Pay-frozen Microsofties not happy to hear of 'landmark year'

First, Amazon stocks vests over four years on a schedule something like 5%, 5%, 10%, 80%. So comparing just the first year is borderline dishonest. It's been a while, but the typical grant you'd have expected to see as a new grad was considerably closer to 200k than 50k. And not only that, but you'd have benefited greatly from additional grants coincidentally being during downturns. But that was pure luck so we don't need to get into that. Thus in 2023 we're looking at more like 2.3 mil in the bank, not 650k.

Next, what part of in a ZIRP environment you buy real estate by levering up did you fail to understand? Anyone with even basic financial literacy knew that near zero rates mean equity inflates and leverage is cheap, so clearly you want to borrow as much as possible rather than sell, and especially not sell high return equity. The comparison isn't equity or real estate, it's equity and real estate to just real estate. At year 10, someone that was good at personal finance has the 2.3 mil from the equity plus the roughly 1 mil in home equity from appreciation, vs just the house. Which is to say a roughly 3x greater outcome. In fact it's considerably more than 3x better because liquid assets have considerably higher optionality than illiquid ones like real estate. We'll get to that in a couple paragraphs.

But hey maybe you think that's not fair or something, and we should compare the relatively financially illiterate scenarios that you propose. In that case then, over the next 20 years (30 - 10 since in this case we're supposing we start the mortgage a decade later), assuming you diversified to a 7%ish return to preserve capital, that 2.3 mil is going to double every ten years so even if you do end up paying 2.3 mil on the mortgage, you're still sitting happy with north of 9 mil in your brokerage account at year 30, which is to say 2043. Last I checked 9 - 2.3 (total mortgage cost from buying in 2023) is considerably more than 1. Indeed, it's probably considerably more than 9 - 2.3 on account of considerable home equity will have accrued over those 20 years to offset the cost of the mortgage's effect on your balance sheet.

And finally, since at this point we're invested in safe capital preserving assets, we can call our broker up, say hey match IBKR's margin rates or I'm taking my business to them. And at that point you can write checks up to about 5 mil on a whim at an interest rate something like prime + 2.9%. And that means you can get sweetheart deals on real estate from auctions if that's your jam, among many other options having access to that kind of liquidity provides. Your primary residence on the other hand doesn't count toward your financial net worth.

The game gets considerably more interesting from there, but I think I've said enough for anyone with genuine intellectual curiosity to get the point.

I assume the reason you're so defensive is because you made poor financial decisions, but that shouldn't keep you from learning, especially so as to provide better guidance to any children or other heirs you may have.