Jul 12, 2026
The six-figure salary has long been the unofficial finish line of American ambition — the number at which, supposedly, financial anxiety gives way to security and the good life begins. But for a growing number of Americans, the chase itself has become the problem.
CNBC recently profiled three Americans living what they describe as a version of their dream, and on incomes well below that benchmark. None earn six figures, and yet all have found happiness with their modest earnings.
Not in it for the money
Kinley Cook, 28, guides visitors through Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains, earning around $50,000 a year. She runs five to seven miles daily, rents a one-bedroom apartment and picked up a bartending gig — adding roughly $1,200 a month — when the federal government shut down and her National Park Service job went on furlough.
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“Even on the hardest days, I’m doing a job that I love,” she told CNBC. “What a gift that is.”
Brendan Emmett Quigley, 52, is one of the rare Americans making a full-time living as a puzzle maker. He earned about $78,000 in 2024. He and his wife own two properties in Massachusetts, maintain retirement savings accounts and are putting money toward their teenage daughter’s college education — a fairly conventional financial life, built on an unconventional career.
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“We’re quite comfortable, but it’s not like we’re lighting cigars with $100 bills,” Quigley told CNBC.
Kait Merryman, 26, spent three and a half years living in a shed in her aunt’s yard in Florida, with no air conditioning and a leaking roof, after her Tampa apartment lease doubled to $3,200 a month and she walked away from a full-time graphic design job to freelance.
She was earning between $30,000 and $45,000 a year, spending almost nothing and saving aggressively: roughly $50,000 in cash and $20,000 in investments by the time she signed a lease on a space for her own art school.
“I’m not really in it for the money,” she told CNBC.
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The math behind the low-salary life
These three aren’t outliers in their attitudes, as many Americans are making the five-figure salary work. In fact, these folks have found something that many higher earners are still searching for.
According to CNBC’s quarterly money survey, 41% of Americans earning between $100,000 and $250,000 a year say they still feel like they’re living paycheck to paycheck, as the income that was supposed to solve that problem hasn’t quite done so.
That finding reflects a documented pattern: past a certain income threshold, more money tends to deliver less marginal happiness. As reported by Inc., for the first time in the 22 years since Randstad began conducting its global workforce survey, work-life balance surpassed pay as the top priority for employees in 2025.
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And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage across all U.S. occupations is $69,770. While Quigley is the only one of the three CNBC profiles that exceeds that figure, all three say they’re building toward the life they want — on incomes the data would classify as average or below.
How to make it work
The financial strategies behind lower-salary contentment aren’t complicated, but they do require deliberate choices that higher earners often skip.
For example, Merryman’s approach was essentially extreme geographic and lifestyle arbitrage. By accepting a dramatically lower cost of living — $800 a month in total rent versus $3,200 — she converted a modest freelance income into savings momentum. And rather than just spending less, she also redirected that difference into capital that eventually funded her art school.
Quigley’s path involved a specific sequencing of financial priorities. He and his wife put all available money toward a down payment on their first condo, lived there for four years while aggressively saving toward a second property, then built a client base in his chosen field over several years while managing two mortgages.
The timeline was long and the lifestyle was unglamorous at points. But the result — two paid properties and a sustainable creative career — reflects compound effort, not a high salary.
Cook’s buffer is different: the bartending income, which adds roughly $14,400 a year on top of her park ranger salary, provides a cushion against income volatility. It’s what kept her financially stable during her 43-day furlough, and she kept the job afterward.
These three weren’t frugal for its own sake. Instead, the common thread for them and millions of Americans is deliberately aligning income, spending and savings with what they actually value. For Merryman, Quigley and Cook, that turned out to be a more reliable path to financial stability than simply earning more money.
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With a writing and editing career spanning over 15 years, Emma creates and refines content across a broad spectrum of industries, including personal finance, lifestyle, travel, health & wellness, real estate, beauty & fitness and B2B/SaaS/tech.
