Another point that makes a difference is that if you ever want to get a mortgage and buy a house, the maximum the banks will give you is a constant multiplier times your annual salary. In Ireland it’s 3.5x — good luck trying to buy a house on a €140k budget in Dublin.
In my case, my total effective comp increased about 8x in the last 5 years after being corrected for taxes and CPIs of the countries I lived in, and I kind of concur with the OP in that it’s more of a log curve than linear. Things get progressively ‘easier’ but less lifestyle-changing over time.
