Madsaw Simon might actually be grossing $700k as CEO of a company. What really matters though is net worth. All my neighbors are Drs., lawyers, realtors, business owners etc. I bet every one of them grosses $200k+/yr. They all have big houses, drive new cars, have their kids in private schools and take a couple of expensive vacations a year. I start talking to them about investing and find that none of them has any real $ invested. Their $ goes out as fast as they make it. They are working their ***** off to service their debts in order to maintain their lifestyle. The banks actually own all their possesions. Anything that effects their ability to make $ (ie. recession) or the amount of monthly debt payments (ie. rising mortgage rates) could cause them serious financial pain. Most of these guys think they are rich because the appraisal done by the bank as a requirement for a home equity loan or second mortgage tells them their home has gone up in value a lot in the last couple of years. That scares the crap out of me because I wonder what they will do when the value of their house goes down and they are under water on their loans?
None of the above may apply to Simon. He may have a net worth of a few million $ which would put him in the top 5% of US households. If so maybe he could give us some advice on making $ in addition to fixing chainsaws!