As Charlie Munger said, the first $100,000 is a bitch.
Story of my life so far.
Charlie was born in 1924. If he was referring to 100k around the time he was 30 (1954), that'd be the equivalent of 855k today.
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgiIn other words, you could translate that to "The first 3/4 million is a bitch." Using it to mean a literal 100k doesn't make much sense - 100k is a lot easier to make nowadays than it was then. Hell, the median household salary nowadays is 50k (in 2012), compared to 6.1k (nominal) in 1967. (
http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php) In 1954 it was likely around 2.5k. In other words, you can make 100k in two years of working now, compared with 40 years of working then. And that's actually being generous, because you can make 855k in only 17 years of working at the median amount.
(Now yes, you'll have expenses, but you did back then too, and in fact given how the cost of goods is even cheaper, you can proportionally save more than you could back then.)
So his quote shouldn't be taken at literal value.
He's basically saying, translated to today's dollars, that the first million is a bitch.