What is your $2m generating? For instance, if you invested in high quality dividend stocks, you can get 3% and it should generally grow about what GDP does (which should also include inflation effects). So that's $60k/year, or after 15% dividend tax + let's say 5% California state tax, for a net of $48k. If you're in somewhere rent-controlled, seems like even with a family you're not going to on the streets starving.

Alternatively, if you have $2m in stocks that are growing, you could consider the growth amount as potential income, because you could always sell it. Generally the growth is better than 3%, but down times will also hurt worse since you might have to sell at a low.

Or you could purchase a residence with $1m, and buy dividends with the rest. Taxes on the residence will be about $10k, with dividend income of $24k, leaving $14k for food, etc.

You won't independently wealthy in any of these scenarios (not in the Bay Area, anyway), but in these scenarios you don't actually need much from a job, maybe $40k with a family. So you should be able to save several years worth of that on a Bay Area salary, which leaves you with quite a long runway.

And if things get really bad, you can move to the middle of nowhere, buy a house for $300k and actually be independently wealthy.