A lot of, if not most, folks in that income bracket vote democrat and hate republicans. These are tech folks who voted for Bernie. It isn’t until you add another couple of zeros that you find the people funding the Republican party. 150k isn’t elite, it’s literally just barely middle class in any major city.
So are you stereotyping democrats as poor and republicans as rich? And only republicans tout trickledown? Oh, and if you voted for any trickledown policies, you have to be a rich elite? Please. Saying six digits is middle class is elite speech. Maybe in tech hubs like California and Washington, but in the REST of America, 6 digits is still upper class. Or at the least upper echelon of middle.
Personally I know many people in that “bracket” and lower that DO give to the GOP and vote for them too. They even vote for trickledown policies because they believe they are rich and they will benefit. I’d love to see some statistics on your claim that a lot if not most people in the middle class vote blue.
And other thing, there is a metric fuckton of blue and white collar work out there that makes six digits. Not everyone that makes that much is in the tech sector.
Consider what that income will get you. Ignore the actual numbers. There’s also a very big variable on lifestyle- dual income no kids is very different from a single breadwinner with 8 kids.
I am in a fairly big city in the Midwest (you’ve heard of it, but you would never think of it unprompted). $150k/year (household) would buy a medium-large single family home (2000 square feet, 3 or 4 bedrooms) in a good (but not exclusive) area, a pair of decent cars (well equipped new Honda Accord or similar, trading in after 5 years), retirement around age 65. Any kids would attend a good public school, or possibly a very inexpensive religious school. You would have yearly vacations, but it would be mostly domestic. Road trips to the grand canyon, Disney world, etc.
I live in a capital of a southern state, no more than 30 minutes outside city limits $150000 a year will get you several acres, 2500+ square foot house, multiple cars, trucks, ATVs, boats and all the goodies to go with them. Three weeks of vacation a year, with a hunting cabin in the mountains.
Understood, my point being classes are created by the .01% and have no meaning, we are all “lower class” unless you can buy a government representative.
I think I can safely say with a high level of certainty that you do not own a home or have your own children to care for, which is why you can say that.
Not trying to shit on you, I'm simply saying that you may not have the complete context to consider your own opinion as correct.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Aha so you ARE taking it personally, I had a feeling. I’ll go through the math with you for the sake of discussion, name calling aside.
I have no kids, no marriage, no car payment, no student loans, no public assistance.
Take home pay after taxes and benefits is about $2500. Housing is $1500. Utilities are $250 including A/C during summer. Car insurance I’m rounding up to $150. Gas is $150. Food is ridiculous of course, looks like $250 for groceries and let’s say $150 for combined coffee/sometimes lunch/maybe a pizza here and there. Add em all up and I’m at… $2450. Like I said, I barely make it work. :)
There are many other details I’m leaving out for the sake of anonymity, and I will admit I did get lucky in some regards, but I can imagine my figures are quite extendable with someone who has a roommate or two, who got handed down a family member’s car, who has a decent side hussle, who reaps the benefits of minimizing their bills, etc.
If made 3x as much as I did, with the same monthly costs, I would be in a ridiculously better place financially. I would have a decent amount of savings and could eventually have enough for a mortgage down payment. I could even have a good set of investments that would further contribute to my income. There would be no excuse to still be struggling, hence my hostility. Not saying to not eat the rich, also not saying our system isn’t fundamentally fucked and that our current and future generations might not ever be homeowners, but I feel my original point still stands.
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.
Yes the economic rigging is the billionaire class. But at 150k assuming. Single and not joint income, this is interesting. At that point you are 78th percentile of income. How is the top 25 percentile not able to cover expenses? I think that is a question worth asking.
Also read the article. It talks about paycheck to paycheck as not being able to cover full credit card expenses monthly.
I think a more apt question is: what is it about our economic system that creates a situation where the people in the top 25 percentile of earners are incapable of supporting themselves financially?
That said, with a few lifestyle changes, I believe someone making $150k per year could make it work in most, if not all, major US cities. It might be a small one bedroom apartment, and you might need to walk or take a subway to work, but it can probably be done.
I think a lot of people who grew up in the 90s and early 00s working class kind of saw $100k/year something to aspire to (at least where I grew up). Like, if you could make that much, then that would mean you’d be more than set. These days, not so much. It’s hard (for me at least) to remember sometimes that it’s really not that much money anymore.
I think a lot of people who grew up in the 90s and early 00s working class kind of saw $100k/year something to aspire to
Oh absolutely. Looking at median home prices by state and even then choosing a lowball estimate for a mortgage ($275k, 0 down) at today’s rates (7-8%) you’re looking at nearly a $3k/mo house payment. So, like 30-40% of your income. This doesn’t include taxes/insurance, so that $3k is probably $3500 being again extremely generous, so that’s just about half of your income. And that’s for a house with no heat, water, electric…
I have a family of 6-8, and make just over this amount between our incomes, and it’s tricky. Absolutely wouldn’t be possible for us if we hadn’t bought our home 6-8 years ago.
Exactly. People need to remember that $100k in 2023 is different than $100k in 2003.
They don’t realize that they’re falling right into the trap of class infighting. You can absolutely make $150k and still be a “working class family” in certain areas of the US in 2023. These aren’t the people we should be focusing on.
I mean by all standards they should be completely fine.
I make less than $30k/year and make it work without credit. I honestly want to see their bills and what their living situation looks like because if you can’t manage $150k/year comfortably you’re definitely doing something wrong.
I make a lot less than $150k in CAD and live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and I’m doing fine. But yeah obviously billionaires are the problem.
I mean by all standards they should be completely fine.
I read it as whether it’s fine (moral) that they make that much money, not whether they could live off it. Else, what context for billionaires being mentioned?
I’m a software developer, a couple years outta college. My girlfriend and I are living together, and make about $120k/yr combined. We have no problem, I save a lot of my income and still have a bunch left over for hobbies. She has maybe a couple grand in student debt left and I’ve never been in debt in my life. I’d be willing to bet that a large portion of the issue is car payments and payments on a house that’s fancier than they need.
It’s also wild that roughly the same percentage (36%) of people making $50k-$150k are also living paycheck to paycheck. Live within you means. It isn’t hard.
Now live in San Francisco, have 2 kids and a house.
Probably not even possible on 120k
Edit: im not in San Francisco, but I don’t think you could own where i am with a dual income of 120k and have a place that would work for 2 kids. At least moving here today. 5-10 years ago it’d work no problem. Cheapest 3 bedroom condo is 525k with $620 monthly fees, but almost all of them are 700k+ (in CAD)
If I had kids, I wouldn’t live there. If I lived there I wouldn’t have kids until I was able to move.
It obviously isn’t as simple as that, and it’s a personal choice, but that’s how I see it. Kids isn’t just an emotional choice, you’ve gotta be able to raise them within your means.
Where I live, we could own a house and have a couple kids, but it makes more sense to rent right now. Where we currently live, we could have a couple kids, and they’d each have their own room, but it’d be a bit tight.
That’s part of the problem though. We should all be able to have a house and kids. Those are not luxuries. The fact that you’re arguing that income is fine if you forego those means the corporations and billionaires have successfully convinced you to fight against your own class and self interests.
I’m not arguing that it isn’t bullshit, I’m just arguing that it’s possible, considering the situation. Just because it’s bullshit that I can’t afford kids doesn’t mean I’m going to accumulate credit debt by having kids.
I don’t disagree, but $150k is just not that much money any more for a household. My wife and I make probably around $110 or so. I got lucky and bought a house 6-8 years ago (I’d never be able to afford interest rates or what that house appraises at now) we have a couple of <$20k used cars with good rates, and a household of 6-8 depending on which of my kid’s friends basically live with us this week.
if I were buying my house today, we’d need to make much closer to the 150 just to maintain our current middle class lifestyle, and trust me, it’s not like we’re eating steak every night (or probably even every month.) I mean, sure, there are things we can do to make that money go further, and we will likely have to do as my kids get older/more expensive.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
You seem to think that the only way for people with children to to be poor is if they are poor and have children. You know you can have children, loose your job, and become poor, right? I’m telling you, you are out of touch and that is clearly evident in you’re inability to come up with non circumstancial examples.
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.
In my experience, bad parents are those that think people act with a single motive - they tend to label kids as manipulative. People can have kids for a selfish reason and still put their interests first.
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.
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.
Look, I’m not arguing that restricting access to abortions is stupid. Of course it is.
But having children in our day and age is of course a choice. There are countless contraceptives available and what you mention are merely edge cases that are not responsible for people not being able to make a living because they pop out children non-stop.
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.
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 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.
San Francisco, CA The cost of living in San Francisco is the highest in the country. Jobs in the City by the Bay pay well, with average annual incomes of over $100,000. In 2019, the city had an unemployment rate as low as 1.8%. But a good chunk of each check goes toward the nation’s highest housing costs. As of January 2020, the average rent for an apartment in San Francisco was $3,700, and the median home purchase price was $1.35 million. Prices are sky-high because of limited housing stock and lack of new construction.
If you are making $100k and renting at the average rental price of $3,700, in one year the cost your housing is $44,400 which is almost 45% of your income. The goal is to spend 30% of your income on housing. If people with would be normally considered to have a good income are struggling then the poor are completely fucked.
There is a small group of people who are making money off this system and ain’t us.
San Francisco, CA The cost of living in San Francisco is the highest in the country. Jobs in the City by the Bay pay well, with average annual incomes of over $100,000
Now imagine one just doesn’t choose to live in the literal most expensive place on the planet.
FWIW the only people benefiting from this shitty exclusionary zoning are the boomers who rigged the zoning so they stay rich forever. It’s entirely a localized problem.
Now imagine one just doesn’t choose to live in the literal most expensive place on the planet.
Because the jobs I want to work will relocate to the midwest to help me cover rent. /s
And before you tell me to take a less-fancy job, some of the problems a person might want to solve are far more interesting and rewarding than the kinds of “tech” jobs available in a place like Austin, TX. No comparison at all. People don’t work hard to do things that don’t interest them.
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.
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.
This is a completely unfair assessment. I make way less than that, and this is what results they get? Either they didn’t try hard enough with more taking the test, or they are THAT financially tone deaf. Soo stupid
Try living in a high CoL area on 150k. Don’t bother with the “just move” or whatever trite oversimplified solution. People live where they live. Not everyone wants to earn 75k and live in Ardmore, Oklahoma so that their money goes further. If you can find a 75k job in Ardmore, anyway.
Higher taxes, higher mortgage or rent costs, cost of commuting all add up fast.
That said, burning through $150k does seem a stretch. I lived in a major metro area on a lot less (we were definitely poor), it is possible to keep expenses low, but it sure isn’t comfortable at all.
I don’t understand your point? The article and the survey found a 3rd of people earning over $150k were living pay cheque to pay cheque, but also 36% in the bracket below and over 55% of people on $50k or less.
Living pay cheque to pay cheque is a sign of financial distress but not the only sign. People’s living costs also match their lifestyles - it’s possible for someone earning $150k to be living pay cheque to pay cheque as the cost of living, schools, transport, etc are higher. Of course people in that bracket have the “luxury” of being able to move down the quality of life ladder - move to a cheaper area, cut back on their lifestyle.
Whatever you may think about people earning that much, the message is that the cost of living crisis is affecting everyone and pulling down living standards for everyone. Not only is it hard to live your previous lifestyle but it’s impossible to aspire for more.
The only exception is the millionaires and billionaires who continue to screw the rest of us over. We have more in common with someone who earns $150k a year than someone who earns $500k or who is sitting on millions or billions in asset wealth.
The sooner the middle classes realise they’re aligned with the poor and not the rich, the better. Maybe then they will stop voting for shit right wing politicians who only benefit the truly rich.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A lot of people like not commuting several hours a day, or having access to actual culture, or not being constantly robbed by meth heads, or not being murdered because of their Identity, or about a million other things that are difficult to impossible outside of cities…
But fuck all the queer and trans people who escaped to the safety of cities. If they can’t afford t, they shouldn’t be there, right? /s
We have to create that culture. You’re not alone. That’s the world that most people want to live in. The more we talk to each other and the more we’re able to connect, the more we can work together to make that happen.
There’s obviously enough for everyone, but we choose to pretend there isn’t. We choose to pretend that the people who artificially restrict access to things people need to survive are ligitmiate and have the right to restrict access to food and housing. We pretend the people who enact that violence on behalf of these borders are heros. We pretend the imaginary rules they enforce on us have power. We pretend paper and imaginary numbers should dictate who lives, who dies, and who has the right to dictate the actions of others.
We’re playing a game together with made up rules. We pretend that there isn’t enough so that people who have too much can take even more from people who don’t. This is a stupid game that we should stop playing. Just by being aware of this, we can start to change the rules.
Good for you. I bet you have to drive everywhere and you don’t even realize that the cost of the infrastructure to make your life convient is bankrupting your closest city.
Look, I’m glad you’re advocating for good things. People need to be doing that. I’m done with the US and I really have no hope for it so it really doesn’t matter anymore to me either way. I’m lucky enough that I never have to come back.
It fucking sucks getting gentrified out of places you lived when you’re making over $100k, and its absolutely absurd. I live in the Netherlands now. Because there’s a functional tax system my neighbors are bike mechanics and students, instead of literally everyone either being a boomer who bought their house in the 80’s or a tech bro on a single income. People should be able to live in cities, and cities should be high density. If people say they’re struggling on $150k/y then believe that what they’re saying is real, because it is. If people are struggling on $150k/y then theres a huge problem. But you know what’s nice? It’s not my problem anymore.
I really hope your volunteering works out because it’s needed.
How were you able to move there? On paper I’m absolutely worthless… I’m stuck in a place I can’t afford to stay in, but too poor/undesirable to be welcomed into another country.
I’m really privileged and I sacrificed a lot. It’s not an option for most people and if I didn’t work for a big evil company I probably couldn’t do it. They paid for most of it and organized a lot of it, but it was still a ton of work that we couldn’t have done without a bunch of help from our family. Also being fueled by pure terror helped.
As much as I say I don’t care, I have so many friends who couldn’t do the same thing and are stuck like you. If I thought I could help by staying, I probably would have. I thought about leaving when Trump got elected, but decided to stay and try to make things better. Then I got shot by a Trump supporter. So this time my family and I figured out an exit plan and left. Well… My partner and kids got out, but everyone else is still in the US.
Everyone should have the opportunity to live in a place that makes sense. I wish I could make the US a place with living in. I wish that borders didn’t exist.
But if you want to escape to Europe, you want to figure out how to get citizenship in a place in the Schengen zone. The easiest to get in to legally are Spain and Portugal, which are a lot cheaper. It’s also easier and cheaper to move if you’re not taking anything and not supporting any kids or a partner.
I appreciate your abrupt change in tone and your effort to engage with me as a person. I feel like we share many of the same goals and ideals, and are not as far apart as pithy comments may make us seem.
I hope the Netherlands is as kickass as I’ve heard it is from friends
Hi, this is pretty much me, and I concur. If you can’t live on $150k then you are definitely making some questionable decisions. That’s around $8k/m take home. Even if you are spending $4k on rent/mortgage, you should have plenty left over to live on.
Yeah, if you’re a single man who doesn’t have anyone to take care of and has no physical or mental health problems $150k is great. If you’re part of a house with two incomes you’re probably OK. If you’re on a single incoming supporting parents with disabilities, kids, partners with disabilities, or any combination of similar things, you can maybe get by on $150k as long as you never fuck up and everything goes perfectly in your life and you don’t care about or try to help anyone else.
Edit: and I say man, because men are less likely to take on caregiver roles that cost large amounts of money.
My wife is disabled FYI. I get what you are saying, but there is still a good amount of wiggle room in our budget. I also still don’t really like the idea of lumping kids, which are a choice with a very clear financial impact, in the same category as dealing with illness and disability. That doesn’t seem to be a good faith argument.
A society where having kids is an unsustainable financial decision is a society that can’t continue to exist, and a society where caregiving for someone with a disability or having one yourself makes life impossible is also a society that can’t continue to exist.
There are also a ton of other factors that can easily push someone over the edge. “We have lots of wiggle room” is great for you but lots of people don’t… And even if someone did make a mistake, why should some small mistake put someone in inescapable debt?
I just think the idea that $150k is fine and everyone who can’t make it is an idiot isn’t taking in to account the obvious data that shows the opposite.
It does always strike me as ridiculous when we live in a world where continuing the existence of the human race is considered bad financial planning. No wonder birth rates are declining massively when the incentives are all on personal productivity and streamlining your life rather than having/raising a family. I don’t plan to have children for a number of reasons, but the fact that society is filled with active disincentives certainly doesn’t help persuade me otherwise.
Yeah, if you’re a single man who doesn’t have anyone to take care of and has no physical or mental health problems $150k is great. If you’re part of a house with two incomes you’re probably OK
Why would it matter how many people it takes to make the 150k?
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
That’s exactly how it works. Why do you think it’s more expensive to live in major cities than outside of them? Supply and demand. There’s more demand and less supply. Why is there more demand? Because more people would prefer to live there.
Why should we invest in major cities that have already reached diminishing returns on their investments instead of spreading out to make more places attractive to more people? Entitlement. Life outside of major cities isn’t good enough for some, and they think people living in major cities should get more before everyone else who has less.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’ve would’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
$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 $500k.
My career now is generally a higher valued one than theirs, but adjusting for inflation, my pay has always been lower than theirs at the same point in their careers. And that’s the story. Incomes may have doubled since the early-mid 90s, but everything else has tripled or quadrupled.
150k for me would be a dream right now. I have a dog, a gf, and I rent. But if you’re making 150k and you have two kids and a spouse for example, suddenly that 150k doesn’t go very far at all.
Yep, my mother used to manage pays for engineers making up to 300k and for some of them it was a disaster if a mistake lead to 200$ being missing from their cheque and they would be in her office first thing in the morning in full panic mode…
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.
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.
I’m somehow sure that plenty of people were still buying houses when rates went up. Once again, people blaming choices and circumstances. It feels eerily similar to how people judge the homeless and talk about their “bad choices.”
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’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
My family is very similar. We aren’t quite paycheck to paycheck, but things feel a lot tighter than they did before - we make 190 ish combined, which ends up being about 9k a month. We have one paid off car.
Mortgage - $2500 Utilities - $800 (electric, water, plain Internet and mnvo cell phone plan) Daughter’s school - $1200/mo (obv this is a “non essential”, but it’s pretty cheap for a year round private school) Prescriptions - $1200/mo with insurance (although this usually comes in a single lump in January. Insurance also refuses to cover a few essentials which we pay out of pocket for, about $100/mo) Student loans - $800/mo
Which leaves us with around $2500/mo for entertainment, car/house repair (it’s 40 years old and needs new things like a roof or hot water heater from time to time), groceries, any vacations, etc. My wife and I both have chronic conditions which are exhausting to deal with so we get house cleaning for $300/mo as well.
We are doing fine, but it seems like an exhausting cycle to try and build savings, and if we ever had to buy another car I don’t know how we would swing an extra $500 payment every month, with what it seems vehicles cost these days.
All this to say, while we are ok, I have no idea how families making under 100k get by.
Sure, for school age kids like my daughter that is true, but I will push back that toddler and infant childcare is, on average, extremely expensive.
If you don’t have a grandparent or other relative to watch your kid, in a state like North Carolina you will be forking out around $800-900 a month per kid on average.
Which is why publicly funded options for preschool would be life-changing for so many people, especially single mothers and fathers.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
But it would affect you, just longer-term than shorter-term. You don’t know what things will be like when you’re old, which is why most people who can do put the max amount in their IRAs, 401Ks, and HSAs. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people or misspending their money or not living paycheck-to-paycheck.
If you suffer in your old age because you had to cut back on retirement, that’s a huge impact on your life. It’s way easier to live paycheck-to-paycheck when you still can work than it is when you literally cannot and are relying on Society Security or retirement investments. I think that matters.
I’m poor as fuck, but I don’t feel like I need to judge people who barely make more money than me in the context of fucking billionaires.
Also, do you have kids, because that’s a huge impact on the bottom-line of people who make a decent salary.
Well your certainly buried your point at the end of your tirade. Sounds like you just want to argue with people on the internet that making 150k isn’t a livable salary for a person in this day and age. There’s a lot of nuance and factors to consider. Like children and life situations. People making 50k also have to deal with those same issues - and it sounds like you’re one of them. I feel bad for anyone living paycheck to paycheck because of their circumstances but at the end of the day this is life under modern capitalism.
I feel bad for anyone living paycheck to paycheck because of their circumstances but at the end of the day this is life under modern capitalism.
So have some class solidarity for fucks sake then. If you think people making $150k are the people who are the problem in this society, I think you’re the one wildly out of touch.
The average CEO salary in the US is $832,576 right now, and they don’t actually fucking work.
I don’t think $150k wage people are the problem at all and never said that. Overpaid CEOs and corporations are wildly disgusting and the root of a lot our problems so I guess I’m not sure what we’re arguing about.
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