How do you define broke and broke into here?
OP: "If you're not making six figures by the time you're 40, you fail at life."
P1: "whew… I just made it… broke into 6 figures at 39."
P2: "I broke 6 figures at 29. Never got much past that though."
Learn English – How to define broke and broke into
meaningphrasal-verbsphrases
Best Answer
Broke means to undo, smash, tear etc. Here it's metaphorically picturing the ¤100,000 limit as being broken like an athlete breaking a tape. It's such a common metaphor as to have moved past cliché into a new meaning.
Broke into means to break something so as to gain access to something or somewhere (burglars break into houses, and in some jurisdictions this is a separate offence to both the vandalism and the trespassing entailed). Here the speaker is referring to the fact that they stayed within the ¤100,000+ region after this - they moved from one state to another, and stayed in the latter. It's a bit of a clumsy use though, to my mind.
Priorities about what counts as "failing at life", is another matter...