Reply to At what HHI did you stop feeling middle class?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It really depends how long you've been making the high income.  Often the first few years of "professional pay" are following years in school and coincide with people starting families.  So a couple can hit $400k HHI, but have $400k in educational debt and are very behind on retirement, [b]be living in a pricy apartment near work, have two giant daycare bills for downtown centers, extra childcare bills to cover their intense work hours, lots of convenience food costs to support two busy careers with little kids, plus feel a need to save for a house down-payment (and potentially another car to shift to the suburbs), plus then furniture and tools to support the new house, etc.  It's an expensive time of life.[/b]  Ask the same couple 10 years later and they'll be much more comfortable.[/quote]

They should not have taken so much debt, should have waited to have kids, and made different choices.  Something is wrong if you cannot live comfortably on that even with the debt.  We'd be very comfortable and we are comfortable making less than half of that.[/quote]

I’m really loling at the idea I should have waited to have kids so I could have felt rich sooner. Those are some messed up priorities man.

Also the debt was necessary to make the money (prestigious law school). I was making $35k/yr before I left for law school. Definitely didn’t feel rich then! [/quote]

No duh it is an expensive time of life, and no surprise you feel strapped after spending all of your money. People who say the above^"it just doesn't feel like a lot after I spend it all!" have lost a bit of perspective. Imagine trying to pay for all those same things on half or a quarter of that HHI. [/quote]Making a good HHI for one year doesn't magically make up for years of making a subsistence wage.  I went from a $20k / year grad school stipend to a professional salary in my mid 30s.  There was a ton of catch up to do financially.  It's not the same as going from a smaller professional salary to a larger professional salary.[/quote]

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