Reply to Middle class life has me completely baffled

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Middle class life has me completely baffled"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do you own your own business? Why are you paying for taxes and healthcare and pension outside of your take home???

Your numbers don't add up at all. At $180K your should be have a take home income close to $8500 per month. Your bills are only $2500 per month. Where is the 6K going?[/quote]

Let me do a better job here:

$180,000 HHI

-26,000 Federal
-16,000 State
-11,000 Social security and medicare
-39,000 for pre-tax retirement contributions
-3000 for health care per year
-4800 per year for required pension contribution

After tax/401k/health/pension = ~$80,000 per year left over in free cash.  $80k/12 = $6667 per mo in cash.

Expenses per mo. :

-1000 for maxing out Roth IRAs
-1700 rent
-100 phone bill
-150 car insurance
-300 groceries
-80 electric/gas
-70 parking
-90 internet
___________________
total: $3500

Free cash left over = $6667 - 3500 = $3100 (a little higher than what I had before because I had to go back and look at my pension contributions, which I was estimating before from memory).

$3100 - $300 per mo towards new car funds - $1000 for emergencies = $1800 per mo left over for a house.

Again, I've assume $0 for clothes, entertainment, car maintenance/repair, and miscellaneous.

The bigger picture here is that I cannot fathom tacking on $3000 more per mo. for childcare if I had children, another $300-400 car payment if we had to buy and finance a new car, spending more money than we do on clothes for ourselves or children, contribute to college savings, and have enough left over for retirement.....and oh, also afford a house.  That's what I mean when I say I really don't understand how in the hell people are affording a middle class life with a family, a house, a car, and savings for college/emergency/retirement assuming there are zero health care disasters, no job loss, and other extremely expensive setbacks. 
[/quote]

You can’t save for EVERYTHING at once. That is the whole point. You want a house, you retool your calculations and contribute less for a while to save up your down payment more quickly. At your ages you don’t need to max 401k and your Roth every single year.

The ironic thing is your tax burden will be lower if and when you buy Aw house. So, you just make it work if you want to make it work.
I’m fiscally conservative but you make a lot of money and have extremely low expenses for DINKs - you just need to suck it up and temporarily prioritize the house if you want the house. [/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