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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband makes $160k and I stay at home with two small kids. These threads always surprise me because at $160k we do pretty darn good! Rent a townhouse for $2300/month, aggressively paying off both cars so we spend $1000/month on that, $131/month insurance for both cars. $280/month for preschool, around $200/month for power and gas, $400 for cable/internet/cell phones. We have a house in another state but the mortgage is covered by a renter so we don't make money on that but we aren't in the red either (this year at least). In a normal 2 paycheck month we net around $8500 and very very rarely do we feel pinched unless a few major expenses come up at once (property taxes, new tires for cars, medical bills, things like that). I mean we aren't wealthy by any means but I feel we do much better than "survive."[/quote]

You don't own, you don't save for college for the kids, and what are you doing for yourself as a SAHM for retirement?  [b]Households with income totalling less than $200K, with kids, are almost always way short on house equity, retirement and college savings[/b].  [/quote]

Citation please.

Our HHI is $180K.

We have about $700K equity in our house and less than $100K to pay on the mortgage.

Retirement accounts total $1.5M.  We are 50yo.

College savings total $250K for two kids ages 15 and 12.

We are not "way short."  Not by a long shot.[/quote]

Wow, very impressive!  Good for you.[/quote]

Thank you.  We are aggressive savers and planners.

Anyone who uses "$200K" and "survive" in the same sentence is clueless.  With a HHI of $180K, we consider ourselves rich.[/quote]

But you're at a different stage in life.  You bought your house when before the bubble, when gas was cheaper, when economy was better, and when families were able to live on one income.  Try starting out with 2 kids in daycare and paying for a house now on 180k.  [/quote]

PP here.  That will always be true.  We didn't make $180K when we were starting out, not even close.  We struggled just as you do.  It's what life is like, starting out, for most people.

I still say $200Kish is a LOT of money.[/quote]

What did the home cost compared to your income. No way in hell someone would make that equity and be in the same position if they bought now and fast forwarded 20 years.[/quote]

IIRC, we were making about $90K or $100K together when we bought our house for $360K in 2000.  (Families in this area were definitely not able to live on one income at that time.  No way.)  At the time we had two kids in daycare (later pulled them and did a nanny-share) and for a few years we were in the red, with more going out to childcare etc. than we had coming in.

I don't think you know what your house will be worth in 20 years.  (We've owned for almost 14, not 20.)[/quote]

It's very unlikely that [b]housing will triple in next 15 yrs like yours did[/b].

And a comparable housing cost would be 600k, which means you are living at out and paying more in gas and extended care or live closer in and pay for private.

Different world now. We should all move tonPitt or nC. [/quote]

Huh?  How do you figure our housing value tripled?  $360K x 3 = $1M+.  Our house is worth about $800K.  So it doubled, plus a little more.  Yours might too, in the next 15 years.  Unless you have a crystal ball, we don't know.

I don't know what you mean by comparable housing cost.  Do you mean that is what we would be buying now with our income?  Perhaps so.  We live in close-in Silver Spring and put gas in our cars 1x/month as we don't drive that much.  Our kids go to public school.  People buy houses in our area for $600K today and make these same choices.

Your situation is really not any different from what ours was 14 years ago.  It just isn't.[/quote]

Except, when you bought your house the value was 3.6x your salary.  Now, making 180k would mean the house is 4.4x the salary.[/quote]

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