Weirdly, I've never made more than about $130k/year, didn't inherit that much, have more real estate than I strictly need, don't particularly want a Tesla (although I've been considering a 5 or 6-year old luxury car lately, as I'm old and fat and tired of crawling in and out of the 2004 Corvette) and I find the "I have to have an initial offer $400k/year or I'll never be able to afford a car or a house" completely inexplicable.

Pro tip: I am a negative example; don't do what I did. If you are success and prestige oriented, do not chase hard problems. Go after easy problems that are well compensated. Hard problems run the risk of failure, from which it is difficult to "catch up", and typically aren't all that well paid.