Married 30 year olds.. HHI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is for pure curiosity. My spouse and I are 30/32 and have HHI of 190. Do you feel like you're doing well in relation to your peers?

31 and 32 and we don't care about the financials of others. We are happy and content with our modest lifestyle and a newborn baby. There will always be someone with more and someone with less than you have. Measuring your financial status with your peers will only do 1 of 2 things:

1. Make you bitter, feel inadequate or impel you to work harder to achieve something you really don't need while sacraficing the more important things,

2. Give you a false sense of security, pride, ego boost, and a feeling of superiority over others with less financially.

We both come from families that didn't have alot financially but placed value on more important things in life. I was raised to understand that the things in life that provide longest satisfaction are not material in nature and do not cost anything! Neither of us lacked love, sufficient education, discipline, recreation, food, neccessities or friends. Even now that we make a decent living, we try to view money in its proper place as a protection when needed and not the driving force behind our goals in life.

Just remember, a rich man and a poor man have the same eventuality. A pine box 6 feet in the ground!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is for pure curiosity. My spouse and I are 30/32 and have HHI of 190. Do you feel like you're doing well in relation to your peers?

31 and 32 and we don't care about the financials of others. We are happy and content with our modest lifestyle and a newborn baby. There will always be someone with more and someone with less than you have. Measuring your financial status with your peers will only do 1 of 2 things:

1. Make you bitter, feel inadequate or impel you to work harder to achieve something you really don't need while sacraficing the more important things,

2. Give you a false sense of security, pride, ego boost, and a feeling of superiority over others with less financially.

We both come from families that didn't have alot financially but placed value on more important things in life. I was raised to understand that the things in life that provide longest satisfaction are not material in nature and do not cost anything! Neither of us lacked love, sufficient education, discipline, recreation, food, neccessities or friends. Even now that we make a decent living, we try to view money in its proper place as a protection when needed and not the driving force behind our goals in life.

Just remember, a rich man and a poor man have the same eventuality. A pine box 6 feet in the ground!

Amen

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both 31 both in biglaw and I don't feel like we are doing better because of the drama and uncertainty that is biglaw.

Forgot to mention expect to make $520k this year depending on bonuses.

I pray to God you'll be paying off your loans if you have any left. And saving a significant percentage of your income.

I wish. We still have basically all our debt and no savings or assets, due to some unusual circumstances. But we shook $6k of monthly expenses so this year should be a lot better than last.

[Anonymous]

36/37 - HHI 330k (not counting biglaw bonus - I just lateraled to this firm and have no clue what the bonus situation is)

Most of our friends are either GS9-11 feds or blue collar workers so they make significantly less than us. From all appearances, it doesn't feel like we are doing better than they are; many drive nicer cars than we do, take expensive vacations, etc. However, we save around $7-8k/month in retirement and taxable mutual fund accounts, around $1k in cash, and $1k to our kid's 529 account. I doubt our friends are able to save anything near that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:30/31, 210K - 240K depending on bonuses. We don't live in Dc, but a different major metro area with a more reasonable COL (decent normal homes run 275K - 500K depending on where you want to live).

Very similar situation to the above poster. My husband and I have a combined base salary of about 265K, and can usually count on an additional 20Kish in bonuses per year (we are both lawyers but have left big city life and BigLaw for our hometown and smaller firms). I have a bunch of student loan debt, but I'm on the accelerated 10 year payoff plan so I only have a few more years left. We're having our first baby this summer and should be able to swing the additional daycare costs (about $1200-1500 per month in our neck of the woods) without too much fuss. Though it's possible to live in a "nice" suburb with new-build housing stock priced under $300K here, we choose to live in a very nice city neighborhood where the smaller homes like ours run $450K and up.

Incomes and house prices are very low compared to DC, so we do feel quite well off compared to our peers. I know plenty of people here who make in the 50K-75K range who are doing just fine, for example.

[Anonymous]

33/34, HHI 250k. Most of our friends probably make less but have much nicer houses and cars due to family help for down payment or using grandparents as daycare. We don't have those options, and while we have a good life and everything we need, I wish we were able to save a bit more for the college funds, retirement, and minor house renovations (a bathroom in the basement for the kids would be so nice to have!)

[Anonymous]

31/32 HHI was 420K in 2015. We have 2 kids. I recently decided to stay at home with them, so our HHI in 2016 will be closer to 300K (DHs income will increase slightly in 2016).

Our mortgag is 4200/month, but we pay an additional 1k twards the principal each month.
Our other monthly expenses total around $5K.

[Anonymous]

wow. when I was 30, I was making about 45k, just after finishing grad school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:31/36- 130k and very, very comfortable. Lots of parent support in buying house and parent providing childcare, plus we are pretty frugal and live in a less expensive area. We feel very, very good about our finances.

Obviously you do, you've got mommy and daddy supporting your lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:31/36- 130k and very, very comfortable. Lots of parent support in buying house and parent providing childcare, plus we are pretty frugal and live in a less expensive area. We feel very, very good about our finances.

Obviously you do, you've got mommy and daddy supporting your lifestyle.

Jelly? Need some peanut butter, lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is for pure curiosity. My spouse and I are 30/32 and have HHI of 190. Do you feel like you're doing well in relation to your peers?

31 and 32 and we don't care about the financials of others. We are happy and content with our modest lifestyle and a newborn baby. There will always be someone with more and someone with less than you have. Measuring your financial status with your peers will only do 1 of 2 things:

1. Make you bitter, feel inadequate or impel you to work harder to achieve something you really don't need while sacraficing the more important things,

2. Give you a false sense of security, pride, ego boost, and a feeling of superiority over others with less financially.

We both come from families that didn't have alot financially but placed value on more important things in life. I was raised to understand that the things in life that provide longest satisfaction are not material in nature and do not cost anything! Neither of us lacked love, sufficient education, discipline, recreation, food, neccessities or friends. Even now that we make a decent living, we try to view money in its proper place as a protection when needed and not the driving force behind our goals in life.

Just remember, a rich man and a poor man have the same eventuality. A pine box 6 feet in the ground!

+ 1 million

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is for pure curiosity. My spouse and I are 30/32 and have HHI of 190. Do you feel like you're doing well in relation to your peers?

31 and 32 and we don't care about the financials of others. We are happy and content with our modest lifestyle and a newborn baby. There will always be someone with more and someone with less than you have. Measuring your financial status with your peers will only do 1 of 2 things:

1. Make you bitter, feel inadequate or impel you to work harder to achieve something you really don't need while sacraficing the more important things,

2. Give you a false sense of security, pride, ego boost, and a feeling of superiority over others with less financially.

We both come from families that didn't have alot financially but placed value on more important things in life. I was raised to understand that the things in life that provide longest satisfaction are not material in nature and do not cost anything! Neither of us lacked love, sufficient education, discipline, recreation, food, neccessities or friends. Even now that we make a decent living, we try to view money in its proper place as a protection when needed and not the driving force behind our goals in life.

Just remember, a rich man and a poor man have the same eventuality. A pine box 6 feet in the ground!

Amen

+1 and thanks PP, I needed to read something like this today.

[Anonymous]

31/33, HHI about 165K, one toddler son, own our home in DC. None of our peers are doing markedly better than us financially. A couple are the same, others are signficiantly lower income (and are single, renting, still figuring out careers/vocations). We have what we need for now, so I'm happy.

[Anonymous]

^^ like the pp, its important to not put things on hold with the excuse of career or figuring things out. We compare against our peers who did this and none of them are any more successful.

Last thing you want to do is knocking on 40s with no kids and just so so career, wondering what you did wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:31/36- 130k and very, very comfortable. Lots of parent support in buying house and parent providing childcare, plus we are pretty frugal and live in a less expensive area. We feel very, very good about our finances.

Obviously you do, you've got mommy and daddy supporting your lifestyle.

Jelly? Need some peanut butter, lol.

Is this flyover state humor?