Watches

Premise of the original post assumes you have a family and associated normal expenses.

After 10% retirement savings you're still not maxing your 401k, so call it 180k pre-tax income. That puts you in 22% federal bracket or 14.0% effective federal tax rate assuming standard deduction. Add on FICA, NY state income tax and NY City income tax, your total tax burden is about 29.06% at that income. Assuming standard deductions, your take home pay after retirement and taxes is somewhere around $128k per year.

OP said 2-3 kids so lets call it 2.5 kids at $2k per kid per year for college savings (a popular rule of thumb). If you have a family you're paying for a multi-bedroom place. Median rent Manhattan was $5,588 in mid-2023. USDA publishes costs of groceries for a family of 4 (Thrifty plan, low cost plan, moderate cost plan, and liberal budget) since we're talking about luxury goods here lets go with the USDA liberal budget of $1,583/mo.

OP also specified vacations - I'd guess someone making 200k buying a luxury watch will spend above average on vacations, but lets just go with national average here. Forbes publishes an estimate for national average cost of a family of 4 to vacation at $3,609 for a 3-day trip and $6,144 for a week-long trip. Lets assume one 1-week vacation and one 3-day vacation per year.

OP also specified said charity - obviously highly discretionary but for the sake of argument it looks like Americans donate about 1.7% of income to charity, so lets call that $3,400/yr.

So, assuming you have zero student loan debt, that sill leaves you with about $23,800k per year or $1,983/month on ALL other costs. I didn't even get into utilities, cell phone, insurance (rental, life, auto). All this could quickly get you down towards the $1,200-$1,500 per month range of truly discretionary spending availability. That is what you would have to spend on any childcare, babysitters, restaurants, date nights or other entertainment, all clothing for multiple people, spending on any hobbies other non-vacation travel (to visit friends and family), or anything else.

So could you save up for it over time? sure, though I have a hard time seeing it. You would have to prioritize that particular watch (as opposed to a similar but less expensive watch) as more important than many other things your family would enjoy.