Reply to SAHM: how much does spouse have to earn to make it work?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People can lol at the comments about $800k not being enough (it probably would be for us), but here's the thing: If someone is making $800k, they probably work a lot and have a pretty high stress job.  You go down to one income, and while you definitely have a nice life still, you don't have a "rich" life where you don't have to worry about costs.  If you have two kids, $800k does not pay for 13 years of private school plus college and grad school and summer camps, plus a couple expensive vacations every year. So you have one person working the life of a high income person and making the money of a high income person, but with only one income you're not actually in the income bracket where money doesn't matter.  And as someone who makes that kind of money myself (as does DH), i can tell you that the idea of putting this insane level of effort into my job for the next twenty years isn't doable. At some point (soon) both of us need to downshift.  If you have another person making $250k (pretty normal in HCOL city if one spouse makes $800k; eg dual lawyers where one is a fed), now you have that extra money to pay for the schools and camps and all the extra stuff.

So yes of course $800k is more than enough to have a sahm.  But it's not rolling in it money. And if i'm the spouse working hard enough to make $800k, i'd like to be rolling in it.  [/quote]

I come from a middle class family (and I mean actual middle class, not DCUM middle class) -  and from the type of place where hitting 100K salary means you have MADE IT BIG.

Serious question:

What do all of you actually DO that warrants these  500k+ salaries?  I honestly cannot wrap my brain around it.  And if possible (if you feel like answering) please avoid using corporate jargon catchphrases that don’t actually impart any meaningful information to those of us outside the know.[/quote]

I'm a private sector attorney. My billing rate for my very niche, high skill area is $1575 an hour. People pay me that to be available to them for a lot of hours every week. So do the math on what my revenue is per year.  Overhead and other costs get paid out of that too, so I don't see it all.

In DC, I have many friends in the federal govt with "mommy track" lawyer and nonprofit jobs making $220-250k. So two feds or comparable nonprofit jobs easily get you to HHI of $400-$500k.  That's why people claiming $700k is some bizarre hyper wealthy upper class salary are living in a fantasy world. Yes, if you look at the US as a whole, and look at people of all earning ages, $500k is a very high salary. But if you look at people ages 38-52 (basically, the group this thread is about) in HCOL cities (SF, NY, DC, LA) with college degrees..... it's pretty run of the mill UMC.

DH has a group of buddies from his college fraternity. Public school in the south, back when it was easy to get in. None of them are rocket scientists, none did STEM degrees (lots of "business" and history degrees).  But by their mid 40s, the whole group of 7 guys live in HCOL cities and makes in the $300-$700k range. Women (especially ones trying to justify staying home) use national data to undervalue themselves so frequently.  "Oh the average household income is only $45k! We're rich at $100k!"  Without acknowledging that average HHI includes unemployed students and the 35% of americans that are retired.  If you actually look at full time working people in the middle of their careers (not early years, where it's common to make crap, and not later years where people start to do a lot of non-job jobs), people with true "careers" rather than "jobs" generally make a lot more money than a lot of women would like to believe.  [/quote]

This is such bullshit. My siblings and I all went to Holton-Arms or Landon, where the richest of the rich send their kids.  We know LOTS of former classmates making individually in the $80-$140K range.  The idea that $700K is the norm if you were UMC or went to college is totally false.[/quote]

You must only know duds. Or those who chose fake jobs while living on their parents' dole.  Any middle of the road corporate is paying new college grads $90k for their first year out of college this year.  [/quote]

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