I’m worried “paycheck to paycheck” is up to the interpretation of the person filing it the survey and how the questions are phrased. Depending on how the questions are worded, they’d possibly include me. My wife and I max our IRAs, 401ks, and HSAs each year. Anything that can be put on the credit card, is (then paid off before any interest can accrue). Like sure if you look at our monthly expenses vs income hitting the bank, we are “paycheck to paycheck”. But we could both lose a significant portion of our income and be just fine (provided we scale back retirement savings).
Unless they address that in these articles or surveys, it just sounds like they’re trying to get the poor and middle class to just agree to this shared misery while the rich keep fucking the world over.
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve always heard “living paycheck-to-paycheck” to mean having insufficient savings to cover a missed paycheck
I.e. if you don’t get an expected paycheck then you cannot pay your monthly debts/utilities/rent and still have enough money to feed.yourself and your dependents
Which is why I’m worried it’s not adequately defined. I’m definitely not paycheck to paycheck. But they could word the questions in such a way that I’d be included.
Oh, absolutely. If you click through to the Quicken press release they have a small section defining their methodology but don’t list the specific questions
I wish more people appreciated the lengths that Pew et al. go through to both minimize and recognize sources of bias, confusion, etc
“We asked a group of gambling addicts if they run out of money regularily” /s
I think that’s the point though. It’s subjective.
Many people think the phrase applies to them because paycheck to paycheck is their budget cycle. They’re not living hand to mouth.
This is like all those surveys saying that 70% of Americans have less than $5000 in a “savings account.”
No shit, yields on savings accounts have been pointless for about two decades. Everyone with spare money puts liquid savings into index funds in margin accounts and runs on credit cards.
I’m not sure that they asked that directly. It looks like they asked if people are using their credit cards to cover bills more, and whether they expect to be able to fully pay the credit card bill off by the end of the year.
If you’re making 150k and are living paycheck to paycheck you either live in a crazy expensive area or are a total fucking idiot when it comes to managing your money.
Rent in NYC where I live is insane. My partner and I recently toured a place where they broke up the basement of a building into 4 apartments, none of which had a real bedroom, and were asking for $3k each
This is a trend everywhere, I just recently moved to different apartment and I’d say 8/10 apartments I saw on Zillow and the other sites were these “open concept” or whatever 1 bedrooms and hallway kitchens. It’s depressing
Move to Ohio and you can buy a house for significantly less than your current rent.
And work?
These answers are always aimed at WFH “professionals” but blue collar schmucks like me always get the short end of that stick ever since the WFH trend kicked up. I have to live within range of a job that I have to physically be at (I’ve done the 1 1/2 hr drive one way) and any lcol area that I look in doesn’t have anything even remotely close that pays enough to not make it a relative repeat of my current situation just with lower numbers. It’s not that easy for everyone to just do.
There are lots of blue collar jobs in Ohio, yes.
Idk how to answer beyond that without specifics but my point is that changing jobs within your skillset and moving for opportunities is basically what the country was built on, and is not a new concept.
If you’re not willing to relocate or change roles for more money there’s not a lot anyone can do for you.
I began my career as a high school teacher. Had I remained one, I would make less than half what I make now. Had to change jobs and states to grow my wealth.
Look at the positive side. When sea levels start rising, you’d be first to notice that!
Supply and demand.
You can always move somewhere else and have hope of one day owning property. Or you can rent forever and have nothing to pass on to your kids.
The choice is yours. I wouldn’t wait around for others to solve your problems.
Ya, people should be forced to move away from their family and friends and home by insane cost of living and instead of sympathy we should just expect them to single handedly solve an entire fucked up economic system.
🤡
I’m torn on this one. I do think people should live near their friends and family but if the living situation was totally untenable I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to struggle. At the same time, they aren’t going to help me pay the bills so how much do they really care anyway?
Entitlement. Thanks for understanding.
Douchebaggery. Thanks for your support for high income inequality and low social mobility
What are you talking about? I support spreading out so there are more developed areas that people want to live.
Passing a bunch of money around in major cities is what exacerbates the disparity in wealth. Why should city people who already have more wealth get even more before those who have less?
I really don’t think that’s how any of this works, dude
You need to invest in areas if you want them to be “developed” so people want to live in them. If you force poor people to leave places where there are more opportunities (e.g. economic, educational, occupational, etc.) for them, you’re basically dooming them and their following generations to poverty. This is why I said you support low social mobility and high income inequality.
Now just think of who the poorest people are in cities - it’s a lot of minorities, single parents, people in debt, etc. That should immediately tell you “city people” don’t have more wealth than most people elsewhere. As far as I can tell, the working class anywhere serve mainly to enrich the wealthy class.
I’ve always looked at it this way: should the people that scrub toilets in NY or SF or LA be paid enough to live in the same city? Everything I’ve seen tells me the average American answers this question with a resounding “No!” People in those areas have to make hour-long commutes to put food on the table for their family. I don’t see why we should accept essential workers being paid less than they deserve.
Try making $150k in a “reasonably priced area.” It can be done, but is not the norm. The problem is that to make a good salary, you have to be in a place that pays those wages. Obviously, this attracts more people, so real estate is more expensive.
The trick is to make $150k in some kind of sweet spot where housing does not compensate. But it’s always a moving target and is extremely difficult. Then in you lose your job? Start all over again.
I started working remotely and then left America. Now I live in a very low cost of living city and haven’t owed more than 1-2% taxes in years… It blows my mind that more people don’t do this.
If they did, it wouldn’t be a low cost of living area for long
There are many low COL areas, so yes you can do this quite a lot.
Gentrify the planet.
Most people won’t do something if they think it’s “too hard,” even if it will solve their problems.
Where did you go? And how do you not pay fed taxes working for an American company? Or is it a foreign company?
Georgia (the country) and Turkey mostly.
Qualifying for the FEIE (stay out of America for 330 days per year) means you don’t pay taxes on the first $120k you earn. Maxing out the 401k ($22,500) will reduce taxable income as well so it’s really like the first $142,500 is tax free.
I work for an American company as a W2 employee.
Thanks, looking to emigrate with a remote job, so good to know. Do you know if the FEIE is for any country or only select ones? And how hard did you find the entire transition in general?
The FEIE is only concerned about your relationship with America. It doesn’t matter what country/countries you decide to live in.
As far as the transition, I didn’t know it was happening until much later. When I left America it was to travel full time. I wasn’t specifically going to one place so saying goodbye to friends and family was like, “I’ll be around. Catch you guys later.” 2-3 years later I was thinking to myself, “Oh shit… You’re like… really gone.”
For work, I hold myself pretty strictly to working on US east coast hours so there is as little friction as possible with the employers. I moved my phone to a virtual provider and updated all banking and W4 paperwork to use a mailbox service in Florida (no state level income tax in FL).
You do get very bored with tourist stuff though. I think I would rather die than set foot in another museum or see some old building or religious site or whatever… Now 100% of the travel I still do is to see people I care about.
Good luck.
You just explained how work from home jobs will transform how people buy housing and where they buy it.
Let’s pump up the flyover real estate market?
Yeah, my job went remote in 2020 and this year I moved out of the city and just bought my first house in my home state where the cost of living is almost 1/2 of my former city. I
could’vewould’ve never bought a place where I was before. I’m sure someone would have loaned me the money but that felt like a death sentence for my small amount of disposable income.I make $150k and learned to manage a very strict budget living in the city. Now I have some disposable income and my own house with a yard.
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Because in your world, mobile home trailer parks are free or even exist in urban areas. Come on. A studio apartment around here starts at $1600/mo. The average home sale price in this area in 2022 was $580k. At 10% down, 30 year fixed, at 6.5% interest, after taxes and fees, that’s a mortgage payment of about $4000/mo. Plus about $300-600/mo if you have an HOA/COA. Plus repairs as needed.
Your net take home pay at $150k, after taxes only, is about $9k, making your mortgage 45% of your income. That doesn’t include health insurance, retirement, or any other paycheck deductions.
It doesn’t include transportation: payments, gas, repairs, tolls, or insurance.
That doesn’t include utilities: gas, electric, water, trash, phone, or internet.
That doesn’t include food, supplies, clothing, or personal care.
And it sure as shit doesn’t include medical issues. God help you if you’re a diabetic.
And kids? What are you, fucking Rockefeller? Daycare, schooling (yes, even public schools cost money because of all the extras they ask you to provide like supplies, lunch, etc), and all their needs. At at least 16 years before they might be able to pay rent, that’s a long time for a free tenant sharing your resources.
Plus all of life’s extra costs.
And looking at Zillow, I can’t find any properties within 10 miles of me going for less than $600k. They got townhomes for 1.2 million just down the block. $580k for a house is gonna be hard to find, and probably not in the best condition. Doable, possibly, but not easy.
My salary is $160k in the most expensive region in the country. My total yearly expenses don’t exceed $50k, $20k of which is rent. The rest maxes out my 401k and goes towards a house down payment fund. I have a $30k emergency fund in case I lose my job which gives me 9 months of runway.
I’m not a nomad by any means. I have very nice things and I spend a grand a month on wants (eating out, my hobbies, whatever else I impulse order from Amazon), but I’m extremely aware of all my purchases and budget out every transaction at the end of every week. Hell, I just spent $2k on Christmas to get my family very nice gifts, but I’ve been spending less and sacrificing wants the past few months to offset that to prevent lifestyle creep.
This is a financial literacy problem, not a $150k is not a lot of money problem.
ETA: I split rent 50/50 with my partner in the California Bay area for a decent-sized 2b2.5b townhouse. My friends who do have 5 housemates, as so many of you seem to think I do, pay $1050 a month in rent, or $12.6k a year.
You live in the most expensive region of the country but you only pay $20k in rent? Is your idea of “most expensive” Akron or something?
No, I bet he has five housemates or something.
I live in the California bay area (not going to get more specific than that), and split rent of a townhouse 50/50 with my partner. I live in a stupid bougie area too, so I’m not doing myself any favors there pricewise.
You cannot get a SFH here for under $2 mil, and our townhouse we rent is worth well over $1 mil. I could easily afford the whole place by myself, but that would be financially irresponsible. I was very fortunate to be taught at a young age that being able to afford something does not make it a good or okay use of money.
If I weren’t living with my partner, I’d get a one bed or studio apartment for ~$2200 a month, or an extra $6400 a year. Unless someone took on a mortgage way larger than they could actually afford (again, a financial literacy issue), or has an extremely expensive medical condition, I have 0 idea how anyone could be paycheck to paycheck on $150k a year and unable to massively cut back. The world is expensive, but it ain’t THAT expensive.
To get a townhome in the bay at ~2k a month is a complete outlier with respect to rent. I live in a similar COL area and the cheapest you could rent that kind of space is for ~3.5k monthly in the present market.
I didn’t say I got a townhome for ~2k a month. The place I split with my partner is $3300 a month, and if I didn’t live with them I’d get a smaller, much cheaper apartment.
Edit: Alright everyone can go on believing you need a million dollars a year to scrape by in the bay area lmao. I’m done responding since everyone already has their minds made up about what it’s like here, and somehow saying I could get a studio or one bed for $2200 is the same as a whole ass townhouse.
I just hope more people can learn to be good with money, and we can stop this terrible capitalistic cycle of consumer over-spending and debt.
How many housemates do you have?
Hmmm you’re not going to be making 150k a year in a shit fly over state.
I moved from the Bay Area to the East side of Washington near Seattle, folks here don’t make as much as I do for sure, at least not on average. We both have good salaries so we can afford a lot of things. We essentially got to keep most of our bay area salaries.
But even then if we need a big repair we still have to sit down and plan out the money.
I can’t even imagine what it’s like for folks around here.
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That’s good what’s your title?
Titles at my company are kinda dumb, but I’m the head of employee development for a manufacturing company
I’m pretty sure my title only exists at my company so I deleted it just in case.
How many years of experience did you need to get that job?
I have 13 years of experience but my first Directorship was after 5 (comparable budget and authority).
This job is technically a step down for me but the money was right and it’s a unique opportunity
I live in Nebraska, and all comp included make around 155k per year salary + bonus. You can make that kind of money even here in the “shit”
What’s your title?
I’m a software architect, though even when I was just a senior java developer I was making 130k, software pays well even in the fly overs.
I’m a level 2 Engineer and I make close to what you’re making TC. Hopefully maybe more come next year. And I don’t work for the big 5. I work for a hospital group. Seniors make well close to double that in TC. Principals make slightly more.
Also there are more jobs for higher levels than in non tech hubs. Career wise you’ll probably be making more complex systems too.
You have it good for sure, but you’re the outlier my guy.
I know that, I was just refuting the claim that “your not going to make that kind of money in a flyover state”, it is possible, and you don’t have to work the big 5 here either, and the cost of living is way less.
In California, a new mortgage payment is 8-15k/month. Rent on an apartment is 3-4k/month. $150k salary isn’t enough for the mortgage and will struggle to cover that cost of rent.
In California, a new mortgage payment is 8-15k/month. Rent on an apartment is 3-4k/month
Buddy of mine lives in LA and was just posting angry complaints about his rent going up to 1800/mo, so no.
I’ve got three friends in the LA area and one in the Bay and none of them pay anything close to 3k/mo rent or 8k(!!!) on their mortgages.
Those numbers are insane.
LA is cheap compared to the Bay Area. Also, I’m quoting numbers for new mortgages and new rentals. If you got your mortgage even 3 years ago, the numbers will be different.
Terrible assumption
Student loans
Household income not personal income? And gross not net, correct? After healthcare, taxes and retirement deductions my net is 50% of gross so let’s say that calculates to 6,250 a month. It is a lot of money! But for a household of 4, 2 paid off cars 3 drivers and one college student with no tuition costs, and one high schooler in a school that gives everyone lunch(so it could be much worse) here the average community monthly costs are:
2.5k mortgage with the tax & insurance in there, make that 3k if you are renting.
800/ month car insurance
600/month electric, water, internet
200/month family cell phone service
50/month streaming and donations to community radio
600/month average repair & maintenance on home and cars
Leaving 1700 for food for 4, gas, vet bills, credit card payments (because if someone is making bank now, they got there by making less for years). It’s certainly reasonable but here it’s about the least you can make household - wise and be solid, so if you are making 50k, you need three people working not two. And I can see how a family could get behind. That 2.5k plus $600 housing cost can be much more if you bought a house in the last year or so, and car loan or tuition could also blow this up, as could a medical emergency.
800/ month car insurance
The fuck? Why is your car insurance so expensive?
600/month electric, water, internet
The fuck? Why are you water and electric bills so high? I live alone, but my water bill is always <$40 and my electric bill is $70-$150 depending on if I’m running the A/C or heater.
Internet for me is only $25/month because I use my phone for Internet and have unlimited data with Visible.
200/month family cell phone service
Switch to Visible, like I said. $25/month per line and you all have unlimited data so you can cut your cable Internet.
50/month streaming and donations to community radio
Complete waste of money. You don’t get to do these and then complain you don’t have enough.
600/month average repair & maintenance on home and cars
Lol, what? Are you constantly hitting your walls with hammers? Do you do offroading in a sedan? No way you’re spending $600 per month on home/car repairs (on average) unless you’re driving a Benz or BMW.
That said, thank you for listing out your expenses. It’s a way more fruitful discussion when we talk actual numbers instead of vague “I don’t have enoughs.”
Nope. 2 cars and 3 drivers here with one of them 18 years old. Highest cost car insurance market in the nation. But without that third driver our household income wouldn’t hit the $150k.
Electric, Water, Internet. That’s mostly electricity. Electric bill is higher since I’m working from home, and everything in the house is electric (no gas bill) we don’t eat out much, cook a lot. Very high in the summer. Big windows, high ceilings, old house. Water includes garbage and is usually $100 or so. Internet about $75 FIOS so I can work from home mostly (2 cars not 3 that way).
The $200 is a legacy t mobile plan covering 8 people so if needed I could get the grown kids to cover half of it, that one is high but not per line, we just pay it because if we cut them off it would still cost us $200 for 4 lines.
House is older and cars are too. Tenting for termites has to happen every 10 years and costs 10k, we’ve had to fix plumbing, electric, replace an old porch, need blinds to help with the electrical cost, and the cars won’t last forever - I honestly think the $600 may be underestimating the cost of maintenance, not overestimating.
And of course every month something happens. Vet bills, or some medical cost, or car repair eats the 600 AND the plumbing springs a leak, or I have to work weekends and we buy restaurant food - no month is just bills.
It’s easy to go cheap for awhile, I have done that plenty. We have dry beans, rice, a garden. But things fall apart. I am putting here the cost of maintenance because if we don’t accrue this $600ish, it will end up costing even more. It’s a real cost.
Oh, and I know this isn’t poor, lol. In my 20s lived with 3 families in one house and dumpster dived to make ends meet. Then raised 4 kids with a guy who, halfway through, decided he couldn’t work. 6 people living on what I could make, we are paying that deficit now too. Even so, this is is an awesome life, I am not complaining at all. Just saying that the bills do take most of the netpay if the real cost of housing and transportation is included.
I’m driving a 26 year old car and don’t even spend $600 on maintenance in a year. $600/month ($7200/year) sounds crazy high. That’s like replacing an engine or transmission every year.
Correct, it’s mostly house. For a year, cars are about $400 in oil changes plus $300 in regular maintenance (brakes, etc.) and usually one repair or tires purchase of high cost, $600-1200. Its staying way below the cost of a new one.
The house is the real money eater.
Ah, I didn’t realize you were lumping home and vehicle maintenance together. My water heater recently died after 19 years of solid use and that was more than a $2k project. I’m dreading the day the furnace goes out. Homes aren’t cheap.
I’m buying whatever I want and putting 10% in my 401(k) and that’s exactly the same as being poor
These people lol
Or you only consider your expenses after savings and think that you are “living paycheck to paycheck” because you use up all your non-invested money by the end of the month.
I know a few programmers that are broke because they spend every penny that comes in and bought a $90k car the moment they got their jobs.
I don’t understand why people give up financial security willingly like that
It’s both. People try to always live above their means. Inflation causes that to catch up
100% agree
PS: porque no los dos?
I mean you can make any income be paycheck to paycheck by spending too much.
150k for me would be a dream right now. I have a dog, a gf, and I rent. But if you’re making 150k and you have two kids and a spouse for example, suddenly that 150k doesn’t go very far at all.
Yep, my mother used to manage pays for engineers making up to 300k and for some of them it was a disaster if a mistake lead to 200$ being missing from their cheque and they would be in her office first thing in the morning in full panic mode…
That’s wild to me.
Especially considering that at the time they could have just bought a house minutes from their office on a year’s salary instead of being over their head in debt because they preferred living in the next city in a house worth a couple millions…
That’s why lifestyle creep is a tough one. You make more money and then start thinking you want a bigger home, nicer car, eat out a lot more etc. It’s hard to scale back from that when the times get tougher as selling a multi-million home isn’t that easy.
Don’t let this sensational headline fool you. These are not the 1% not even close.
If you’re making 150k per year and “living paycheck to paycheck” you suck with money, full stop.
That’s more than double median household income
This is out of touch. There is a huge number of factors that dictate what amount of money is enough to live a fulfilled live. A bachelor can live a fulfilled life on 30k a year and still save money, but a family of 5 can definitely be living paycheck to paycheck on 150k, especially if they live in an expensive area.
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck on $150k you’re stupid full stop.
I rarely downvote, but you earned it.
I already did this one elsewhere. $150k is a decent middle class life barely in lower cost of living areas. Probably shouldn’t be paycheck to paycheck, but it wouldn’t hard to be either.
Children are a choice, plan accordingly for the children’s benefit.
So poor people shouldn’t have kids, got it.
Eugenics with extra steps, sounds peachy
I’m never having kids, by choice. How is that eugenics?
When you start advocating for a particular group to not reproduce, what else would you call it? You can choose that for yourself but if you suggest it for anyone else you’re gonna need to choose your words very carefully to avoid coming across like a super racist from the 19th century.
To be clear, I’m anti-capitalist and not blaming poor people for anything, nor suggesting they should not have any children. But I stand by my position and wording.
Don’t have more children (or even pets) than one can support. It’s objectively cruel.
Would I prefer a world where there wasn’t such dramatic (or ideally any) inequality? Definitely. But even in a world where every single parent could support 6 kids I’d be against people having 17.
I’m just saying good parents consider what is best for their children before having them. Having 6 when you can only reasonable support 3 is a ‘poor’ choice. Bad parents, on the other hand, have children to benefit themselves rather than the child.
And anyway, statistically, lower income people have more children per person so no one is preventing poor people from having kids. I’m just questioning if that is what is best for those children, because I care about children’s suffering.
As if it’s never the case that people have children in the expectation that their current financial situation won’t suddenly take a turn for the worse; as if what made perfect sense 10 years ago doesn’t make sense now when you have a 10-year-old kid to support.
This idea of yours, that people should somehow be able to magically predict their financial future is pure bullshit.
Are you quoting facts from Idiocracy right now???
https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-population-tech-2022-11
Are you sure that, since there are proportionally more poor people in the world, you aren’t just forming an availability bias?
And besides that, poor people are more likely to get pregnant from rape without the ability to terminate the pregnancy. If that is not enough they also have less access to reproductive healthcare, reproductive education, abortions, birth control, and prophylactics.
You’ve mentioned you’re a anti-capital, yet you see impoverished children as the fault of the parents who have them as opposed to the system that creates poverty in the first place. Capitalism demands cheap labor which means there are a ton of incentives built into it for procreation. Families don’t just choose to be poor.
Do you not live in America? Children are not a choice is a country that doesn’t enshrine access to abortion.
My combined household income is more than 150k per year and I have not changed my spending habits since I was in college… caveat being I own a house but my mortgage may only be twice what I was paying in rent. Also I now have healthcare.
Still living paycheck to paycheck. I guess I’d be ok if I missed one or both my wife and I missed one. Though, my marriage would start to be in jeopardy after 2 or 3 I’d guess. Not that she would leave me because I’m not making enough but the added stress would quickly become unmanageable.
Same, except I have a functional TV now lol
I think location definitely plays into this. 150k in some places is nothing.
I’m almost there.
I also live in the Bay Area. My rent is locally cheap but nationally very high. My wife has a chronic illness and an unrelated acute issue that recently required surgery. She can barely work. Until this most recent surgery I was keeping ahead, but expenses are up and income is down and that’s not true anymore.
I have good health insurance but there’s a lot more to medical costs than just doctors, and to partially manage her daily quality of life it’s not weird to cook her three different dinners and she can only stomach one. This explodes our meal budget.
We’re childfree but one of our dogs recently also got diagnosed with chronic illness. They are our kids, full stop.
Shit happens. Don’t be a dick about it.
You sound like the exception not the rule.
I think you’d be surprised how many people live in cities and have medical expenses. This dude doesn’t even have kids.
Word
Nope. If people having been living the exact same without changing many of their habits then it is absolutely fair that they would also be struggling paycheck to paycheck. They’re effected just as the rest are. We need to focus on the jackass causing us to turn on eachother. We shouldn’t be comparing ourselves because there are people who consider 30k/y as living lavish and think they also shouldn’t be complaining.
If people having been living the exact same without changing many of their habits then it is absolutely fair that they would also be struggling paycheck to paycheck
If you can’t play for the future you will be poor. I owe you no sympathy
You’re one of the richest people on the planet, by default, and I think you should pay more in taxes and it should be on you to figure out your finances, because you’re fucking rich and you just don’t realize it.
The most wealthy places on earth should not be held up as the norm and most people should not live in those places. We should tax all of those people excessively and they should not have guaranteed wealth.
They use the median instead of mean here for a reason… Can you guess it?
Because mean income is a useless metric in most contexts due to it being extremely warped due to outliers (billionaires) since this country has the worst income inequality in the first world by far…? Do I get a trophy now
I think the point is, they are living paycheck to paycheck unless they choose to decrease the quality of living.
On one hand we can say these people are way better off than they deserve and laugh at their stupidity.
On the other hand, that’s not a great sign for the economy. The “every day” kind of rich person isn’t even that rich anymore. And lowering the ceiling pushes you into the floor.
If society were healthier and functioning, relative costs would be going down for everybody. But enshitification is the new big thing to earn another buck.
I think the point is, they are living paycheck to paycheck unless they choose to decrease the quality of living.
People who actually live paycheck to paycheck don’t have this option and this is ludicrously offensive to people who actually live this way.
On one hand we can say these people are way better off than they deserve and laugh at their stupidity.
It’s not about laughing at their stupidity but about the situation itself being laughable.
The “every day” kind of rich person isn’t even that rich anymore. And lowering the ceiling pushes you into the floor.
I thought lowering these gaps was the intention of Progressivism. Is it not?
I think it’s just one more side effect of “American exceptionalism” and the culture of individuality and “me me me me” here, that people don’t even see “change your lifestyle” as an option.
They were told about the American dream or whatever, but they were sold a bill of goods, and now they can’t even comprehend cutting back on expenses in any meaningful way.
Lowering the gap between 10th and 90th percentile is meaningless if the very top doesn’t change too
Wholely agree. I live in the most expensive region in the US on $160k base salary. My total annual expenses (including vacations, wants, gifts) don’t exceed $50k, and of that $20k is rent.
Well yeah, but you probably make good choices which is arguably cheating.
I don’t think that would be a winnable argument.
I mean, this depends on a lot of factors. Stop applying your own prejudice to this?
$150/y = ~$100-110k take home
The average monthly expenses (Living very much in your means, in an area with avg cost of living, not performing maintenance…etc) for a family of 4 is ~$101k/y
So you have between ~ -$80/m to +$700/m in disposable income. If you start doing the necessary maintenance & long term cost amatorization of living in the U.S. (ie. Having to buy a car eventually, if you own a home replacing the roof…etc). Suddenly you’re close to negative. Meaning that when these events happen you have to cover their cost with credit card debt or some other form of debt, which means your cost of living is over time partially covered by debt.
This also seems that you are living not surviving… Much of the US is not really living, they are simply surviving. We should not measure the bar that low for what we consider acceptable quality of living standards.
Or, if you are in a marginally higher cost of living area that $700/m evaporates.
Even for a single person, a HCOL area will eat way that income to the point where eating out is a monthly luxury.
It sounds like a lot of money but depending on where you live it can be an incredibly small amount of money.
Famine, disease, collapse, or war. Those are historically the only ways inequality of anywhere near this level has been rectified.
Sounds like this might rectified soon, then.
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I’d love to see this as a paycheck breakdown. Unless you have a history of debt, a huge house, or like 8 kids I don’t see how it’s not possible to do at least moderately well on 150k/y
Edit: before folks reply with a comment about people being worse off, I know. I agree. This is just a scenario description.
It is very easy to be strapped with a modest sized house or apartment in the “right” zip code.
As in a 1.2mil mortgage on a 3 bedroom house that’s never been renovated since the 70s. That mortgage could be 5k / month.
150000 a year is 8.7k a month, after taxes. If you have student loans, any medical debt, kids, that remaining 3.7k is pretty critical. You aren’t swimming in liquid chocolate every night and wiping with singles.
If you own a home things can happen out of nowhere. I personally just had to replace my sewer line last month. 17k for the work and 1.5k for new concrete. Not covered by my home insurance because I didn’t opt for the rider on my account. My fault there… My finances are a bit different than the above description but if you were the 150 + paycheck to paycheck situation, you’d be in hot water.
This isn’t a “woe to the 150 crowd” comment. I’m well aware folks are way, way worse off, but when a 150 household talks about being paycheck to paycheck, it’s totally possible.
At least in CA where the property tax is 1%, last time I fed the info into one of those calculators a few months ago, a 1.2m house (exactly the type you describe) with a standard 20% down-payment would run closer to $8k/mo with good credit. That includes property tax and homeowners insurance, which is required to get a loan.
So yeah, that doesn’t leave a whole lot to live off of.
There’s also the upkeep cost for repairs and to renovate.
We’ve let our gutters stay broken for several years now because we just can’t afford to get them fixed. We had to have an emergency repair to our heat pump yesterday and that’s going to be hundreds of dollars out of pocket. We’re on a single income. My wife gets paid well (not $150,000 a year well) and our mortgage is low, but we’re barely making it.
$150k is twice what my parents made combined back in the 90s, and they lived a solid upper middle class life in an upscale suburb of a small city. Always had a nice TV and my dad and I both had PCs that we upgraded every year AND they saved up two years worth of college for me. Amazing how quickly things have changed. They bought their house for $180k and it’s now worth nearly $500k.
My career now is generally a higher valued one than theirs, but adjusting for inflation, my pay has always been lower than theirs at the same point in their careers. And that’s the story. Incomes may have doubled since the early-mid 90s, but everything else has tripled or quadrupled.
Isn’t a mortgage as high as your whole salary for 10 years unwise from the get go?
In general yes, but many many people are doing this to attempt a “normal” home the likes of which they grew up in, and that they themselves want to raise a kid in.
OR consider a household where 2 incomes of around 150 were earned when the house was purchased, but now one earner is not earning appreciably any more…maybe a stay at home parent or illness or whatever.
Again just saying some possibilities, not the normative experience.
I guess the rough reality is that some people want to live where their family lives but can’t easily afford it. I don’t know how far you need to live from SF for prices to return to reality, but I suspect it’s a 1h+ drive
Bay area
Yeah I could see 150k being poverty level there.
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Such a rusty axe head
They couldn’t afford a new one
Adam Smith observed in his epic that when people get more money they generally spend it on more/better housing. Today we have a few more luxury goods, to add to a house, but a house is still something people spend more and more money on when they get it.
I’m not sure that is bad. My dad died at 65 - what was the point of all the retirement savings he had saved up (at least my mom can enjoy it). Even if you live for much longer, most old people I know have failing bodies and so they can’t really enjoy those old years. More and more my advice to people is save for a rainy day and an okay retirement, but don’t save for a rich retirement - instead enjoy that difference now.
Sorry about your dad - I hope you got to enjoy some good times together before he passed.
Welcome to the jungle fellas. How’s that trickle down working for you now?
That’s because they’re just passing a bunch of money around at the top.
All of them live in major cities and don’t own property.
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The only way I could reasonably see that is if those people bought houses when rates went up. I live in a high cost of living area and $150k would not be living paycheck to paycheck for my family (wife, 2 kids, and a dog). I guess I also don’t have expensive tastes.
Define high cost living area. Wife with 2 kids and a pet, I assume you’re going to need at least a 3 bedroom condo for a modest living arrangement.
Where I live, southern California, the average cost for a 3br condo is $4k per month. Mortgages at this time would be way more (standard 20% down).
Someone else estimated 150k is around 8.7k a month after taxes. So that’s already almost half your income just for a roof over your head.
Include the expense of kids, student loans, car loans, health insurance, etc. Yeah, paycheck to paycheck isn’t unrealistic.
Not everyone was lucky enough to be in the financial place in their life to buy a house 5 years ago.
I’m gonna go ahead and tell you, that’s a bit high for after tax.
I make 172/year and after tax and benefits and what not in South Carolina, I’m at 8.6 a month, which is less than the 150 estimate. So in an average tax state and making 20k less? Might be more like 7.5-8.
Edit: granted of course, 401k contribution can change things a bunch
Fair enough. I’m sure there’s a calculator to make it easy per state. But yeah, take home is deceptive, because typically someone making that kind of income is going to have health insurance contributions, retirement contributions, social security (not technically income tax, but fair enough to deduct IMO) taken directly out of their paycheck.
Without doing the estimates myself, either of your claims sound plausible, and even taking 8.7k as a generous estimate, it doesn’t look good.
and even taking 8.7k as a generous estimate, it doesn’t look good.
Big facts. Worker wages need to be adjusted for the last ${years since Reagan took office and initially screwed everything up for the common American} and then we should be okay.
I live in Seattle. Like I said, I can see this being true for people who got a mortgage at 5+%. But I don’t think a third of people got houses at that rate so it would likely be closer $3k. Here the average 3br is around $3k/month.
But you missed one large part of the headline. It’s people making $150k or more. So that includes a ton of people that make more than that. And also a ton of people not in SoCal or other HCOL areas.
To be fair, I live in a low cost of living area and having purchased a house this past January, if I dropped to 130k I might be paycheck to paycheck after a while. Which, granted is lower than the survey.
This being said, my mortgage payment is only $50 more than what my rent was about to increase to, because landlords are the devil.
I also didn’t get a big house, it was well under the national average for cost and size, very much a “starter house”. But still over 300k, because housing is a nightmare.
I make less than a third of that and make it work (barely). Some people need to seriously reassess their priorities or something.
Many probably live in higher cost of living areas.
And it’s entirely possible/likely if they move to a lower cost of living area they will suddenly not make anywhere near as much and still live paycheck to paycheck.
You don’t get any sort of financial assistance?
I grew up on the poverty line. Food Stamps and Affortable Housing programs got us by.
I worked my ass off to get above the threshold of qualifying for any sort of assistance, and now I live at about the same level because food and rent eat up the difference between what I make and what my parents made.
Nope, no direct financial assistance. Though my parents are close by, and do help with things like inviting me over to dinner like once a month and helping me buy used furniture, if that counts. I shop very frugally and don’t have expensive hobbies. The only thing I’m really missing is savings.
We are cut from different cloths.
I hope you the best.
Maybe. At least I’m not making $150k and somehow still struggling lol
Ya.
You can’t figure out how to make 150k, but you think you are better than people who have.
Tried to end it nice, but fuck you are a raging asshole.
Do you make $150k and are struggling to make ends meet? Please clue me in to the struggles, I’m all ears.
Household, not solo, income of about 150k.
About same quality of life as I had growing up.
No kids.
Bottom barrel health insurance is a LOT more expensive than it is for people who make less. Drive a Honda Civic, but I still pay more for car insurance than my buddies that make less and drive Mustangs/Chargers/etc. My mom got WIC. I don’t. My mom qualified for Affordable Housing. I don’t.
I mean… I endorse you punching up, but I don’t think you aim those punches high enough, which makes you look like the kind of asshole who it makes sense that you can’t find actual gainful employment to advance yourself.
If this conversation proceeds, I need to know if you have reproduced, if you have been divorced, and if you are on any form of public assistance.
I’m no divorce/no kids/ can’t qualify for public assistance and my rent, food, and insurance costs have me living paycheck to paycheck.
At a current household income of, specifically, about 130k, far higher than I ever thought I’d pull off, there is NO shot at me getting a mortgage and I’m still living at the standard of life whose tax statements include kids, divorces, far lower paying jobs, and public assistance.
What’s even the point of your comment, I’m not trying to be rude it just seems unhelpful and the attitude is prevalent. Sure, if people adjust their habits they could make due, but the problem is the fucking robbery of all working people so it’s just wasting time bickering with points like this.
The point is that there is something fishy going on if you make $150k and still can’t make ends meet.
My hunch is that there is obvious excess spending on things that aren’t needed, and downsizing is the best solution. Families don’t need a $80k SUV when a sedan would do for example. Joneses be damned.
Your 150k number continues to highlight how oblivious you are to the current state of the economy.
1 mil… maybe that has gotten past the orphan crushing machine/boring dystopia threshold, but there is almost no physical quality of life difference between someone making 50k a year and someone making 150k a year.
How does the old adage go?
Mo money mo problems.
The $150k was literally in the OP lol?
You’ve called me an asshole multiple times yet you’ve been incredibly toxic in this comment thread.
Yeah, I was making a flat 50k a few years ago, and seeing some college classmates making three times as much complaining about how poor they were could only make me laugh.
I’m doing much better now, but it still drives me nuts when people don’t know how to appreciate what they have.
Someone can appreciate what they have and still struggle to support a family, repair and maintaine a house, pay deductibles and co-pays for medical treatments, support an unemployed or ailing family member, pay student loans, pay car loans, send remittances to family in a home country, etc. They could simply live in a HCOL area. There are many not unusual scenarios that could have a household making $150k/year struggle.
It drives me nuts when people think their circumstances define someone else’s, too.
Seeing this first hand between myself and some of my close coworkers who all earn similar incomes with similar sized families, I’d be willing to bet a majority of those 32% (who don’t live in the bay area or Manhattan) are financially illiterate and live paycheck to paycheck because they blow all their money on stupid shit.
I still manage to save, pay my credit card off each month, and pay all the household bills while still having money for stupid hobbies and yearly vacations while they constantly take out loans, loans to pay for other loans, finance even small purchases, have multiple maxed out credit cards, and keep kicking the can down the road on paying off their 20 year old student loans. I’d have a little more sympathy if they didn’t make snide comments like “must be nice” when I mention an upcoming trip, or argue that I’m stupid for upping my 401k contributions during our recent market dip while suggesting its better to sell it off when the market is down so you don’t lose your money.
