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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]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 housing will triple in next 15 yrs like yours did.

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]

NP--but this is crazy. Yes, I'm older than you are and we bought our first house when real estate was cheaper. But when we bought our first home--a 1100 square foot row house for $180,000--our HHI was a hell of a lot lower than it is now--about $80,000. We lived there for 14 years, eventually adding 2 kids in that small house with no yard or basement. Yes, when we sold in 2008, we made a killing. (Although not nearly as much as we would have made had we sold it a year earlier.) But we turned around and paid through the nose for another house in the DC area, so the equity we'd built up wasn't the quite the windfall one would imagine. At that point, our HHI was $175,000, the house we bought was a 1300 square foot SFH with 1 bathroom, unfinished basement, garage, and big yard (and better schools) for $575,000. The ratio of mortgage to HHI was 2.16 for the first house, 2.38 for the second. (Although it's higher now because after a few years we took second mortgage to finish the basement and add another bath.). Note a few things about this tale: our starter home was an older small house, bought on the edge of gentrifying neighborhood; we lived there for over a decade, stuffing 2 kids into that small space, and working the "substandard" school system as best we could; and when we traded "up," we got just a slightly bigger but still old and small home with one! bathroom (albeit with yard and much more storage and expansion potential) and with better schools as our eldest started middle school. I am confident my home meets the current DCUM definition of "shitshack." However, it is pleasant and comfortable and suits our family very well. My kids are thriving and none of us feels "deprived."

It's easy to say that things were "easier" back then, and perhaps that's so. But a good part of the explanation is that our expectations were (and are) lower. Our money feels like it stretches further in large part because we don't try to stretch it as far.[/quote]

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