Study shows that 350k/year is barely scrapping by as middle class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BTW it is even much worse to scrap by in your 50s on 350K.

I know 55 year old folks two kids in college, one in HS and sick parents they are helping out on or living with them.

And home prices over one million is a function of where you live and state in life.

My current home is from when I relocated to DC. I could not live that far out as started new job with a lot of hours, I still had two of my three kids in school so needed a good school district. Now that moving to a place where if folks visit me they have to stay overnight so need a spare bedroom and now I had three drivers in house soon to be four drivers I needed a big driveway. Moving to a new town where I know no one and having to unload an old home needed a house in good shape.

Guess what My three month house search started at 900K and quickly went to 1.2 million as that was min for what I needed, from there it went to 1.325 million.

Guess what, no pool, no huge plot, kinda a regular looking street.

Now add in two college tuition's coming up while still dong 529 plan for youngest and 401K and medical and car insurance 375K is a break even salary if lucky.

A Pharmacist and a Nurse dont as stated above dont cut it. Both jobs have good starting salaries but long term the pay sucks. My brother in law is a pharmacist and stands at counter in Giant Supermarket and if his wife was a nurse sitting at the minute clinic at CVS hardly high paying jobs.

It would take a Doctor married to a Nurse Practitioner to afford a house in 2020 that a Pharmacist married to a regular nurse could afford in the year 2000.

It's a sad state of affair in this country when the supposed "high earners" have such poor grammar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BTW it is even much worse to scrap by in your 50s on 350K.

I know 55 year old folks two kids in college, one in HS and sick parents they are helping out on or living with them.

And home prices over one million is a function of where you live and state in life.

My current home is from when I relocated to DC. I could not live that far out as started new job with a lot of hours, I still had two of my three kids in school so needed a good school district. Now that moving to a place where if folks visit me they have to stay overnight so need a spare bedroom and now I had three drivers in house soon to be four drivers I needed a big driveway. Moving to a new town where I know no one and having to unload an old home needed a house in good shape.

Guess what My three month house search started at 900K and quickly went to 1.2 million as that was min for what I needed, from there it went to 1.325 million.

Guess what, no pool, no huge plot, kinda a regular looking street.

Now add in two college tuition's coming up while still dong 529 plan for youngest and 401K and medical and car insurance 375K is a break even salary if lucky.

A Pharmacist and a Nurse dont as stated above dont cut it. Both jobs have good starting salaries but long term the pay sucks. My brother in law is a pharmacist and stands at counter in Giant Supermarket and if his wife was a nurse sitting at the minute clinic at CVS hardly high paying jobs.

It would take a Doctor married to a Nurse Practitioner to afford a house in 2020 that a Pharmacist married to a regular nurse could afford in the year 2000.

I own a home that costs $1M+. The couple we bought it from (who bought the house 20 years prior) were a social worker and a mid level manager working for the government. On their salaries they were able to raise three kids, buy this house and complete some major renos when they bought it. They were completely astounded at the sale price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Subsisting on ramen for a couple years is a penny wise, pound foolish strategy anyway. Really high in sodium and fat. No wonder this country has an obesity problem. You can eat a pretty nutritious diet with a little more money and effort- beans, rice, pasta with vegetables, eggs. Also going back to the original article, there is a lot of space for this family to reduce their food budget ($70 per day?!) without resorting to extreme measures. With those numbers they are almost certainly eating out for lunch every day.

You are missing the point. No one is suggesting you need to subsist on Ramen Noodles. You can cut down on your food costs significantly by cooking yourself and cooking rice, beans, lentils, chicken and veggies etc. The less processed food, the cheaper it will be for you. Also, have you heard of terms like sales, coupons, seasonal foods and buying from warehouse clubs with other families to get good rates? Ramen Noodles is a suggestion for the cost of what you pay for the food, not the food itself.

However, how many people know how to cook from scratch? There is such a lack of adulting that is missing from the post above. Anybody who is scraping by on 350K is stupid and entitled.

What is shameful in the family budget shown is that they are incredibly tone-deaf. They save for college and retirement - huge amounts, they have homes, cars, expensive daycares, vacations, dinners and date nights, huge amount of insurance....and then they say they have no money left? There should be no money left after spending on a luxurious lifestyle and then saving huge amounts for college and retirement.

Hey dimwit - You have MONEY LEFT over after a very comfortable, luxurious, convenient lifestyle that very few people in the world can afford. That money is what you are putting for your retirement and college.

You are spending an inordinate number of hours and mental bandwidth hunting sales and coupons to save what, a couple thousand a year? A high earner does not have the time or the mental bandwidth to do that. And yes, rice and beans an lentils is what the poor eat in the poorest countries. It's called belly filling food. It's fine that your vision is a race to the bottom where people make do with less and less, but personally I am with the $350K guy who sets stands for himself above the poverty line.

Yes. You are correct. You do you! Eventually, the student loans will be forgiven. It is not as if the govt or bank can come after you if you do not pay off your loans or under debt, right?

Plus, if your house of card collapses, it will be an opportunity to others to swoop in and buy your assets at low cost. Your loss will be someone else's gain. That is how capitalism works. Carry on. You are scraping by on 350K. Poor you!

Actually, both you and I are more likely to go completely bankrupt it this country from a medical crisis, than my house of cards falling down. I don't focus my energies trying to save $3K a year, but in doubling my earnings. Because of it I live well and have enough reserves.

[Anonymous]

If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

I would say ONE married college educated person 40 to 60 should be at 350k and spouse with lower income should stay home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

And the statistics prove it:
https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/education-pays.htm

Median weekly earnings in 2017
Doctorate - $1743/week or $90,636/year
Professional degree - $1836/week or $95,472/year
Masters - $1401/wk or $72,852/year
Bachelors - $1173/wk or 60.996/year
Associate - $836/wk or $43,472/year
High school - $712/wk or $37,024/year
Less than high school - $520/wk or $27,040/year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

I am married to a teacher and together we make $300,000. Our house is paid off, our kids' college funds are fully-funded, and we will be fine in retirement.

If you hire a babysitter and not a professional teacher to educate your kids, they won't become college-educated people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

I would say ONE married college educated person 40 to 60 should be at 350k and spouse with lower income should stay home.

Yep. If you're not in the 1% you're pretty much a failure.

[Anonymous]

we make 250k, have 2 kids in daycare, purchased a 350k house and we are BROKE

after tax, insurance, daycare, P&I, nothing is left

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we make 250k, have 2 kids in daycare, purchased a 350k house and we are BROKE

after tax, insurance, daycare, P&I, nothing is left

We make 115k and have one kid in daycare/one aftercare. Our home cost 290k. It is tight but we are not broke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we make 250k, have 2 kids in daycare, purchased a 350k house and we are BROKE

after tax, insurance, daycare, P&I, nothing is left

Huh? We make $260k also with a $350k house and 2 small kids in daycare. We don't live particularly frugally, but we still save about $3500/month without even including retirement contributions.

I realize different people, difficult circumstances, but that sounds like a spending problem...

[Anonymous]

Where is everyone living with such inexpensive houses? Not in DC (?)

[Anonymous]

I live just outside Chicago. My spouse and I are both teachers. Our HHI is 155K. We do okay. We save 20% of our income on top of the percentage of our income that goes to our pension. We save for our our kids' college as do their grandparents. By the time they graduate, we'll have enough to pay for state university. Our oldest, right now, looks to be headed for a free ride to a state school if she wants to go there though, so that can be grad school money. We go on one 3-4 day vacation a year to a location we can drive to. We maintain our very small modest SFH. My husband and I share one car and we are not buying a second car for our teenagers. They will continue to walk, ride their bikes or share our one car when it is available. We don't feel poor. We know we are wealthier than 95% of the rest of the world. Sometimes we feel the pinch, but I know poor and we aren't it. I know that DC is more expensive than Chicago, but is it more than 2x in cost? Aren't there bad neighborhoods that are affordable? Before living where we do now, my family lived in a poor, mostly black and latino neighborhood with significant crime in a condo that cost about 40% of what one in a nice area might cost. I don't like it when people say they can't afford Chicago. For middle class folks like my family, that is code for "We won't live where there is crime", which is very different than saying they can't afford the city. They can, they just don't want to live where it is affordable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you marry a nurse you are condemning yourself to a life of poverty. Same with teacher or cop. I wouldnt consider any of these jobs to be professional- basically they are high level babysitting jobs. Two college-educated married adults with professional jobs easily make$350k.

Famous last words.

[Anonymous]

Depends type of Nurse or Cop. A nurse Practitioner can easily make 150k and some cops in highly paid areas like Nassau County NY can make 200k a year.

So a cop married to a nurse can make 350k