Reply to Is this a common feeling in your early 40s? Feels like friends are getting rich and we're stagnant

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Age 35-45 for a lot of people is when - 
Drs finish residency and specialty training. 
Lawyers and consultants make Director / Partner - or know they won’t take that path.
PhDs finish post-docs and fellowships and get a well paying job. 
GS15s decide to go to non-fed industry jobs. 
Stock options vest, 
Couples know how many kids they will have. 
The highest daycare and nanny bills dwindle down to after school care and some camps. 
The student loans are paid off.
Parents start dying and leaving inheritance.

If just a few of these things are true, it can seem like a family’s finances change overnight. In a 5 year span, our HHI went from $200k to $300k, my company’s stock doubled, and our childcare bills went from $50k/yr to $20k/yr. [/quote]

Yeah this is all true. In the past 3 years alone, SO and I (ages 37 and 39) finished paying off his grad school loans; each got significantly higher-paying jobs; stopped paying for daycare for our two kids; and my grandparents passed and I inherited about $500k. I didn't really plan for all of those things to happen at once, but they did - and at the same time that the market was doing really well. I'm still reeling a little bit from all of the changes. We're not in the Big Law salary realm, but we are actually very, very comfortable, for the first time in our adult lives. But a decade+ of pinching pennies has left me unable to loosen the reigns, and so as a result we are just stuffing our savings accounts.

It also comes at the time that we're outgrowing our starter house, and now as we think about our next home, we're realizing that we're positioned to make a bigger lifestyle change than we had imagined. So I can imagine that maybe in 2 years or so, we'll be the ones moving into an expensive neighborhood and our friends will be wondering when and how this happened.

We're not, like, private school rich. But I do think we'll be looking at houses in the $1.5m+ range, and doing maybe 1-2 overseas trips per year. And those two things alone are both big changes from our lives to date, and honestly probably out of reach for many of our friends who work in nonprofits or government jobs. [/quote]

Your friends would have to be pretty poor to be wondrous of a 1.5-2m house in this area.[/quote]

DP here. Oh stop, a $1.5-2m house is out of reach for more than just “poor” people. DH and I make 300k HHI in stable jobs unlikely to ever generate high levels of wealth, but I would still say we’re on the lower end of UMC. We had grad school loans to pay off while saving to buy our home, and now 2 kids to send to college someday (will be done with preschool in 2 years so we’ll reallocate some of that). We bought an 850k house (did another 200k in updates) and that is as far as we will likely ever stretch.

I recently saw a friend (part of a dual fed couple) sell their home valued similar to ours (around $1.2) and move into a home that per Redfin they paid $1.8m for. They have 3 kids, 2 of which are still in childcare. They’ve also started taking fancy ski vacations and international trips. But I know one lost their last living parent a couple years ago so I’m guessing that is where this money is coming from. It’s still a shock to see their lifestyle change and I would not consider myself poor by any means. But I know my friend went through a tough time losing both parents in a short time span. So I’m glad to see her family enjoying some happiness. [/quote]

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