Dual income families, what is your HHI?
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Anonymous
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What I wouldn't give to have someone bringing in a 2nd income!
Me: $47K Rent: $1500/mo 1 child, in school and aftercare: $300/mo Student loans: $90/mo Retirement: 5%/mo (employer matches up to that) No car. No debt (just paid it all off! $15K worth!) About $1000 in savings (contribute $200/mo). Anything extra I get goes straight to savings. Supposed to get $700/mo in child support and medical support. He pays about 40% of the time, so I don't count on it, just stick it in savings (I was putting it towards debt) when I do get it. Oh, I'm 27, no graduate degree (while a MA would be nice, there's just no room for it right now, time or budget-wise). |
Anonymous
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Me: $110K (technical at a trade)
DH: $170K (Sr. VP at a tech startup) Mortgage: $4500/month 2 kids, both in daycare: $2900/month Retirement: We both max. out 401ks, so $2800/month Student loans were paid off prior to having kids. Put aside about $1000/month into savings, including 529s. Both 36 with masters. |
Anonymous
We are considering taking on a mortgage about that size with similar income and expenses. So I'm curious, how does your budget feel to you? Tight? Comfortable? |
Anonymous
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HHI -- $350 (me, $225K and bonus, DH, $130K).
We live in Del Ray, just bought our home. One baby. |
Anonymous
Also -- mortgage is about $4000, and nanny about $2000/month (share). |
Anonymous
me= same boat. You and I probably have a lot in common. |
Anonymous
But you also have a very small mortgage for this area. I wouldn't find it tough to live on 150k with no daycare, no loans and a itty bitty mortgage either. |
Anonymous
It feels mostly comfortable for us. When we first got our mortgage in 2007, it was $5K (we've refinanced) but only one in daycare. Of course, our salaries were less as well. We are still able to go on decent vacations (cruise, Vegas, trips to family in Florida) and generally buy what we want, within reason. But we also don't have expensive taste - name brands really mean nothing to us. Spending $100 or more on any one clothing/accessory item is extravagant for us. In other year, our oldest will enter public school, so we'll start feeling more comfortable again. |
Anonymous
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DH: $350k doctor
Me: $100k working part time finance Combined: $450k $5k monthly mortgage We have 2 kids under the age 3 and we own. |
Anonymous
this is me too. WE are also doing well -- have some credit card debt but that's not the end of the world. |
Anonymous
The point is that people adjust their spending to what they earn. I couldn't ever contemplate taking on a 4k per month mortgage. We're lucky that we bought our house nearly 10 years ago, but if we didn't we woudl be living somewhere cheaper. $1400 a month isn't "itty bitty" to me, and neither is my salary. I think we're very lucky and hope those of your on $150k+ realize that too. Even if we earned double we still wouldn't be sending our son to private school or paying a fortune ofr summer camps or other the other "necessities" the people spend so much on. |
Anonymous
Same, though we finally kicked the credit card debt a couple of years ago---woot! $120K that would be split evenly if DH and I both worked the same hours (we don't since we have a baby, so one of us is always at 80% but it varies which--our base salaries are almost the same). Mortgage is just under $2K, daycare is $1700 (could be less but we opted for the situation we felt best about after a bad first experience, so we take that hit willingly). I have student loans but DH doesn't (and yes, I think that's relevant--mine are $300/month for loans from private college and grad school, while he went to a state school that was basically free when he attended, so it has affected our respective finances our entire adult lives). Car is paid off; we put 10% of pre-tax salaries into 401Ks. It's not living large, but we also don't spend time worrying about whether we can or can't buy things (within reason of course!) or nickel-and-dimeing each other, so it works for us. We do live close in so we spend far less on gas than we might farther out, and we only have one car. It's also likely to get better over time as we phase out daycare costs, phase in raises (hopefully!), etc. |
Anonymous
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DH = $45k
Me = $117k plus small bonus Total HHI = $162 Daycare $800 per month - so cheap! Mortgage $1900 Max on 401ks Grad school loan $200 No credit card debt, car loans (they're older cars though) 1 child, hoping for another Holding off on vacations to save money for IVF |
Anonymous
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I love these posts. It is amazing to me how much money people make. We feel pretty comfortable with:
HHI: 120K DH: 65K ME: 44K (part-time) Own a house in NE DC. Mortgage: $1,950 MINUS $1,000 rental income from basement apartment = $950 total Daycare for one child: $1,100 Save about $1,000 a month not including 15% - 20% in retirement accounts. Ages: 33/32 |
Anonymous
correction: $109,000. That was our HHI before I went part-time. |