Is $500K/yr enough?

Obviously, no.

But the New York Times gives a good explanation of how little $500K buys you in, say, 10021 or in Greenwich, CT. Yes it's hard to feel sorry for someone who's made many millions and squandered it on silly stuff like the very best education money can buy for their children, but it turns out that Masters of the Universe are frail people driven by their own insecurities, their need to keep up appearances, their need to prove they are successful etc and have constructed lives that are being utterly swept away.

The pain and dislocation they are experiencing is every bit as real and valid and that of the archetypal Michigan factory worker in a small city with almost no jobs available.