1) Federal income tax on $240k income as an unmarried taxpayer would be about $63k today. A good bit higher back then because the tax bracket boundaries were higher.
2) CA income tax (note that he was in CA) on $240k income as an unmarried taxpayer is about $20k. I suspect it wasn't much lower back then, if lower at all.
I'm assuming "unmarried" given the "girls" in the description of the lifestyle.
So as a start the after-tax number is closer to $157k * 7 = $1,099,000.
Then you have housing: a "beautiful apartment" in Santa Monica. http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Santa_Monica,CA/1-2_beds/APAR... suggests that will probabably run you $3k/month at the low end of the scale for a nice place, and as high as $16k/month if you go for luxury. Figure $252k if it was a cheap nice apartment.
The "nice car" mentioned was presumably at least 2, over the course of 7 years, and presumably cost $50k or more each.
Assuming he didn't do much cooking and just ate out all the time, and didn't worry too much about the cost but also didn't go looking for expensive, figure another $20k/year or so ($50 per day is a pretty typical per diem for a highish-cost-of-living area like that). So that's another $140k.
That still leaves about $600k to spend on various other things, of course. But notice that I low-balled both the taxes (e.g he had another $100-120k of FICA over 7 years, given that he was self-employed) and the rent, and I suspect the cars, and that it's pretty easy to spend a lot of money on some of the other things on his list. Oh, and he might have bought health insurance too; that would run him somewhere between $20k and $100k over 7 years, depending on what he bought...
Once you get serious about not watching how you spend money, it's pretty easy to spend a lot of it quickly. :(
2) CA income tax (note that he was in CA) on $240k income as an unmarried taxpayer is about $20k. I suspect it wasn't much lower back then, if lower at all.
I'm assuming "unmarried" given the "girls" in the description of the lifestyle.
So as a start the after-tax number is closer to $157k * 7 = $1,099,000.
Then you have housing: a "beautiful apartment" in Santa Monica. http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Santa_Monica,CA/1-2_beds/APAR... suggests that will probabably run you $3k/month at the low end of the scale for a nice place, and as high as $16k/month if you go for luxury. Figure $252k if it was a cheap nice apartment.
The "nice car" mentioned was presumably at least 2, over the course of 7 years, and presumably cost $50k or more each.
Assuming he didn't do much cooking and just ate out all the time, and didn't worry too much about the cost but also didn't go looking for expensive, figure another $20k/year or so ($50 per day is a pretty typical per diem for a highish-cost-of-living area like that). So that's another $140k.
That still leaves about $600k to spend on various other things, of course. But notice that I low-balled both the taxes (e.g he had another $100-120k of FICA over 7 years, given that he was self-employed) and the rent, and I suspect the cars, and that it's pretty easy to spend a lot of money on some of the other things on his list. Oh, and he might have bought health insurance too; that would run him somewhere between $20k and $100k over 7 years, depending on what he bought...
Once you get serious about not watching how you spend money, it's pretty easy to spend a lot of it quickly. :(