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Living on $100k a Year

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Re: Living on $100k a Year

#31

Post by tedivm »

mberning wrote: post #6

I really cannot sympathize. My father raised a family of 6 making ~$30k/yr at his peak. Yes we struggled at times. Public school. Knock off sneakers. Cheap cost cutter food and small simple meals. Crap car. Etc. When I started working in software I made way more money right out of school than my family ever made. And I developed a lot of bad spending habits as a result. After a few years I got my head on straight. Pa…

Three out of the four "people" on this list are actually families, not individuals. So that $100k isn't going towards a single person- it's going to anywhere between three to five people. At least one of them mentioned having medical debt. That is a rather huge difference than what you describe for your life.

The other person is making $100k in a very high cost of living area. He's living as you do- frugal, paying down debt, and living within his means. He does raise a good point though- $100k does not feel like the fortune and there is still quite a bit of inequity.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#32

Post by arca_vorago »

mberning wrote: post #6

I really cannot sympathize. My father raised a family of 6 making ~$30k/yr at his peak. Yes we struggled at times. Public school. Knock off sneakers. Cheap cost cutter food and small simple meals. Crap car. Etc. When I started working in software I made way more money right out of school than my family ever made. And I developed a lot of bad spending habits as a result. After a few years I got my head on straight. Pa…

How long ago was that? What kind of cost of living area? You really can't take a number and use it to judge someone without taking into account so many variables. 40k in Texas would be about 80 in Cali. Due to inflation and other things that eat away at purchasing power that's much harder to raise a family or even oneself up on. Gone are the days of one person working and supporting an entire family like most baby boomers seem to still think is possible.

Of course the billionaires like it this way. They are destroying the middle class, but they keep the fighting at the lower ranks.

It's not the 1% that are the problem, it's the .01%.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#33

Post by shas3 »

mberning wrote: post #6

I really cannot sympathize. My father raised a family of 6 making ~$30k/yr at his peak. Yes we struggled at times. Public school. Knock off sneakers. Cheap cost cutter food and small simple meals. Crap car. Etc. When I started working in software I made way more money right out of school than my family ever made. And I developed a lot of bad spending habits as a result. After a few years I got my head on straight. Pa…

You’ll be downvoted for preaching frugality because many coastal-city HN software folk making six figure salaries are probably inimical to frugality: buying 3000 dollar bikes, luxury cars, eating at fancy restaurants, etc. in very anti-fragile way without saving with substantial cushion for rare adverse events.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#34

Post by pageald »

This is ridiculous. It's one thing to claim that 100k is "not enough" if you live in a high cost of living (which is still dubious, considering the median income in NYC is half of that.) If that's not enough for you in Kansas, the fact is that you're living far beyond your means.

I think it's telling that one family cited credit card debt like it's an act of nature instead of a conscious choice. And just because you qualify for a million dollar mortgage doesn't mean you should get one. Spend that big salary on a home near your workplace and sell the $40,000 SUV.

The sooner we wake up from the "dream" of being deep underwater in debt to fund an ecologically and economically unsustainable lifestyle, all the while just a paycheck or two away from complete ruin, the better off we'll be.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#35

Post by epmaybe »

mberning wrote: post #6

I really cannot sympathize. My father raised a family of 6 making ~$30k/yr at his peak. Yes we struggled at times. Public school. Knock off sneakers. Cheap cost cutter food and small simple meals. Crap car. Etc. When I started working in software I made way more money right out of school than my family ever made. And I developed a lot of bad spending habits as a result. After a few years I got my head on straight. Pa…

So to summarize you're basically saying to live within your means.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#36

Post by tedivm »

mberning wrote: post #18
pishpash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he did that then he had government support out the wazoo and free meals in the school as a child and all sorts of benefits.

Yes we were on food stamps and WIC for several years when my two youngest siblings were born. Never on welfare. We got reduced lunch at school. It was about $0.50 if I remember correctly. What’s the point though? If anything there are more benefit programs today than were available then. At $100k/yr you really should not be eligible for much benefit when you consider how much better you are doing than average.

Food stamps and WIC are welfare. What exactly do you think welfare is?

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#37

Post by Consultant32452 »

d4mi3n wrote: post #3

> "And now I'm one of those coastal elites, a term, you know, that people in Middle America use. And it feels like betrayal," he says. "But what I've learned in moving to the coast is there's real inequality. And the biggest driver of that inequality is the tax code. The biggest social welfare has been to the rich and powerful, giving them loopholes and abilities to keep money from the government and keep money from…

>Is there anything that can be done to improve the situation?

Yes, but it's all the things that "coastal elites" don't want to hear. The first two topics of conversation would likely be about trade and immigration policy. But it's hard to talk about either without being shouted down as xenophobic or racist. It's worth noting that Obama ran on a platform to renegotiate NAFTA during his first primary.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#38

Post by njarboe »

The article would become useful with the addition of the budgets of each of the people/families. Without that it is hard to understand the individual problems, besides some generic platitudes. That is if one would want to find a way to succeed on 100k/yr and not just voice one's current issues.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#39

Post by taurath »

nprisntthebest wrote: post #10

It would have been nice if they included anything about family size and details besides “kids”, budget, lifestyle, etc.

It’s kind of inconceivable that a family in Kansas City making 100k a year can’t afford more than one car. The article is super light on details. Do they have a super expensive house? Student loan payments?

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#40

Post by rayiner »

Recently, the news media seems to have developed a weird fetish for the petit bourgeoisie. The U.S. is highly atypical in how we treat the upper middle class.

In Germany, for example, a two-income couple making 84,000 Euro ($100,000) in Bavaria nets 57% of their income: https://www.icalculator.info/germany.html. In Maryland, a relatively high-tax state, they net 76% of their income. And that doesn't adjust for the additional upper middle class tax benefits like the mortgage interest deduction, which don't exist in Germany, which would take the net income over 80% on a typical house.

A couple earning 840,000 Euro ($1 million), in contrast, net 55% of their income, barely different from the previous example. In Maryland, they net 54%, less than in Germany! In contrast, actual corporate tax rates in Germany are about 15.5%, versus 18.5% in the U.S. (and Germany is quite high compared to say Canada, at 8.5% or France, at 11.2%).

I live on the east coast, but about an hour east of D.C. Around here, you can live very comfortably on $100,000/year. Certainly, more comfortably (at least, materially) than you typical middle class German family. The only reason the situation gets worse as you get closer to D.C. is expensive housing and worse schools, which are problems that are entirely inflicted by the middle class on itself (through anti-development and pro-segregation policies).

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