What is considered a high income for millenials? (18-34)
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Anonymous
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I often hear that millenials are under earning the previous generations.
What is the experience of this board? What is "doing well" for a millenial these days? |
Anonymous
| 18-34? I would say 180k plus. |
Anonymous
| My DH and I (25) have a HHI of $125k. Low by this boards standards but I don't feel like we're struggling. However we don't have student loan debt, which is what I gather is the biggest weight on our peers right now. |
Anonymous
| It's not just that we are under earning it's that housing and daycare is so so much more expensive and takes a bigger chunk of the paycheck. |
Anonymous
| pp again. We make 225k together and we couldn't afford either of our parents houses right now but they made about 70% or even less of that at our age. |
Anonymous
Yes, it's called inflation. |
Anonymous
| Lower salaries are part of it but also student loan debt and insanely high housing. I would say childcare but most millenials don't have kids yet, if they will at all. |
Anonymous
Because we can't afford the childcare. DH and I are saving up for it and I know at least 3 other couples that have delayed kids due to that cost. It costs more than college and people save for that for 18 years. |
Anonymous
| Under-earning because jobs that used to require bachelor's degrees now need a masters and a bunch of certificates. Wages have not increased with inflation, daycare is much more expensive, housing is more expensive, and there are incidentals like $200 a month cell phone plans the previous generation didn't have. |
Anonymous
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We make $150k HHI and feel flush. We are 30, one child (in daycare) and own a house in DC. We have little debt other than our mortgage- about $10k in student loans. When we were first starting out though I felt extremely poor. My salary was about $30k and I graduated undergrad with $40k in loans.
I think it also helps that most of my friends work in government or nonprofit like we do, so we don't feel pressure to keep up with the Joneses. We live fairly simply and don't spend a lot. I wish we could save more for retirement and college, though. |
Anonymous
| I'm 27. I would say if you are making six figures or near it (i.e. ~90K+) for each earner in the family, you're doing pretty well. Even in high COL places. A lot of us in professional jobs In addition to having large student loan debt have spend most of our 20s in grad school or in low paying jobs to open doors in the future, so real earning doesn't start until the 30s for many. |
Anonymous
Sure. But hosing in some places went up 200% and salaries didn't. |
Anonymous
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I feel like you have to split the millenial pop for this question.
18-25 aren't going to be making the same as 25-34. 18-25 either isn't college educated or bachelor's only so I'd say high income for that would be $70k+. 25-34 could be college educated, possibly even grad/law degree by this age so high income here maybe $100k+ |
Anonymous
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The biggest differences I notice are housing and student loans. I'm a 40 something gen-x'er and when I finished graduate school in my 20s I landed a 100k job. I had gone to 4 year private undergrad and 2 year private grad school and walked away from both of those only owing like 40k. I got my own apartment in Ballston and paid around $1200 mo and started paying down my student loans aggressively. In those days 100k was pretty nice - my own place in a nice area, plenty of money for rent and debt servicing and even some 401k contributions. These days forget about it. It costs as much for one year of private tuition now as it did for FOUR years when I went and it wasn't that long ago (graduated late 90s).
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Anonymous
And housing flat lined or decreased on other places and incomes didn't. |