$200K. What is your lifestyle like?

[Anonymous]

If your HHI gross income is $200-250K, what does your lifestyle look like?

Two incomes or one SAH or part time?
Kids or DINC?
SFH, townhome, or condo? Cars? Vacations?
What do you feel like you can afford and what feels out of reach for you.

This is specific to the DMV. $200K is rich in West Virginia or Ohio or Iowa, and poor in Manhattan or San Francisco, so DC metro only please.

[Anonymous]

2 incomes, $250k
1 kid
Small SFH bought 20 years ago, paid off
2 old cars: we both had Metro commutes pre-Covid and now 80% WFH so don’t drive much
We take one trip to visit family in Asia each year and a few small breaks over the rest of the year
Max out 401ks, have an emergency fund and don’t feel we lack for anything

[Anonymous]

It totally depends on where you are in your life

I retired early near a decade ago, and we currently budget ourselves about 200 K a year to live. We have our primary home, a second home, and an investment property. We vacation frequently, go out to eat whenever we want, and have a very, very nice life. Frankly, I can’t really even figure out how we do it. Our kids are all grown and launched and weddings and colleges have already been paid for. Maybe that helps.

[Anonymous]

Our income is $250k this year, very low for us. Our lifestyle is buttoned up. Very tight budgets with not much room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our income is $250k this year, very low for us. Our lifestyle is buttoned up. Very tight budgets with not much room.

Do you have kids/how old?

[Anonymous]

1900 sqft home. $530k mortgage. Drive a paid off Mazda that's 7 years old. No name brand clothing.

[Anonymous]

One kid. Townhouse in Rockville. One FT income. One very PT. No financial worries but no easy spending. College on the horizon and not expecting to need loans. Grandparents helped with 529 funding when teen was an infant. Vacations are tight but doable. In our late 40’s. Two small paid off sedans/hatchbacks. Budget is tracked closely. Kid in public. Eat at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One kid. Townhouse in Rockville. One FT income. One very PT. No financial worries but no easy spending. College on the horizon and not expecting to need loans. Grandparents helped with 529 funding when teen was an infant. Vacations are tight but doable. In our late 40’s. Two small paid off sedans/hatchbacks. Budget is tracked closely. Kid in public. Eat at home.

“Tight” in this context has to include a lot of savings, right? How much are you spending?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It totally depends on where you are in your life

I retired early near a decade ago, and we currently budget ourselves about 200 K a year to live. We have our primary home, a second home, and an investment property. We vacation frequently, go out to eat whenever we want, and have a very, very nice life. Frankly, I can’t really even figure out how we do it. Our kids are all grown and launched and weddings and colleges have already been paid for. Maybe that helps.

This. It's going to look very different depending on your savings, expenses, housing costs, kids at home vs. launched, etc.

[Anonymous]

49 years old
3 kids, 1 college, 2 pending
Mortgage is low since we bought many years ago. College is saved since we started when each was born. Instate. Cars paid. Vacation is 1 big trip, 1 smaller. We do feel squeezed
A bit since everything has increased in price but it’s due to pre debit and allocations to savings out of gross income.

[Anonymous]

We have $250k and are in CC debt that we’re working to get out of. Don’t lack anything but also don’t have a super luxe life. Three kids, both work FT. New car purchased just over one year ago after both our old, paid off cars bit the dust at around the same time. We take a beach vacation a year, nothing really more than that. Tiny house and dreading moving, but we really have to as we need more bedrooms for the kids.

[Anonymous]

- 2-income HHI $250k
- 1 child (10 yrs old) in public school
- Old house we bought 12 years ago and upgraded. Refi’d in 2020 at 2.75%.
- max retirement
- international vacation every year or two
- 1 car, paid off

I grew up poor so my lifestyle seems luxurious to me. We don’t have debt other than the mortgage. With 1 kid and a low PITI, we are doing fine.

[Anonymous]

We are at $245k, split evenly between two earners, with two teens and a row house in DC. We both max our 401ks (trying to make up for those lean early years when we were paying for childcare on under $150k/year!), plus we’re saving for kids’ college. All those savings mean our take-home pay is right around $130k/year, more like $120k when you subtract 529s. And we still will need to take out loans for college.

I’m not asking for pity, though. Having grown up poor, I feel hugely privileged to be able to save for retirement at a rate my parents could never have imagined. It certainly isn’t a luxurious life, though. We cook at home nearly 100 percent of the time and do all our own cleaning. Vacations are cheap and domestic and usually involve visiting family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are at $245k, split evenly between two earners, with two teens and a row house in DC. We both max our 401ks (trying to make up for those lean early years when we were paying for childcare on under $150k/year!), plus we’re saving for kids’ college. All those savings mean our take-home pay is right around $130k/year, more like $120k when you subtract 529s. And we still will need to take out loans for college.

I’m not asking for pity, though. Having grown up poor, I feel hugely privileged to be able to save for retirement at a rate my parents could never have imagined. It certainly isn’t a luxurious life, though. We cook at home nearly 100 percent of the time and do all our own cleaning. Vacations are cheap and domestic and usually involve visiting family.

Oh, and our car is old and paid off and we carry no debt outside our mortgage.

[Anonymous]

Struggle bus