I also believe he had more money than people here want to believe. He paid half a million in cash for a home and spent money freely. I think he had a couple of million in the bank. He may not have had any investments or savings or any money put away for retirement but he was better off than most and had a steady stream of income coming in monthly.
That is the most fascinating mystery of the Woo and really one of the main reasons that originally brought me to this site -- to try and figure out just how much he earns/earned doing this.
I agree that he didn't have retirement accounts or traditional investments (beyond the couple of shares of Disney, Amazon, and Starbucks stock that he talked about in his videos), and that's what makes it so much harder to believe. Compound growth is a truly powerful force, but if all his money is in a checking account, he isn't getting that benefit. Instead, he's got to go about it the hard way: just saving it all.
Say he had $2M in the end. In order to get there, he would have had to have saved on average $125,000 per year throughout the 16 years he'd been posting videos to YouTube. That's not earnings; that's
savings -- after everything: cost of living, the taxes he loved to
witch about so much, the annual passes, the unnecessary hotel stays, the magnets, etc. How much would he have to
earn in order to live his life AND to save such a significant sum? Sure, early on his expenses were very low when he was living in his van, and even later in his life, he avoided common high expenses like raising children, getting a divorce, driving a flashy car, paying higher education tuition, etc, Hell, he lived with roommates* until he was nearly 50.
But saving on average 6 figures a year for 16 years takes diligence, and that's where I wonder if it was possible. Remember, this is the guy who couldn't keep two servings of chickpeas in his house because he lacked the self-control to stop himself from just eating it all. Could he really put a hundred large into the bank every year and not be tempted to tap into it until the very end?
Of course, if YouTube was paying far more than the estimator sites believe, maybe that savings was just a small portion of what he was pulling in. Who knows?
It's a fascinating mystery that I fear will never be totally resolved.
*About that: It was a BIG DEAL when BLaB did whatever they did to break his lease, and it ruined the friendship. How much did he really lose there? A couple hundred? A few thousand? If someone is sitting on 7 figures, they don't destroy a relationship over such a comparatively small amount (unless, of course, there are other factors at play, which is very possible in this case).