How this family do it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have these friends. 2 kids in middle school, he makes max 150k she probably makes 60k. Have 550k home, have at least 2 vacations a year: one in Mexico and one in Europe. Eat out constantly.
How?

That doesn't sound hard to do on their income.

Plus, with 2 middle schoolers their days of paying for daycare and preschool are long gone. That's $12k a year PER KID in my low COL area - there's your vacation money.

[Anonymous]

I thought you were going to say that they make $80k.

[Anonymous]

I would guess they have no student loans and they get some parental help. Why don't you have more money OP? What is your situation?

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry but why exactly couldn't a couple with a 210k HHI and a low priced house of 550k afford a vacation? You do realize that nearly everyone takes a vacation. Even my relatives who make 50k still take vacations.

[Anonymous]

2 kids in middle school eating out may not cost tht much are these people skinny as sticks. I have normal sized teenage boys but they can eat like theres no tomorrow If i took them out all the time I would be broke.

[Anonymous]

We bought a 850k house with a 200k income, went on 3-4 vacations per year AND had to pay for childcare.

We were not saving much in those early years.

Our income increased to $1m gradually. I’m sure people may have thought we were living above our means but in actuality, we were saving most of our earnings.

I think it is odd when people say high consumers are living off credit card debt. Also when you earn/spend a lot, you get comped more frequently. We stay at a lot of hotels using points and get upgraded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We bought a 850k house with a 200k income, went on 3-4 vacations per year AND had to pay for childcare.

We were not saving much in those early years.

Our income increased to $1m gradually. I’m sure people may have thought we were living above our means but in actuality, we were saving most of our earnings.

I think it is odd when people say high consumers are living off credit card debt. Also when you earn/spend a lot, you get comped more frequently. We stay at a lot of hotels using points and get upgraded.

You must have had a big down payment or you would have been really house poor.

[Anonymous]

I would maybe worry less about how other people do it and work more on literacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought a 850k house with a 200k income, went on 3-4 vacations per year AND had to pay for childcare.

We were not saving much in those early years.

Our income increased to $1m gradually. I’m sure people may have thought we were living above our means but in actuality, we were saving most of our earnings.

I think it is odd when people say high consumers are living off credit card debt. Also when you earn/spend a lot, you get comped more frequently. We stay at a lot of hotels using points and get upgraded.

You must have had a big down payment or you would have been really house poor.

We were totally house poor. I started working shortly after we bought the house and both our incomes increased quickly.

When we bought the house, we had a toddler and infant.

Had monthly take home of around 10k. Mortgage was 4500. Childcare was 3000.

I started working and earned around 100k and brought home around 6k per month.

My memory was a bit blurry. Those early year vacations were more trips to Florida and Maine. Staying at inexpensive hotels and kid(s) flew for free. We also would tag along dh’s conferences so hotel and DH airfare would be paid for work.

The bigger more lavish trips came later when income was more like 500k.