Goldman Sachs: 40% of $400-500K and $500K+ households “live paycheck to paycheck”

[Anonymous]

"Living Paycheck to Paycheck" - it's just an eye-catching title geared towards Goldman Sachs' audience. It's not mean for a broader audience. They know who they are meant to reach - this is relative to the upper income/not rich audience, that's all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The cost of college - this is the bracket where full pay comes into play at the lowest qualifying incomes. Looking at the figures in this report, private college costs have jumped 86% as percentage of income (private) and public 36% in just 5 years.

This aligns with the report.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should be embarrassed to make 400k a year Anyone can make that

Who listens to this scammy garbage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yea I do not understand people, this year it looks like we will hit about 800K (two incomes). Between us we will have put 47k into 401K before employer contribution and another 40K of after tax mega roth money. We then do direct deposit of 30% of our net income into our brokerage account at every pay cycle. Even after forking over ~222,000 each year to retirement and taxable investments, we still are left to blow 23,000/mo on life. The key for us is we do all of this out of payroll deductions so there is no lifestyle creep, we never see that money.. And yes, we do have a 2nd home and do drive expensive cars and do take ski trips out to the rockies. At this point our investments are like having 3rd full time wage earner in the house. Our growth last quarter was around 250K...not bad for 3 months of work! And yes at age 48 if we both lost our jobs we could get by on taking a low wage job just for the health insurance. We would not lose our home, our kids would still have college paid for and we still would live a good life.

If you make our income and are strapped and not reaching your short and long term financial goals you are a complete and total moron.

Curious, what’s your net worth? We are 44/43 and very similar financials.

to be honest i don’t really know. My spouse handles all of the finances and we just do a “state of the union” twice a year. All I know is what we contribute and that we have never pulled money out. We also have rentals that i pay exactly zero attention to which factor into NW. Probably 8M? he just makes grand announcements when we have a particularly good quarter.

Similar here but I’m retired. I don’t do ski trips to the Rockies. That’s so UMC. Ski every year in the Alps either Switzerland or Austria. We make over $800K/yr tax free.

I'm sorry, so you're MC? Alps kinda suck compared to the Rockies to be honest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make about $450k. We max out most deductions, have a $4,800 mortgage payment, no daycare or debt and we pay cash for cars and vacations, and I can not fathom paying for a nanny, dual private, country club, and cleaning. When college comes we have savings. No quarterly tax payments (we're regular employees).

Yup exactly this middle class lifestyle

That does not describe a middle class lifestyle.

Her lifestyle is comfortably upper class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is crazy to me, see page 20:

https://am.gs.com/cms-assets/gsam-app/documents/insights/en/2025/am-retirement-survey-102025.pdf?view=true

Lots of wild details in this document on “The Future of Retirement”

I can relate. We are in the same income bracket. We live paycheck to paycheck after maxing out 401k, hsa, saving 10k per kid in 529, saving 60k in our brokerage account. We don’t have much left.

You are solidly upper class wealthy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The curious thing if you look at the graph of responses:

Most people earning $200-$300K did NOT state they were living paycheck to paycheck. The majority 56% said they were doing considerably better than that, and felt they were able to make significant progress on short and long term financial goals.

Yet as people moved up the income scale, that percentage dropped a lot! Only about 25% of pe3ople earning $300K+ felt that they were making significant progress on short and long term goals.

I'm wondering about the age of the respondents and whether theyhad kids?

$200,000 income (one parent) + 2 little kids with a Stay at Home Parent is probably doing better than $300,000 HHI where both parents earn $150,000 and you have to pay for daycare for 2 kids.

It’s lifestyle creep. We live like we make $200K so people assume we make $200K. In reality we make a ton more. Our friends making $400K live like they make what we actually make and frequently complain about how stretched they are financially and how it “keeps them up at night.” You learn a lot about people and money when you live below your means and people assume in conversation you make less than them.

How do you know what your friends make? I would never tell anyone what I make. I bet they think the same thing if you.

They tell us. Pretty straightforward.

They’re lying to you.

yup. whenever anyone like the PP is tacky enough to pry we always down play.

[Anonymous]

Why is this hard to believe. I used to audit folks in NYC making 750K and most lived paycheck to paycheck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is this hard to believe. I used to audit folks in NYC making 750K and most lived paycheck to paycheck.

Did they have reasonable net worth/savings?

[Anonymous]

I think this partly happens because someone making 400k thinks they should have everything their neighbor has, but they don’t realize their neighbor is making north of a million.
We’ve made more 1.1 the last two years, and none of our friends would have any idea. We save a lot, and spend a lot- but we could not have sustained this on a 400k salary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s hard to know what is accurate in this area. High end shops here seem filled with buyers. Are there that many wealthy people, or are people throwing money away that they can’t afford? I assume both.

What kind of high end shops are you talking about?

I’m specifically talking about the 20-30 minutes waits to get help at Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton I experienced on Saturday. Lots of men and women walking out with big bags. Mostly young people in the line.

The people I see at these shops don’t look like they make $400K. They’re buying $4000 bags but wearing spandex and pushing junky strollers.

I carry a $5K YSL and a $3K Loewe, wear mostly gap/BR/jcrew and drive a 2015 Toyota with a nice gash in the side that I haven’t bothered to fix.

We make $400K, save a crap ton and have millions in savings.

Women are funny about luxury bags. It’s my personal weakness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s hard to know what is accurate in this area. High end shops here seem filled with buyers. Are there that many wealthy people, or are people throwing money away that they can’t afford? I assume both.

What kind of high end shops are you talking about?

I’m specifically talking about the 20-30 minutes waits to get help at Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton I experienced on Saturday. Lots of men and women walking out with big bags. Mostly young people in the line.

The people I see at these shops don’t look like they make $400K. They’re buying $4000 bags but wearing spandex and pushing junky strollers.

I carry a $5K YSL and a $3K Loewe, wear mostly gap/BR/jcrew and drive a 2015 Toyota with a nice gash in the side that I haven’t bothered to fix.

We make $400K, save a crap ton and have millions in savings.

Women are funny about luxury bags. It’s my personal weakness.

glad it’s not mine! our HHI is double yours and it’s on one income and I don’t even carry a purse, would look weird in my perpetual uniform that consists of yoga pants and sweatshirts or scrubs for my messy hobbies! My wallet is my phone. My weakness is high quality food ( I love to cook), gym/wellness memberships, and my very expensive art habit (creating not buying).

However we do fork our money over to a money manager and essentially live off what i refer to as an allowance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should be embarrassed to make 400k a year Anyone can make that

Who listens to this scammy garbage?

Truth hurts?

[Anonymous]

Rich people love to pretend they have financial problems to convince themselves they deserve every penny.

My sister does it all the time, claims all sorts of money issues and is worried she'll lose her house. Yet she sends her kids to private school, remodels her house with luxury contractors, maxes every possible tax advantaged account, has close to $500K just in an emergency fund. It's become annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rich people love to pretend they have financial problems to convince themselves they deserve every penny.

My sister does it all the time, claims all sorts of money issues and is worried she'll lose her house. Yet she sends her kids to private school, remodels her house with luxury contractors, maxes every possible tax advantaged account, has close to $500K just in an emergency fund. It's become annoying.

are you embarassed making 400k i am