How "rich" are you - or not?

[Anonymous]

I love it how practically no one in this thread has any debt yet your net worth still doesn't add up. Interesting.

[Anonymous]

How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? $400k
Cash (emergency fund) - $150k
How much is your mortgage? $650k - $3k/monthly payment - we made a $480k down payment a few years ago but I would guess our equity is down to $425kish.
What is your household income? $380k (base) - bonuses last year totaled $100k but will likely be lower this year
how old are you (and spouse)? both 33 (but will be 34 soon)
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? $18k in a student loan that we will likely pay off soon.
What profession are you and/or spouse in? Both attorneys although we both left a large law firm and took paycuts in order to have more time at home. We both went in house.

[Anonymous]

How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? 10M
How much is your mortgage? 0
What is your household income? 2M
how old are you (and spouse)? 20 and 21
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? 0
What profession are you and/or spouse in? Trust Fund

[Anonymous]

Wow, this topic is on here at least once a month. While I detest the archives Nazi ("check the archives - roar!") I find it funny people here are so preoccupied with this.

[Anonymous]

I REALLY hate it when our friends who are either younger or haven't been married as long expect to have as much or more than we have. This has actually come up. Sad, huh? Does money really dictate EVERYTHING in this area?

[Anonymous]

18:18...I like you!

Anyways, just for fun I guess. I graduated college a year ago, and I worked like crazy to keep my college debt as low as possible.

How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? Nothing yet
How much is your mortgage? I pay rent. I live in a low income apartment building...I pay 850 a month
What is your household income? about 24,000 a year
how old are you (and spouse)? I'm 23, no spouse. Although I'm currently living with my sister, trying to help her out since she's still in school and doesn't have much income
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? um...about 1300 credit card (almost maxed out, but determined not to get any more credit cards or use it anymore), 20,000 student loans, 6,000 left to pay on my car
What profession are you and/or spouse in? I'm a preschool teacher (hah)

Yes, I'm working class, and don't have much. And I do worry about money and being able to make ends meet, a lot. But hopefully my situation will improve soon. I hope to get a job with the public schools which pay better and to get my Masters degree.
Overall I'm pretty happy, I guess. I love working with kids and helping them learn. It's nice to have a job to go to where you enjoy almost every minute of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll admit I am jealous. I work 3 jobs, my husband's business is in danger of going kaput in the coming months. I am scared. I can barely afford health insurance. I haven't had a raise in 4 years. I read about everyone here making lavish salaries, or being a SAHM in a house they can afford. I'm not trying to be hostile, but it does hurt to read about everyone else's success when I am scraping by working long, hard hours to see it all go out the door.

Yeah I would have to admit, I'm feeling a bit the same way. All of these people and their money, meanwhile there are hard working people just barely scraping by. And don't forget all the the homeless people, including the vets who for various reasons can't find or keep jobs.

I can't even imagine what life would be like if I didn't have to be worried every month about whether or not I can pay the bills. That would be nice...

[Anonymous]

I don't envy these people at all. I have friends that are both attorneys, live in a very nice home, have tons of money and are in marriage counseling. They also work crazy hours and never see each other or their children but are so used to their lifestyle that they have trapped themselves. I don't make six figures (195k combined HHI) but have a modest home, free healthcare from my employer and I love my job. I work no more than 8 hours a day and have plenty of time for my family. Not all wealthy families are miserable and I'm not saying I wouldn't mind making more money but it's a trade off and one that I'm just not willing to make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't envy these people at all. I have friends that are both attorneys, live in a very nice home, have tons of money and are in marriage counseling. They also work crazy hours and never see each other or their children but are so used to their lifestyle that they have trapped themselves. I don't make six figures (195k combined HHI) but have a modest home, free healthcare from my employer and I love my job. I work no more than 8 hours a day and have plenty of time for my family. Not all wealthy families are miserable and I'm not saying I wouldn't mind making more money but it's a trade off and one that I'm just not willing to make.

20:21 here.

I would agree. Money can be a harsh thing, you can get caught in this terrible "more more more" and forget what you wanted in the first place.

I would like more money, but not an extravagant amount. Just enough to get by without too much worry. Where I'm at now, I can't afford a house, or much for new clothes. I'm barely making enough to pay the bills and buy food. I'd like enough to be comfortable, but not 6 figures comfortable

[Anonymous]

How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? Not sure, but less than one year's income
How much is your mortgage? about 1500
What is your household income? about 100k
how old are you (and spouse)? 39,40
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? about $8000 used to improve the house. Our car is a '96 and is paid off (but won't last much longer...)
What profession are you and/or spouse in? SAHM and federal employee
maybe $10k savings, varies
about $5k in college savings for 2 kids, ages 3 and 5
home equity -- who knows, less than $75k a year ago

I've been worried for a long time that we are living too close to the bone. If my husband lost his job we would be in really serious trouble almost immediately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love it how practically no one in this thread has any debt yet your net worth still doesn't add up. Interesting.

Don't know which posts you are thinking of, but for some folks the reason the net worth does not add up is because the amount of debt they paid off was substantial. For instance, when I graduated from law school, I had close to $100k worth of student loans, and I know of people who had more on their own (and double if their spouse also had student loans). It take many years to pay that stuff back.

I currently have no significant debt other than a mortgage, but for 15 years - that was very far from true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? Not sure, but less than one year's income
How much is your mortgage? about 1500
What is your household income? about 100k
how old are you (and spouse)? 39,40
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? about $8000 used to improve the house. Our car is a '96 and is paid off (but won't last much longer...)
What profession are you and/or spouse in? SAHM and federal employee
maybe $10k savings, varies
about $5k in college savings for 2 kids, ages 3 and 5
home equity -- who knows, less than $75k a year ago

I've been worried for a long time that we are living too close to the bone. If my husband lost his job we would be in really serious trouble almost immediately.

see, I think THIS is more the norm, but no one is willing to admit it with all the high household income folks in this area and on this board.

We're 31 and 32. We make a little over $100K combined (I work PT). Our mortgage on a tiny TH way out in the burbs is @$1500/month, which we luckily just recently refinanced from an ARM to a 30-year since we're still up @$75K from where we bought. We have 2 paid off cars and luckily no other substantial debt (although I have used the credit cards a little too much lately and need to pay those off...a couple thousand?)

Retirements savings are not very much right now - we each took a pretty big hit in the past year, as did most people. I think between my rolled over 403b, his rolled over 401k and both of our Roths we currently have @$70K? We each have to fund our retirements out of pocket now, so maxing out Roths adds up to $10K/year out of our after-tax. I have a VERY small Simple through my employer that I just started, but the match is like 3% of my miniscule salary. We do the best we can. As for other savings, we have @$30K (some in a mutual fund which also took a dive...ack!) and no idea how much in our daughter's 529. We contribute set amounts to all of these monthly, also out of after-tax money.

While we're obviously not ready to retire right now, we are much better off than some others. We have decent health insurance covered through my hubby's job, we are still able to put some money aside and we have decent life insurance. Plenty of people can't say the same, you know? We would love a bigger house, but we're not house poor currently. We're waiting on adding a second for many reasons, but a big one being because we don't think our current budget can support it.

This area can make many of us who aren't in the high-income brackets feel inadequate, that's for sure!

[Anonymous]

Low-income lurker here trying to even out the ranks

retirement: 75,000 maybe
other savings: 8,000
mortgage: 1,100
HELOC: 13,000
income: 68,000
profession: publishing
Age: 46, single mom with 1 kid

[Anonymous]

How much do you have in your 401K (or other retirement accounts)? 300K
Other Savings: 75K
How much is your mortgage? 1800 monthly 350k total
What is your household income? 250 - 300K
how old are you (and spouse)? 38 and 41
What (if any) debt (other than mortgage) are you dealing with? 0
What profession are you and/or spouse in? Media and SAHM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who is doubling her mortgage payment. We are doing that because we are currently upside down on our mortgage and desperately want to move. Thus, we are saving aggressively for a down payment and trying to pay off as much mortgage as possible to minimize how much we will have to pay out of pocket to get out of the condo. I guess we could only pay the minimum and put the rest into savings but since we want to move in the next 6 months to a year it doesn't really matter.

I realize that I am offering unsolicited advice, but here goes. Your reason for doubling the mortgage payments does not really make a lot of financial sense. The bulk of your current regular payment is likely interest not principal. If you save the excess payments in even a regular old savings account this money will be available to you to pay any shortfall when you sell the condo. Plus, in the event that you do not move or cannot sell the condo(shit happens!) the money will be available for other purposes. This is true even if 100% of your excess payment is going towards prinicipal, basically what you are doing is not putting you in any better postition when it comes time to sell the condo.

True except that if the sale is a short sale or potential short sale it will put off some buyers, lead to a longer time between contract and settlement and create a massive amount of paperwork.