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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Another out of town lurker here with a prospect to relocate.  Many of you seemed to earn a bundle in the 90s before the housing boom.  I was still in high school then.  How do people in their early 30s and younger manage in DC?[/quote]

I am 39 but I did not make a bundle in the 90s.  HA!  That makes me laugh!  I was an impoverished Hill staffer living in shared housing.  I think my starting salary was $22K. Yep, it was.  That was '97, [u]with a Master's degree[/u], for which I then had to pay student loans!

And then we bought at the top of the market in '04, right after we got married, so yeah, no luck there either.

Just guerilla-style frugality and Irish stubbornness.  [/quote]

haha - I like you.  I made $25K as a Hill staffer at my first job - I thought I was doing great!

We're 35 with a school-aged child and make probably $135K (my salary has varied a little this year - PT job had reduced hours for the summer months due to cutbacks).  Somehow, we manage.  Is our savings account as big as it should be?  No, but we manage to pay our bills and put money away for retirement and not have to live like paupers.  We don't get to live close in (nor do we need to, as neither of our jobs is DC-based), but we live in a nice community that has walkable amenities and good schools where we purchased a 2200 sf home for $450K.  We were able to make a down payment on this home and do a few renovations because we bought a VERY tiny TH in late-2003 after we married that we sold for $100K profit last year.  We actually were VERY close to moving to one of the cities everyone likes to throw out there as a hot (and less expensive) market - turns out there were no jobs available for my husband there at the time.  He's a security/defense contractor (ex-military) and his particular job just isn't readily available outside of this area.  He loves what he does.  Neither one of us will likely ever make the big bucks (he JUST broke 6-figures this year), but we know that this is the town we need to be in, no matter how attractive lowering COL might be.  Our reason for even looking at the other city was to be closer to his family - having to spend money on airfare to visit family pretty much rules out actual vacations for us, which we had hoped to alleviate, but such is life.

Look, if OP makes a good living where they are, I wouldn't suggest moving here.  But it isn't horrible to live here, either, even on our "modest" salary.  We're right around the median income in Fairfax County, and we live a very average middle income life.[/quote]
My first year in DC, I was an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. I made a stipend of $750/month. Between that and a retail job a few hours a week, I managed to scrape by. It wasn't pretty, but I did get to live in a fun DC neighborhood and meet interesting people. When I got my first "real" job after I finished my AmeriCorps service, I felt like a millionaire because I was making $35K!  :D [/quote]

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