This depends a lot on the person. There’s plenty of rich people that earned it rather than being born into it, and still live frugally. I work at a big tech company and there’s plenty of people with mid to high six figure salaries that still use coupons, keep their phone for 4-5 years, and save as much money as they can. Living well within your means on a higher salary lets you retire early, and for some people that’s worth more than any frivolous spending.

If you’re getting a new phone every year, you’re not throwing away $1000. You can easily sell it after a year for $700 or more.

I’m not sure about Apple, but Samsung has some ridiculously good trade-in offers sometimes. My wife upgraded from an S21 Ultra to an S26 Ultra this year, and got something like $250 for trading in her old phone. About the same as what they were selling for on eBay. I’ve seen them offer $600+ for last year’s model.

Apple does too.

If I wanted to get a new phone this year, I could trade my 17 pro max in and their current trade is $885, and I think it was $1400 msrp when I bought it. So I’d have actually paid $515 or something like that.

I also traded in my 15 pro max when I got the 17 and they gave me $520 on it after 2 years. And I think I actually got that one free on our phone plan when we switched. So really I got a free 15, which they then gave me $515 for, taking the 17 down to $879, which is less than what they’d give me today for it.