Half a million at 40: the wealth an executive sneers at

Half a million at 40: the wealth an executive sneers at

A chance meeting at El Corte Inglés has brought an uncomfortable question back into the spotlight: when can you say your wealth is enough? An executive who presents himself as a big shot runs into an old university classmate and hears that, just turned 40, he has his home paid off and half a million euros saved, and plans to take life a bit easier. The reply is swift: that "is crap", the bar for peace of mind starts at ten million, and anyone settling for less belongs to the "lower-lower class".

The numbers of the new elite, according to his story

His scale has its own internal logic. He claims that 28-year-olds who passed through McKinsey earn 500,000 euros a year, that very good 25-30-year-olds reach a million without connections, and that the top, at 26, pulls in 2 million gross a year. The upper class, he wraps up, starts with people like Wyoming, with 40 apartments, or Almodóvar, with a sicav (a Spanish investment fund) worth 12 million. Everyone else is "low-value people who haven't worked for it".

The counterpoint: working for others doesn't make you rich

The reaction of those hearing the story is mostly sceptical. "A guy earning millions a year doesn't waste time on this," one comment notes. "Only pretentious people talk about high-level jobs, properties and money, all unverifiable." Another sharper take: no matter how top-tier you are, working for someone else doesn't lift you out of being poor; great wealth is inherited or built with your own business, and even brilliant profiles struggle to buy a nice flat in the city centre.

The episode leaves one baffling figure: if a 28-year-old earns half a million a year, in two years he accumulates what his former classmate took twenty years to build. With those margins, the only plausible explanation for both worlds coexisting is a hyperinflation that makes Weimar's look tame.