If only the FED actually measured this in inflation numbers.
too lazy to go around the paywall, but I also wondered how inflation factors into this. seems normal that "a record number of six figure earners" would rent
$100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
31–40 of 321 posts
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#32There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
Small town America will have $500 / month for a 2-bedroom apartment, while paying medical-doctors $200k+ / year. But you may be the only doctor around for 10s of miles. Which is why you'd be so valuable. I'm sure there are other $100k to $200k jobs that small towns need. No, you won't get high-tech or programming in small-town America. But there's more to life than just the tech-field. Its easy to forget because we'r…
the sweet spot in terms of arbitrage right now is: find full time employment at a high earning job in a major metro area, move far enough from that metro area to work remote while being able to come into the office a handful of times per month.
A three hour commute is easier when you only do it twice a week, or a few times a month.
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#33I'm in a mini-retirement right now and living in SF. It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California. As a single person I can very comfortably live off $40k/year in investment income and pay no taxes right now.
>It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California.
Not if you're a contractor without a full-time employer. In college I did freelance work, and I lost nearly 30% to taxes despite making less than $5k a year from my work. Having your social security responsibility doubled is brutal.
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#34I'm behind a paywall, so I'm sure they pick up on this, but the biggest problem I ran into when I thought I could afford a house was the down payment. You can make $100k (or less!) and quite easily afford a monthly mortgage payment, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have enough saved up for a down payment.
Exactly this. Who can manage to save up 20k when they've got massive student loan bills from the education that got them that $100k+ job in the first place?
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#35There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
1) Take this list of metropolitan areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...
2) Remove most of the coastal cities (SF, NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland, etc. etc.)
3) End up with a list of metros with decent paying jobs and not exorbitantly expensive housing
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#36There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
Small town America will have $500 / month for a 2-bedroom apartment, while paying medical-doctors $200k+ / year. But you may be the only doctor around for 10s of miles. Which is why you'd be so valuable. I'm sure there are other $100k to $200k jobs that small towns need. No, you won't get high-tech or programming in small-town America. But there's more to life than just the tech-field. Its easy to forget because we'r…
Even in small towns $500 won’t get you much. A small, old, place in a marginal part of town.
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#37I'm in a mini-retirement right now and living in SF. It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California. As a single person I can very comfortably live off $40k/year in investment income and pay no taxes right now.
>It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California. Not if you're a contractor without a full-time employer. In college I did freelance work, and I lost nearly 30% to taxes despite making less than $5k a year from my work. Having your social security responsibility doubled is brutal.
I'm not familiar with how freelancing income is different than other forms of income...isn't that just a regular 1099? Are you saying you didn't receive a tax refund during tax season?
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rural folk don't understand that even if you're making 100k in the big city, a lot of that is eaten up by housing costs. The fantasy of what people who don't earn 100k think 100k buys you is very different from the reality of what lifestyle 100k affords.
Median household income in NYC is $57,782. (Individual is $50,825.) And yeah, NYC is a huge, diverse city but even Manhattan's median income is $79,781 in 2017. (Corrected figure)
Hence Scott Sumner's headline a while ago, "The Typical Rich Family Is A Cop Married To A Nurse".
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/the-typical-rich-family-is-...
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
100k is not enough for your typical American dream, which a _lot_ of people feel entitled to
What is the typical american dream and why is there a typical version and an atypical version?
Asking what the typical american dream is a bit hyperbolic, no?
For the same reason we seem to be worried about vaping but also want to make sure children get their puberty blockers and can chop off their penises before they could legally have sex or consume a beer.
For the same reason why being a stay at home mother is similar to slavery, but wasting your life away at some joke of an HR job while you're just a slave to your boss is empowering.
For the same reason new companies who are supposed to be taken seriously play video of a shooting range in Kentucky and try to make the public think that it is a foreign country where our stinky old racist president is allowing untold slaughter to take place.
For the same reason the guy who won and aware with Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali is supposed to be the biggest racist of them all while he tells his supporters, who are also the most racist people to have ever lived, that he would like record immigration if done legally.
Re: $100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home
#40There's very few places where there is an overlap of "jobs that pay $100k" and "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary".
Remote work is becoming more "real" by the day, so it's certainly possible in the age of the internet to work remotely in a low cost location while making a salary competitive with a higher cost of living city like SF/NY/LA.
Oh I totally agree. I'm doing this very thing: SF salary, live in Western MI.
But that's really only available for a small subset of the population.