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Making it on $250,000 a year (WaPo business section, front page, Sunday)
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Anonymous
I'm 15:33. We live in FC and have two kids. We're doing great on 150K! OK, maybe 165K once you count year-end bonuses. Most of the people we know are in similar circumstances as well. It is not that unheard of. |
Anonymous
| Hey, living in a SFH west of the park isn't a right. Some of us shlubs have to live in 1950s ramblers. |
Anonymous
| 15:33, how much do you save for retirement and to send those two kids to college each year? Do you give any money to charity? I don't see a family of four being able to save $43,000 for retirement and another $10K for college on $165K gross. |
Anonymous
I don't think you are really talking to 15:33 because that poster didn't say anything about $43K for retirement and another $10K for college. But, I am a poster whose HHI is $165 gross, and we do save $43K for retirement and another $10K for college each year. (So maybe you are directing your question to a post I made? I can't find it on this thread.) We do save those amounts and live very comfortably. FWIW: Our monthly mortgage payment is $2100 and we only have eight years to go on our 15-year mortgage. We have huge equity (owe $170K on our house worth about $850K) and could borrow against the house if we needed to. I work mostly from home so my professional wardrobe is sparse. We do not have any childcare expenses (our kids are school-age and come home after school to their WAH mother) We eat out maybe 6x/year. I buy the vast majority of our kids' clothing at Value Village. I drive a 15yo car and have no plans to buy another until this one is completely kaput. We take a two-week vacation each summer which costs less than $3K total. We get no help from our parents other than a $1,000 check each Christmas from DH's parents, which we apply to our vacation expenses. |
Anonymous
| And the key - "we have no childcare expenses". Considering the cost of sending 2 kids to day care (not to mention if you have a nanny or something else), I would say that if you make it on $165k, then a person who has to pay for childcare would struggle making it on less than $200k... |
Anonymous
I have to disagree - even if that family has a HHI $20K higher than ours, that's enough to pay for childcare, or close to it. In any case, the subject line is "making it on $250K," not $200K, so I don't know where you got the $200K number. We don't struggle. We are rich, IMO. I repeatedly remind my children of that, including when we are shopping for clothing at Value Village. |
Anonymous
I'm happy for you, but based on your description below, you are living extremely frugally not 'very comfortably' in a material sense. Very comfortable to us means having an extra 2 or 3,000 dollars a month unallocated to bills, savings or charitable contributions, and having an active social life that includes nice dinners out, theater, opera, etc., complete with paying a sitter for 6 hours a night.
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Anonymous
Yikes, to me that sounds like rich, not comfortably upper middle class. We have a HHI of $235K and only have and want one child. we go out to dinner 2 or so times a week and buy new clothing on sale. We live in a small townhouse right next to a metro station with a reasonable ($2400 per month) mortgage payment. We don't go out much without DS, because we work full time and want to spend the time that we can with him. |
Anonymous
I've been curious about this aspect throughout this whole thread. (And I've skipped many pages in the middle, so perhaps it was discussed. If so, forgive this extra post.) We attempt to tithe 10% of our after-tax dollars, though many people we know tithe at least that amount on before-tax income. For those who feel frugal and are more than "making it" on under $250k/year, how much does charitable giving factor in to your household expense equation? I'm honestly just curious about this. We put this "expense" at the top of our fixed budget and try to treat it as we do our mortgage -- that is, non-negotiable -- but I know there are a wide array of philosophies about this. Some friends give a little here and there, others don't give at all until they are completely shored up for retirement/college/etc., viewing giving as a later-in-life kind of thing to do. |
Anonymous
I stand by my statement that we live very comfortably. We have a large house with three bathrooms, four bedrooms, and heating and AC in a good neighborhood. We have warm clothing for winter, and new shoes when we need them. We take an annual vacation. We have reliable transportation (and if it fails, we have savings to buy another car with cash, no loan needed). We have a very active social life, which often entails having another family to dinner, or another couple or two for an adult evening. When we do these things we do not worry about the costs. We have enough money to donate to charity. All of the above = living comfortably by any standard, except maybe whatever standards the top .02% of the earners in the world set for themselves. (Those standards are meaningless to me.) I have no interest in paying a sitter for six hours/night. If that were a priority for us, I suppose we could do it, but I have no interest in being out so late. LOL |
Anonymous
I agree - anyone with an extra $2-3K/month unallocated to anything is rich, not comfortably upper middle class. |
Anonymous
12:53 here - sorry, meant to say, even if that family has a HHI that nets the family $20K more than what we net, that's enough to pay for childcare, or close to it. I would also add that the reason we save so much for retirement is DH's age (55) - he qualifies for "catch-up" savings - and that the only reason we no longer have childcare expenses is that our children are school-age. When they were younger, we did a nanny share, and we were in the red (paying out more than we took in) for about three years, until DC1 went to K and we cut our childcare bills by sending DC2 to daycare. |
Anonymous
I've been curious about this aspect throughout this whole thread. (And I've skipped many pages in the middle, so perhaps it was discussed. If so, forgive this extra post.) We attempt to tithe 10% of our after-tax dollars, though many people we know tithe at least that amount on before-tax income. For those who feel frugal and are more than "making it" on under $250k/year, how much does charitable giving factor in to your household expense equation? I'm honestly just curious about this. We put this "expense" at the top of our fixed budget and try to treat it as we do our mortgage -- that is, non-negotiable -- but I know there are a wide array of philosophies about this. Some friends give a little here and there, others don't give at all until they are completely shored up for retirement/college/etc., viewing giving as a later-in-life kind of thing to do. We make about $225 single income and tithe 10%. As this point we're not saving for college because we don't have the $$ while paying for preschool for 2 children. However, it's very important to us to give a percentage of our income away to others (especially given the size of our income which we consider to be quite large in comparison to how we both grew up). |
Anonymous
This. |
Anonymous
Agree, and I also don't understand why we have to accept that poster's definition of living comfortably. $2-3K on that stuff is not my idea of living comfortably. But if I wanted to spend more per month on those things she listed, on our 150K income, and still save for retirement, savings, college, we would probably trade off some things and not live in our close-in SFH with a yard, etc. I just have no desire to spend that kind of $ on theater, opera, and babysitting, when we both work FT and we want to spend our weekends with our child, or have friends over. Yes, date night is important but not to the tune of 2-3K per month (we also have family nearby so have not needed a babysiter outside of daycare - my parents do that for us). I also am not a fan of eating out. We have a great kitchen where we spend a lot of our time, and I prefer my or my husband's cooking to most restaurant food that is loaded with salt. There are exceptions of course but my point is I don't feel the need to eat out frequently, it's more of a special treat. We like to buy certain things at Whole Foods, we buy organic, I pay for yoga classes, I like buying lattes, etc. so that is my idea of living comfortably, and we can afford that on our income. |