As a person who started out poor and has reached the point of being pretty well-off I can say that $10k would have been life-changing in my early 20s, useful in my early 30s, and not even 2 months of mortgage payments in my late thirties.

I'm not saying that'll be true for everyone, but it can happen. My internal scale of what is expensive versus cheap has changed dramatically over the years.

I wouldn't spend $10k on a hotel room or a bottle of wine, but it wouldn't change my life any more.

It's a fucking shame that the system is rigged against normal people.