Why a 300-400k salary doesn't feel rich

[Anonymous]

The problem isn't that you have to little. The problem as the richer people have too much. The solution isn't for you to earn more, it's to recover the excess from them.

[Anonymous]

We are just under $300k. It seems like a ton of money! But yes, I do marvel sometimes about how fast it goes lol. We live in a 1500 sqft home, send our kids to state schools, drive old cars, have mostly old crappy furniture. But having grown up truly middle class, I can say with certainty we are living pretty high the hog, in a pricey suburb of a major city, with all its cultural amenities, with the ability to save for retirement, travel internationally on occasion, send our children to college without taking on (or them taking on) any debt, pay our credit cards in full each month, and pay cash for a new boiler when the old one goes kaput. Most of these things are beyond the means of the middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh.

We make $450ish (more like $410 last year) and it's pretty rich.

We live in a $1m+ house.
We do not typically think about, nor do we have to, groceries or gas or coffee or takeout or summer camp.
We haven't prioritized college savings, but we could pay cash, yes, even for a $70K school (we don't want to but we'll see).
We get new cars when we want them.
If we want to renovate or something, we would just pay cash or take a HELOC or stop contributing to one of the many many investment or savings accounts we have temporarily. This would feel BAD but it is a blessing.
If we aren't going to Europe this summer it's because it's our choice and we want to prioritize cash savings. It's not because we can't.

We are lucky and relatively, rich. In the upper-middle class no worries relative to others sense. And there are MANY families richer than us at our W school.

Get some perspective if you think 400K isn't well off. Unless you have 7 kids and 3 parents in assisted living that you pay for, you should be more than OK.

What's your net worth though? Rich is about that and not income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh.

We make $450ish (more like $410 last year) and it's pretty rich.

We live in a $1m+ house.
We do not typically think about, nor do we have to, groceries or gas or coffee or takeout or summer camp.
We haven't prioritized college savings, but we could pay cash, yes, even for a $70K school (we don't want to but we'll see).
We get new cars when we want them.
If we want to renovate or something, we would just pay cash or take a HELOC or stop contributing to one of the many many investment or savings accounts we have temporarily. This would feel BAD but it is a blessing.
If we aren't going to Europe this summer it's because it's our choice and we want to prioritize cash savings. It's not because we can't.

We are lucky and relatively, rich. In the upper-middle class no worries relative to others sense. And there are MANY families richer than us at our W school.

Get some perspective if you think 400K isn't well off. Unless you have 7 kids and 3 parents in assisted living that you pay for, you should be more than OK.

The problem is on 400 you can pick and choose your luxuries but you can’t have all of them at once. You can have the nice new car every 3 years and the country club membership but you need to compensate by not doing the elaborate ski trip or Europe trip every year, or maybe send the kids to public. Mid 6 figure incomes bring too many compromises in lifestyle to be able to say you’re rich.

[Anonymous]

Do you mean individual income or household income?

[Anonymous]

If a family making $200K a year is "barely getting by," that’s likely due to their own choices (i.e. paying way more for a house than they need to, sending kids to private school, etc) which can be undone if need be. That’s not actually "barely getting by." We make $150K a year and have plenty to spare, but we also don't pretend that the "perfect" house that feeds to the "perfect" schools is a need rather than a want.

[Anonymous]

Can you hear this tiny 🎻 in your fancy EarPods?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Overall quality of life is decreasing for everyone, from the lower class to the upper class. Even though percentage wise this income puts you in the 97-99th, it doesn't feel that great because a top 3% lifestyle now is different from a top 3% lifestyle 50 years ago. Going down to the 90th percentile which is under 200k/yr, most families who make that are barely getting by. To really be comfortable nowadays you need to be in the top 0.5%, not even a 1% income feels that rich.

We do quite well on $200k a year.

[Anonymous]

We have a household income of $250k in northern Virginia with three kids and we are unquestionably rich.

Only financial worry I have is how to pay for college when all three are in college at the same time in a few years.

Everything else in my life is free of financial worry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh.

We make $450ish (more like $410 last year) and it's pretty rich.

We live in a $1m+ house.
We do not typically think about, nor do we have to, groceries or gas or coffee or takeout or summer camp.
We haven't prioritized college savings, but we could pay cash, yes, even for a $70K school (we don't want to but we'll see).
We get new cars when we want them.
If we want to renovate or something, we would just pay cash or take a HELOC or stop contributing to one of the many many investment or savings accounts we have temporarily. This would feel BAD but it is a blessing.
If we aren't going to Europe this summer it's because it's our choice and we want to prioritize cash savings. It's not because we can't.

We are lucky and relatively, rich. In the upper-middle class no worries relative to others sense. And there are MANY families richer than us at our W school.

Get some perspective if you think 400K isn't well off. Unless you have 7 kids and 3 parents in assisted living that you pay for, you should be more than OK.

The problem is on 400 you can pick and choose your luxuries but you can’t have all of them at once. You can have the nice new car every 3 years and the country club membership but you need to compensate by not doing the elaborate ski trip or Europe trip every year, or maybe send the kids to public. Mid 6 figure incomes bring too many compromises in lifestyle to be able to say you’re rich.

This is exactly right. It's all about the definition of "rich". I realize people making quite a bit less would look at 400K as rich, but they are not. Of course, they are very fortunate to be able to make choices on how to use the money, but those are choices that come at the expense of something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a family making $200K a year is "barely getting by," that’s likely due to their own choices (i.e. paying way more for a house than they need to, sending kids to private school, etc) which can be undone if need be. That’s not actually "barely getting by." We make $150K a year and have plenty to spare, but we also don't pretend that the "perfect" house that feeds to the "perfect" schools is a need rather than a want.

There is no way people earning $200k are sending their kids to a chi chi private school without some combination of family help, trust fund, incredibly low housing payment, not saving for retirement, etc.

[Anonymous]

This was good until houses became over 1m

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh.

We make $450ish (more like $410 last year) and it's pretty rich.

We live in a $1m+ house.
We do not typically think about, nor do we have to, groceries or gas or coffee or takeout or summer camp.
We haven't prioritized college savings, but we could pay cash, yes, even for a $70K school (we don't want to but we'll see).
We get new cars when we want them.
If we want to renovate or something, we would just pay cash or take a HELOC or stop contributing to one of the many many investment or savings accounts we have temporarily. This would feel BAD but it is a blessing.
If we aren't going to Europe this summer it's because it's our choice and we want to prioritize cash savings. It's not because we can't.

We are lucky and relatively, rich. In the upper-middle class no worries relative to others sense. And there are MANY families richer than us at our W school.

Get some perspective if you think 400K isn't well off. Unless you have 7 kids and 3 parents in assisted living that you pay for, you should be more than OK.

Is a 1 million dollar house a bragging feature? Seems really cheap to me. I live in Toronto and 1 million doesn't go far.

You have lost perspective.

This is true in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get what OP is saying. We make more than OP and have a nice net worth. We live in an expensive house that carries a high property tax burden. Affording our house is no problem, but I acknowledge that a $25K tax bill on the house every year is not insignificant. We own our cars outright and don't carry debt. Technically we are in the top 1% of earners, but we consider ourselves 'working rich', meaning if the gravy train comes to a halt tomorrow we would be pressed to make some lifestyle decisions if the cashflow changes. My family enjoys life, but we know money is not to be taken for granted. Yes, we have savings, retirement accounts, college funded, as well as taking very nice vacations, we can eat out whenever we want, buy any groceries we want, attend any ticketed events/activities we want, wear any clothes we want, but with inflation and rising costs, I stop and ask if these things are worth the inflated costs. $100 today isn't what it was 5 or 10 years ago. DMV is not a cheap area.

Same

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Overall quality of life is decreasing for everyone, from the lower class to the upper class. Even though percentage wise this income puts you in the 97-99th, it doesn't feel that great because a top 3% lifestyle now is different from a top 3% lifestyle 50 years ago. Going down to the 90th percentile which is under 200k/yr, most families who make that are barely getting by. To really be comfortable nowadays you need to be in the top 0.5%, not even a 1% income feels that rich.

It's more simple than that. It doesn't feel rich because you have a spending problem.