Family of Four on 90k - An Upper Middle Class Existence

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Upper middle class starts at 300K, but think whatever you want.

I don't think SES can be determined on income alone. A household with a single earner making 200k a year that doesn't have childcare costs or student loans and bought a house 5 years ago is probably more comfortable than a dual income household of 300k with two kids in daycare, dual student loans, and a mortgage on a house bought in 2014. You have to look at the overall picture. That is why advice from someone who first invested in the real estate market over a decade ago and doesn't have childcare costs isn't particularly helpful for people who are even a few years younger and starting out in the DC area.

[Anonymous]

The concept of upper middle class is pretty vague and economists and sociologists look at it differently. It usually refers to well-educated professionals with graduate degrees and comfortable incomes secure from economic down-turns. Economists like to emphasize the security from the business cycle. Sociologists like to emphasize skills, education and patterns of behavior. What they agree on is that it isn't about absolute income. While a small business owner or sales executive may earn more than a doctor or lawyer, they are generally not included in the upper middle class concept because those occupations don't necessarily carry the same social status and influence or cultural attributes. Academics are almost always included in the definition, even though they may make very little (adjuncts!). Historians like to point out the unique role that the upper middle class has played in social movements.

Bottom line - money isn't everything. Autonomy, security, and education are better indicators of who is in the upper middle class than income alone.

[Anonymous]

We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k. My husband has an income of under $10k. He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips. We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k. My husband has an income of under $10k. He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips. We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.

I imagine you pay a lot less in taxes than a dual income household earning 150k and you don't have childcare costs because your DH watches them.

[Anonymous]

So you have no childcare costs or housing costs. Basically you are making 45K by staying at home, your real income is around 135K a year living in a town house. Kudos to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, you read it right.

I'm SICK of reading the "500k, woe is me threads". I'm also sick of seeing the bashing going on towards the single woman in the other thread.

We make 90k pretax. DH is civil service. I stay home with both kids, 3 and 8 months.

We have two cars, max out TSP and each of our Roth IRAs. I was a music teacher in a previous life, and volunteer lessons weekly. Considering charging for my services in the near future, but I enjoy the set up. We own (and are paying mortgage on) a 3 bedroom home in a nice, safe neighborhood. We will likely homeschool our kids because public school isn't in line with our worldview.

Husband gets every other Friday off. We eat healthy food, and take yearly vacations to california to see my family. We have an active, healthy family - physically and socially.

Enough of the poor mouthing on dcum - you folks are pathetic.

Why I don't see why folks got so rude to OP, she started off on such a civil and courteous tone.

I was looking forward to the story of how DH bought a TH at 22, has to be either family money or No money down mortgage. Exemplary financial prudence, that is.

When I bought my house (a DC rowhouse) at 30 in 2003, I put down $10k, which I had saved during the 3 years previously. I was also self employed at the time and easily got a no doc loan. Many people were buying homes with no money down mortgages then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you have no childcare costs or housing costs. Basically you are making 45K by staying at home, your real income is around 135K a year living in a town house. Kudos to you.

Are you replying to me at 11:51? Sure we have housing costs. We have a mortgage, property taxes, homeowners insurance, plus of course all the maintenance and repairs on a 120 year old home. Why would you think we have no housing costs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you have no childcare costs or housing costs. Basically you are making 45K by staying at home, your real income is around 135K a year living in a town house. Kudos to you.

Not sure if you are using "living in a town house" in some kind of negative way? If so, I hope you understand that "town houses" (that is row houses) in DC are very desirable and are often worth way more than $1 million, which I'm sure is more than the home that you think is so superior in the suburbs.

Ours is probably worth about $800k these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k. My husband has an income of under $10k. He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips. We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.

Could you explain your spending please? Not being snarky, seriously want to learn from you.

We have a HHI of $130,000 and have 10- 13 year old cars, rarely go on any vacation, rare weekend trips and only if we're staying with friends or somewhere for $100 a night, have zero college fund and too often have to dig into savings in between paychecks. Eating out, having a new car and overseas vacations aren't what I think of as frugal. I like your way of being frugal better. Please teach me your ways.

[Anonymous]

We also have $130 HHI and are in our 40's, but have a huge monthly mortgage compared to our salary so we feel poor. Our house is large, old, and in a great location. We like the top school district we're in and the neighborhood, so we've been trying to make things work here. We have a pension, a few hundred thousand in IRA savings, and we've paid off 3 years of each of our children's college education. We had no student debt by the time we met each other in our late 20's. Kids are all in public school finally and we go on a couple of cheap vacations a year. We have a cleaning person every 2 weeks. We rarely buy organic or eat out. We do have a home and cell phone and Netflix. We don't feel upper middle class although I guess we are. We're always looking for ways to save money and never feel like we're doing well enough. We've considered moving, but homes are getting expensive everywhere and we have a great interest rate.

[Anonymous]

I'm the $2.4M net worth poster. I like you! It's all about seeing the glass as half full rather than empty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k. My husband has an income of under $10k. He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips. We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.

Could you explain your spending please? Not being snarky, seriously want to learn from you.

We have a HHI of $130,000 and have 10- 13 year old cars, rarely go on any vacation, rare weekend trips and only if we're staying with friends or somewhere for $100 a night, have zero college fund and too often have to dig into savings in between paychecks. Eating out, having a new car and overseas vacations aren't what I think of as frugal. I like your way of being frugal better. Please teach me your ways.

Some of it is that we have a low mortgage payment ($1600). We also paid cash for our car (and don't use it a lot because we live downtown) so no car payment (it's 4 years old now, but was new when we bought it from savings). We use frequent flyer miles for flights (or some of them), which are accrued primarily though putting all expenditure on credit cards (which are then paid off each month). We stay with family when we travel overseas (I realize this isn't an option for everyone) and get great deals on Priceline for local trips (e.g. 4 star hotels for $50-70 a night and we only stay one night) or use Airbnb if longer so that we can have a separate bedroom for the kids and a kitchen so that we don't have to eat out every night.

When we eat out we eat at lower cost places and pay $40-50 for the family. We use Groupons or other coupons where possible and we just eat out a handful of times a month. Our grocery and eating out budget combined is about $8-900 a month. When I cut back on eating out our grocery bills just go up, so it tends to be similar regardless. (We eat vegetarian and I cook everything from scratch at home) My husband and I almost never buy clothes for ourselves. Or shoes. The kids clothes ALL come from Value Village (we also donate a lot of clothes and toys to goodwill), though I buy their clothes new. We don't have cable and have a low phone plan. We don't ever pay for childcare (we do babysitting exchanges with friends and neighbors - no local family). I pack lunches for myself and my kindergartener.

We put $15k a year into my 401k. We already have a robust emergency fund so I tend to put at least $100 into savings per pay period and then use that to fund bigger expenses like car insurance payment (every six months) or a vacation. Despite occasional use of savings our net worth is growing steadily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are another family of 4 doing very well on less than $100k.

I make about $90k. My husband has an income of under $10k. He also takes care of the kids.

We are frugal but we still eat out regularly, have a new car, go on overseas vacations and regular weekend trips. We have a good life.

We own an 1800 sq foot 3 bed row house in DC, with a 15 minutes commute (by foot) to my downtown office.

Could you explain your spending please? Not being snarky, seriously want to learn from you.

We have a HHI of $130,000 and have 10- 13 year old cars, rarely go on any vacation, rare weekend trips and only if we're staying with friends or somewhere for $100 a night, have zero college fund and too often have to dig into savings in between paychecks. Eating out, having a new car and overseas vacations aren't what I think of as frugal. I like your way of being frugal better. Please teach me your ways.

Some of it is that we have a low mortgage payment ($1600). We also paid cash for our car (and don't use it a lot because we live downtown) so no car payment (it's 4 years old now, but was new when we bought it from savings). We use frequent flyer miles for flights (or some of them), which are accrued primarily though putting all expenditure on credit cards (which are then paid off each month). We stay with family when we travel overseas (I realize this isn't an option for everyone) and get great deals on Priceline for local trips (e.g. 4 star hotels for $50-70 a night and we only stay one night) or use Airbnb if longer so that we can have a separate bedroom for the kids and a kitchen so that we don't have to eat out every night.

When we eat out we eat at lower cost places and pay $40-50 for the family. We use Groupons or other coupons where possible and we just eat out a handful of times a month. Our grocery and eating out budget combined is about $8-900 a month. When I cut back on eating out our grocery bills just go up, so it tends to be similar regardless. (We eat vegetarian and I cook everything from scratch at home) My husband and I almost never buy clothes for ourselves. Or shoes. The kids clothes ALL come from Value Village (we also donate a lot of clothes and toys to goodwill), though I buy their clothes new. We don't have cable and have a low phone plan. We don't ever pay for childcare (we do babysitting exchanges with friends and neighbors - no local family). I pack lunches for myself and my kindergartener.

We put $15k a year into my 401k. We already have a robust emergency fund so I tend to put at least $100 into savings per pay period and then use that to fund bigger expenses like car insurance payment (every six months) or a vacation. Despite occasional use of savings our net worth is growing steadily.

How is your mortgage so low for a rowhouse?

[Anonymous]

We make 500k HHI, two kids, living in a newer home in McLean. public school for the kids, and we have no superstition/religious affiliation. We eat out once a week, but the bill for six of us (grand parents ) rarely goes above 100. Vacation about two to three times a year. Sometimes a cruise, some times a vacation spot like Cancun, but usually between 5 to 10 k for a 3 to 7 day trip. We have a 5 year old SUV, 3 year old C class, and a 2 year old 3 series. Of Course our savings, retirement, kids college and etc are all well funded. Our life style is not all that different from a middle class one, just a bit nicer but a lot of cushion for future expenses. You really can't live like money is no object on a 500k income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We make 500k HHI, two kids, living in a newer home in McLean. public school for the kids, and we have no superstition/religious affiliation. We eat out once a week, but the bill for six of us (grand parents ) rarely goes above 100. Vacation about two to three times a year. Sometimes a cruise, some times a vacation spot like Cancun, but usually between 5 to 10 k for a 3 to 7 day trip. We have a 5 year old SUV, 3 year old C class, and a 2 year old 3 series. Of Course our savings, retirement, kids college and etc are all well funded. Our life style is not all that different from a middle class one, just a bit nicer but a lot of cushion for future expenses. You really can't live like money is no object on a 500k income.

who said we should be living like money is no object?