com/broke-celebrities/

Though Depp is undoubtedly one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, the fame and subsequent fortune accumulated by the star led to his ultimate downfall. According to his agents, he’s earned around $650 million dollars throughout the course of his career—most of which he has already spent.

Building up a cushion and having it placed somewhere that’s providing an effective return is also part of that, having some idea of how much one should put away and how much one should spend, make moves that make sense relative to the tax incentives that the government puts out for people. And while the US provides a number of programs and incentives that reward people for building a cushion, my impression is that it doesn’t do a fantastic job of walking people through them and what makes sense to do in relative terms or where one should aim to be. My school certainly didn’t cover any of managing one’s finances over one’s life, what’s a reasonable thing to do. The only thing I recall them ever covering as regards personal finance was how to write a check and how to balance a checkbook. As I recall, pretty much everything I picked up in my early life was from my parents. I’m going to bet that not everyone’s parents does that. So…what happens to people where that doesn’t happen? Okay, maybe some people are self-driven, start from a base of zero information and go out and dig up material online (and manage to filter out some of the bad advice). I bet that that’s a long way from everyone, though.