Reply to How does your family survive making under 200k hhi

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "How does your family survive making under 200k hhi"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[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?  Households with income totalling less than $200K, with kids, are almost always way short on house equity, retirement and college savings.  [/quote]

Short by what standard? Putting away enough for a public university, putting away 10% of HHI for retirement - is that short? I think you're imagining a family of 200k income living like they make 300 or 400k, which sure plenty of families do, and they make up the difference by not putting away for retirement or college, but the point I've been trying to make on this thread is you don't have to live like that and your standard of living doesn't necessarily have to take a big hit to live more modestly. Living just outside the district and sending your kid to childcare there can easily save you 2k a month that you then can put towards the savings you claim people are short on. [/quote]

Putting away 10% of HHI for retirement gets you to retire on what percentage of your HHI at what age, and is that sufficient, or will you be relying on Social Security?[/quote]

My retirement package alone, not counting DH's and excluding Social Security, will have me at 150% of what I currently make. I've been contributing to my retirement account since I was an intern. This is assuming I retire at 62. I could go earlier but we'll see where we are in life when I reach the earliest eligible age. You're probably still inclined to say I'm short because you seem to hold it as a matter of faith that people making 200k can't live financially responsible lives, but 150% of what I make will be plenty for us. We lived on a fraction of that two years ago. [/quote]

If your current salary is $80K that means that by age 62 your own retirement fund will be at $3M in order to withdraw 4% per year; $120K per year (150% of current salary).  That's just from contributing 10% of salary throughout your career?  That's excellent[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics