Insurance is a non issue for me, I used 50k USD as an example because it's pretty close to what I make in CAD.

With 50k I can pay my mortgage and be mortgage free in less than 20 years then I need way less than 50k to live, that's also something people don't take into consideration, once you've paid you're debts and you just have to pay for food and taxes you're left with way more than you're used to. That's not even taking into consideration the fact that you pay less taxes on capital gain in a lot of countries, so 50k in salary =/= 50k in capital gains!

We're in the process of buying a house based on my income alone, we'll probably have refunded the 250k loan in 15 years tops, probably 12, then we start stacking to retire ASAP.