Could I posit for a moment that if you're not right out of school taking your first job that you should not accept an engineering position (making an assumption here) at Amazon in Seattle for 130k? If you have experience that number is way too low, even if it's only the base salary. Add 30k to that number, then add in the value of your RSUs that will be liquifiable after 1-3 years, and suddenly your argument stops holding water from a purely economic perspective.

Also, consider what happens to your asset value when your 150k home in Topeka grows at the normal rate there vs a 700k home growing at the rate home values are in Seattle. You could build a very nice amount of equity in the expensive market, sell it and then buy a gigantic/perfect/<insert your reqs here> house back in Topeka in cash and have no mortgage. These markets (Seattle, SF, Denver, ect.) have their appeal even if you don't care about the city life or mountains or whatever.

It doesn't matter how much you spend, it matters how much you save.

My mantra has always been spend your time and effort trying to make more money, not saving it. If you have a decent head on your shoulders, and a good family to fall back on, then investing in creating your network in a city or company with other aspiring people is going to win out many times over versus concerning yourself with saving.

Yeah, but maxing out your 401K contribution for the first 20 years of your career is much more productive than doing it the last 20 years. If it were not for the withdrawal penalty, I could retire now at 46 and live off the interest alone. If I keep slugging away another 20 years, I’ll have several $M.

You need to save when you are young to take advantage of compounding interest. Don’t get caught up in the rat race.

401(k)s don't provide the level of security I want. Given the history that I've learned and the current state of demographics and financials around the USA/world, I think inflation is the only way out, until it can no longer be sustained and then revolution. Simply because so much of society is invested in the "market", I believe the government has no choice but to keep bailing it out, but I figure that only helps you keep up with inflation.

My ideal is to directly have ownership in businesses with strong cash flow, good real estate value, citizenship and property in another country or two, and most importantly, to have the human capital of knowing the right people in government/medicine/law/etc to be able to lean on the right people when I need them.

I'm lucky enough to have a stable family so that I can afford to take risks to try to make the above happen (some of which I have made significant progress in), but I definitely don't plan on depending on my 401(k) other than as a worst case scenario.

This.

Not to mention, after saving similar (or more) you'll own a home 5x in value.

Making $75,000 in Topeka? That seems somewhat high. Is that just a number for a thought experiment, or is that realistic?

Getting fired/laid off in Topeka means you'll have a harder time finding a new job than you will in Seattle.

It cuts both ways; talent is harder to find in regions like Topeka, so that means much less competition compared to places like Seattle. It also means employers will work harder to retain decent employees compared to tech hubs where talented engineers are plentiful.

I've not seen any correlation between availability of engineers and how hard retaining efforts are. It really comes down to if management knows what they're doing, or has their head up their ass.

So don't get fired or start looking for a job when you see the writing on the wall.

It's not rocket science.