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

[Anonymous]

Most people making $300-400k salary need to live in the expensive places to have those jobs. So all their expenses are higher. If you make $300k in a small cheap town then you feel a lot richer.

[Anonymous]

“because a top 3% lifestyle now is different from a top 3% lifestyle 50 years ago”

[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.

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.

[Anonymous]

This is BS. 300-400k is rich. I make twice that and like easily live comfortably on 200k

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is BS. 300-400k is rich. I make twice that and like easily live comfortably on 200k

I always think of rich as the 1% because they are on a totally different playing field than the rest of us. We make $300K and it's a lot of money for sure. I have always thought lower upper class was a better description.

[Anonymous]

It doesn’t “feel rich” because you are extremely privileged and have no shame about casually throwing your privilege around in the form of complaints about how $300-400K salary doesn’t “feel rich”
It’s disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why? Because you never learned to budget and save. I feel very comfortable on half of that.

This.

If $300-400K doesn’t feel rich to you then you are either overspending on everything or you have a very very elite view of what “rich” is to the other 98% of the population

[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.

You people need to get some perspective. Holy crap

[Anonymous]

These threads are simply amazing to me. Most people I know are living off of 40k. I know about 7 people that work 2 jobs (around 70 hours total and probably earn 60-70k.

[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.

Says who? I made under $100k and we are doing just fine.

[Anonymous]

I am sympathetic to OP. I also really don't care about the people shrieking at me to get some perspective. Cost of living has gone up greatly in the last five years, irregardless of whatever dueling armchair economists want to pretend. A 200k salary was impressive in 2015. Today it's still a nice salary but doesn't buy you what it did back then. I make a salary that back in 2015 I would have thought would mean I'd finally achieved success! But in reality it just means a comfortable life and some savings but not living lavishly by any measure. Housing is much more expensive and has outpaced inflation/wage gains, as has education. Housing and education are the two main budget expenditures for the professional classes.

Regarding the comparison to 50 years ago, both housing and education were much cheaper, even when adjusting for inflation. It now takes a dual income household to provide for the same quality of life that a single earner could with a homemaker wife.

[Anonymous]

The best things in life aren't things.

[Anonymous]

It's one thing to say "Even though I am doing very well I wish I had more" or "something feels squeezed" but when the squeeze is because your mortgage is 9K a month and you're paying tuition and taking vacations and saving like crazy, yeah, that's not actually a hardship.

The people saying 400K isn't rich (or making fun of people who say it is) live in a bubble. I guarantee you the only people they have relationships with who are actually poor or lower-middle class are either less better off family members, scholarship kids and families, or people who serve them (maids, employees, etc...). It's embarrassing.

The podcast Classy has a great first episode about this. It discusses how "rich" people don't like to think of themselves as rich for a couple reasons, one of them being they are always comparing themselves to an elite sliver above them, which is not a rational perspective.

[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.

I’m in NY and our taxes are 25k on an averagely nice home. And in a shitty school district so will need to send private. Taxes on a 3 thousand sq ft home in a good school district in my area are easily 35/40k+. Op is right that 350k or thereabouts doesn’t get you very far in a HCOL area.