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Notes -
Income comes and goes, is the thing. Your income is never guaranteed, credit is an illusion of the false world which will disappear when you need it most, and expenses can scale infinitly.
I would say if everything you 'own' is leveraged and you are reallying on income/returns/debt to finance your life in exchange for having more exposure to the market; you are trading security for potential profit, and the thing that makes you not poor is security, not some arbitrary number.
75k in the bank + a decent income is a good level of security, enough to feel like you are no longer poor. That is ONE car blowing up and ONE roof blowing off and ONE leg getting broken without the need to sell the farm.
Nothing is guaranteed. Unless your wealth is in non-perishable food, weapons, and the loyalty of fighting men, you're already in a finance world rather than a primitive physical one -- anything dollar-denominated is. In that world -- which is fortunately the one most of us live in, because it's a lot less harsh than the primitive one -- you don't need any particular amount to not be poor.
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