> You didn't answer my second question

I purposely didn’t because strictly that is not a median. Stupid example: median of 1,2,3 is 2 and 67% >= 2 here. We do agree that as N grows, the difference shrinks (to the point of no meaningful difference).

My point was that mathematically there is no contradiction. Let’s say half the population has $200 monthly expenses (3mo is then $600 saved), the median is $600 and it checks out.

That is a stupid assumption though - because who has such low expenses.

> I'm assuming that "three months of expenses" would be roughly $6,000

You then assume that we must be talking about the upper half, but that isn’t given.

We have to make SOME assumptions though, since the statement is underspecified: the OP didn’t specify what 3 months expenses means. It is unlikely that 50% of the US population have the EXACT same expenses, so I assumed an “on average” was missing somewhere which further relaxes the constraints.

I objected to your statement that the math doesn’t check out. There are many ways it could check out.

We came at this with different assumptions. I don’t think we fundamentally disagree and I didn’t mean to bicker.