Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your mortgage debt does not lower your net worth if it, you know, comes with a house.

+1 are you underwater on the house? on the green side, you should be soft-counting the value of your house. I say soft-counting because eggs and hatching and all, but it is a more realistic financial picture.

OP here, you both identified why I am in the legal field working in a non-financial practice! I am not underwater on my house but only 2 years into a 30 year mortgage. Taking the mortgage and equity out of the picture would put me at less than negative half a million. That certainly seems more surmountable even if it takes a decade or so.

To the others offering lifestyle advice: thank you, but I am learning as I go. I don't have major credit card debt now as I learned that lesson carrying maxed out credit cards through undergrad and law school. I have no idea how griping about owning a townhouse is "keeping up with the Joneses" or living beyond my means as we are very comfortable even after replacing the HVAC and poor DIY renovations from the previous cheap skate owner. Again, I am just asking when the upper middle class life, which is obviously a status worth striving for here in the US, becomes comfortable.

It becomes comfortable when you can afford to live an UMC lifestyle. You’re not there yet.

+1. You are not UMC; you are pretending to be. Which a lot of people do, I grant you, but when you owe $700,000, you are not UMC, you are poor. You should be living like you're poor until you are debt-free.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little worn out from the grind so just wondering if this whole UMC life becomes more comfortable once your net worth is in the green. Not looking for budgeting advice but would love to hear other experiences. Quick background, I grew up poor but now our combined income is ~$220k/year. Unfortunately our net worth is -$700,000 with the vast majority of the negative being new 30 year mortgage and two absolutely massive student loans from law school. It would be 7 figures in the red if not for our retirement accounts and the "equity" in our townhouse. I am very bitter about my student debt but I have to admit it was the price I had to pay to make six figures. My social security statement shows that the most money I made prior to law school was $28k in a year.

Our cash flow is fine although the vast majority goes to daycare (2 kids), mortgage, huge student loan bills, and insurance. My parents visited recently and were shocked that we weren't popping bottles of champagne and burning bills given that our HHI is probably 5x what they ever earned (and they actually have a SFH). So what is the point of this rat race and when do you actually come out ahead?

Anonymous wrote:Threads like these make it so, so clear how much more important no student debt is than any pressure to get the degree in a high paying field. Unless it's a T1 university, and you're planning to commit at least a decade to the soul-sucking route of whatever profession you're choosing, prioritize a low debt. You will have so.many.more.options in your life.

And if you do end up making a low-UMC salary, you'll actually be able to enjoy it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel for you op. People act like what until you pay off student loans to have kids. Infertility is real. In my office of women lawyers, every single one of them over 35 is having trouble. We are super close so I know they’ve been trying and the troubles they’ve had. I went to a top 25 law school with partial scholarships and then into government and Dh went into non-profit (no loans for him). We are from the south so we started trying for a child at 26. Infertility. Didn’t see that one coming. Luckily, we didn’t wait until mid to late thirties so we had plenty of time to try everything we could before resorting to IVF. Then I went into private practice to try to pay off my loan faster. Worst mistake of my life. I won’t go into all the horrors of my law firm but if I could do it all over again, I would not have gone into private practice. All your problems are not magically solved if you go into private practice that’s for sure. Good luck.

I feel like many of you use fertility as an excuse as to why you had kids when you still had massive student loans. Sorry but most women do NOT need fertility treatments. There’s a huge difference financially in having kids at 26 vs 34. In your case it didn’t matter when you had kids because you required IVF anyway. So stop the scaremongering. The best thing a woman can do is wait to have children until she is set financially and also in her career. That isn’t the case for most 26 year old women.

Nowhere did that post say they did IVF- learn to read. And waiting until your 30s is a known fact your fertility is 90% gone. It’s not whether most women need fertility treatments, it’s about your fertility declining WHEN YOU WAIT. Facts are facts sorrry you don’t have yours straight.

Anonymous wrote:The way net worth works is it's assets - liabilities. So if your house is worth $1m, and you have a mortgage of $800k, then it adds $200k to your net worth. Do you really have $700k in law school loans? That is crazy, and you should be making much more money if you do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel for you op. People act like what until you pay off student loans to have kids. Infertility is real. In my office of women lawyers, every single one of them over 35 is having trouble. We are super close so I know they’ve been trying and the troubles they’ve had. I went to a top 25 law school with partial scholarships and then into government and Dh went into non-profit (no loans for him). We are from the south so we started trying for a child at 26. Infertility. Didn’t see that one coming. Luckily, we didn’t wait until mid to late thirties so we had plenty of time to try everything we could before resorting to IVF. Then I went into private practice to try to pay off my loan faster. Worst mistake of my life. I won’t go into all the horrors of my law firm but if I could do it all over again, I would not have gone into private practice. All your problems are not magically solved if you go into private practice that’s for sure. Good luck.

I feel like many of you use fertility as an excuse as to why you had kids when you still had massive student loans. Sorry but most women do NOT need fertility treatments. There’s a huge difference financially in having kids at 26 vs 34. In your case it didn’t matter when you had kids because you required IVF anyway. So stop the scaremongering. The best thing a woman can do is wait to have children until she is set financially and also in her career. That isn’t the case for most 26 year old women.

Nowhere did that post say they did IVF- learn to read. And waiting until your 30s is a known fact your fertility is 90% gone. It’s not whether most women need fertility treatments, it’s about your fertility declining WHEN YOU WAIT. Facts are facts sorrry you don’t have yours straight.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel for you op. People act like what until you pay off student loans to have kids. Infertility is real. In my office of women lawyers, every single one of them over 35 is having trouble. We are super close so I know they’ve been trying and the troubles they’ve had. I went to a top 25 law school with partial scholarships and then into government and Dh went into non-profit (no loans for him). We are from the south so we started trying for a child at 26. Infertility. Didn’t see that one coming. Luckily, we didn’t wait until mid to late thirties so we had plenty of time to try everything we could before resorting to IVF. Then I went into private practice to try to pay off my loan faster. Worst mistake of my life. I won’t go into all the horrors of my law firm but if I could do it all over again, I would not have gone into private practice. All your problems are not magically solved if you go into private practice that’s for sure. Good luck.

True, but then you have to live with a lot of debt. You have to pick and choose what you can live with. For most of us, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

I had my first at 35 and second at 38, so it's not like I don't know about waiting to have kids. And I'm not a lawyer.

And I never said you could have it all. It’s just people willy nilly push waiting to have kids and with their kind of debt it may not be so easy.
Even though the DC area doesn’t believe it, fertility is on a finite timeline! She’s getting hounded for having kids and not waiting which is crazy to me.

Plenty of people have kids in modest apartments, condos and town homes. Do you get it?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel for you op. People act like what until you pay off student loans to have kids. Infertility is real. In my office of women lawyers, every single one of them over 35 is having trouble. We are super close so I know they’ve been trying and the troubles they’ve had. I went to a top 25 law school with partial scholarships and then into government and Dh went into non-profit (no loans for him). We are from the south so we started trying for a child at 26. Infertility. Didn’t see that one coming. Luckily, we didn’t wait until mid to late thirties so we had plenty of time to try everything we could before resorting to IVF. Then I went into private practice to try to pay off my loan faster. Worst mistake of my life. I won’t go into all the horrors of my law firm but if I could do it all over again, I would not have gone into private practice. All your problems are not magically solved if you go into private practice that’s for sure. Good luck.

I feel like many of you use fertility as an excuse as to why you had kids when you still had massive student loans. Sorry but most women do NOT need fertility treatments. There’s a huge difference financially in having kids at 26 vs 34. In your case it didn’t matter when you had kids because you required IVF anyway. So stop the scaremongering. The best thing a woman can do is wait to have children until she is set financially and also in her career. That isn’t the case for most 26 year old women.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why HHI is so low for two lawyers?

One works in government, the other is at a non profit

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why HHI is so low for two lawyers?