Reply to Goldman Sachs: 40% of $400-500K and $500K+ households “live paycheck to paycheck”

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Reply to "Goldman Sachs: 40% of $400-500K and $500K+ households “live paycheck to paycheck”"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is crazy to me, see page 20:

https://am.gs.com/cms-assets/gsam-app/documents/insights/en/2025/am-retirement-survey-102025.pdf?view=true

Lots of wild details in this document on “The Future of Retirement”[/quote]

I can relate. We are in the same income bracket. We live paycheck to paycheck after maxing out 401k, hsa, saving 10k per kid in 529, saving 60k in our brokerage account. We don’t have much left.

[/quote]

Similar. We make 3M/yr but it's almost entirely stock. In terms of cash by the time we put 70k each in 401k, back door roth, max HSA, 10k per kid in 529, 60k in brokerage, then there's only enough cash left to pay all the bills and live an UMC lifestyle. Our NW is growing rapidly, but it takes discipline to never dip into the investments and fit our life into the cash flow. [/quote]

Same except we make $10M/yr and I’m a historian and my spouse keeps bees[/quote]

and were drunk when you posted this? I assume that you are joking but I'm blown away by this thread. HHI 500-700K and we cannot possibly spend all of our take home even after maxing all that stuff out. But we live in a very modest house. I think that makes a huge difference. [/quote]

I was mocking the PP who makes $2M or whatever and said they’re still paycheck to paycheck but that went over your head. [/quote]

I laughed PP. Some people are just dense and don’t get the joke.

While folks are right that many of these high income earners are not truly “paycheck to paycheck”, they are only one job loss and extended unemployment away from materially falling out of this lifestyle. So yes, they may be funding a full 401k, 529, and maybe private school, but those are not enough to fully retire on or replace their income if there’s a job loss. Yes, they’d likely have to move and sell the $2+ million home walking away with 30-50% equity. I’m not going to shed tears over this but I do sympathize with the fact that their financial position is not as strong as their income would suggest. It’s worse for the true middle class, which probably can’t fully find any of these things and has few assets and lots of debt and leases. [/quote]

Anyone who isn’t financially independent (which is the vast majority of Americans) cannot maintain their current lifestyle indefinitely without their jobs.  But that’s not what paycheck-to-paycheck means.  Many of these folks could survive several years without a paycheck by drawing down savings, 401ks, reducing lifestyle, etc. There is a lot space between paycheck-to-paycheck and financially independent.[/quote]

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