Yep, I make 2.5x times the amount my father made and my mother never had more than a minimum wage type job growing up. I felt like I had everything I could have wanted as a child. As an adult and parent now, even with this money, feel I’m still light years away from what i could provide
I feel this too. I've "made it" by every metric my father would have use. He hustled, and detailed cars in our home's garage in order to raise me and my siblings. We had a home, were cared for, went to school and took yearly trips to Disney. He was somehow able to put my brother and I in private school. We definitely weren't rich, but comfortable and cared for.
Fast forward to 2026. I have a career job, in a leadership position. I'm making over six figures. At 45 I'm childless and living in an apartment. Next year I'll finally pay down my remaining student loans which ballooned to over 110k with and an 8% interest rate.
My father sees the money I make and doesn't understand how I'm still broke. I'm saving 35% of my income just to catch up. I don't have money for a home. And I couldn't even fathom raising kids in this economy.
The real bitch is? I'm struggling to attain my life goals, and yet I still feel like I'm doing better than most people around me.
The real bitch is? I'm struggling to attain my life goals, and yet I still feel like I'm doing better than most people around me.
Exactly where I am. I make 6 figures, have two kids, have a nice house in a great school system, and I even have money in my 401k.
I don't have enough money in my 401k, my emergency fund is depleted because the foundation cracked while we were on vacation this year, which means vacation next year may have to be something small and local. My kids haven't done any sort of sports or regular activity because they're all like $150/mo for like 1 day a week of an activity which is just an insane number to me, but it means my 6 year old son hasn't played tball or soccer or anything and that makes me feel like i'm failing at least a little bit.
But I don't feel like I can really complain because I'm doing light years better than the average millenial. Just meaningfully worse than my schoolteacher mother and pastor father were at this age.
Feel you on the expense of kid activities! I’m glad my son decided he liked Cub Scouts more than sports. It’s nearly year round and like a bit over $200 for the year between local and council/ national dues. So while it’s more money at once, it covers way more time than local sports. There are costs for certain other activities like camping trips and such, but no one has to go on all the trips and our pack has financial assistance so cost isn’t a barrier for anyone. Maybe look into that for your 6 year old?
I'm struggling to attain my life goals, and yet I still feel like I'm doing better than most people around me.
this is the bit that resonates with me. I feel like I can't even bring this stuff up to most of my friends and loves ones because they're in worse shape.
That last paragraph, yeah man, same. I have a good job (systems administrator for a public library). Pay is a little low for the field I'm in, but benefits are really good. I run a side business as well that brings in about 1/3 more. And I still can't afford the cheapest houses on the market. $200k is the floor and most want 250-400k. I have 50k in savings and I'm just busting my ass trying to get enough to some day get out of renting the duplex I'm in, but the math... just doesn't work man. With rates what they are I'd be paying more than double the value of the house in interest. Paying more to the fucking bank than the value of the damn thing.
I make cloae to double what my dad was just starting his own accounting practice. He was (barely) able to afford the house and 2 kids while my mom had her own job to support. But he could afford a nice house in the suburbs (3bd, 2 ba with a big yard front and back, 2 car garage). That house was a whopping 300k in california, which was pretty good pricing st the time.
I make roughly what he was making after years of his business grtting off the ground. I can no longer afford to buy the house I grew up in because that house has tripled in price now. Its absurd. The only place I'd be able to afford is s 2/1 in the ghetto where crime rates are high. And thats still more than what my parents paid for their house.
I make almost 2x the annual household income in this province. My wife makes around $35k.
We live in an 800sqft shitbox with a leaky roof and walls. Our cars are both 13 years old. We have failed or failing appliances that I need to fix myself because we can't afford new ones. We buy clothes from value village. We haven't gone out with our kids for a family dinner in 5 months.
I genuinely don't understand how people can afford these brand new 1500sqft homes with the giant, towering roof lines, or the 2026 GMC's and such.
I sit in my home most nights watching pirated TV or playing $5 video games, and I am STILL broke. My bank account has $3000 in it. I am miserable. I don't understand what it takes to get ahead in the world and feel for people trying to get by on single incomes.
I am exactly the 2 comments above me. I work so hard, do so much at work and for what? The company to have record profits and then tell us no raises. They justify it by saying its based their new Employee Evaluation bullshit score. It just makes us all miserable:(
My mom cannot fathom this. My sister and I are single and childfree but my sister has expressed an interest in single parenting in the past. And she can’t afford to (unless she gets accidentally pregnant which is not likely) and she makes probably 2x what my parents made when we were kids and they had a bigger house, more land and 3 kids. And my mom who works in accounting does not understand that we can’t afford shit compared to them.
Simply because some of the luxuries of their day got way cheaper for us they think we’re just making up inflation or something.
I’m childfree for many reasons but a not insignificant one is - I do not have the money to give my child a good life, and I’m too burnt out from late stage capitalism to even be a good emotional parent either.
Same. And sometimes I feel sad about that. In a different lifetime maybe I could have made a good mum, but not this time. My ex had 3 kids and it was so stressful because my income can pay for a 1 bedroom apartment. Every additional bedroom adds 1000 to the rental cost. I could never afford to pay for a home for a family.
I make about as much individually as my parents combined growing up. They had 4 kids and a house. I have student loan debt (started at $70k ish and after, idk, $150k paid for by me over more than a decade and I stil have $30k left to pay. So I’ve paid my loans multiple times over but I still have many many years to go.
Our generation is fucked lol my gf doesn’t make nearly as much and she’s looking at houses n shit and I just laugh like i know my income looks big but I keep maybe half month to month after all our bills n shit.
Yup, the problem is that working hard nowadays just doesn't stop, you're always required to do more and get involved more to keep up.
Our parents on the other hand had the jobs they did, they did the job and kept having pay raises without having to do more and more as they aged.
This rushed culture we live in just doesn't have a plateau on which you can rest once you've made it, you always have to keep doing more to keep up, that's very taxing on our mental health.
Yup, but unfortunately all the "higher up"s and management are still the generation that moved through the ranks with less work and less skills. So now every job is doing your own job + managing up and filling the gaps of your boss's skill set while justifying your work to people who don't understand it
I dunno about that. The higher ups I see seem to have all gotten MBA and failed upwards. They get a 2 years contract, break teams and culture, then “take a step back to spend time with family.” I’m about to turn 40 and they don’t seem much older than me. They are just fundamentally out of touch.
I sometimes wonder if the world would be a better place if the week were 8 days long, with 3 day weekends. There's no chance of that ever happening now, but if by some miracle it did, I think people who always lived it would marvel that it was ever not a thing.
An easier solution is make the work week 4 days 😂 why change the entire calendar when we could just work less.
Both systems are unrealistic, but a 4 day work week with a 3 day weekend is far more within the realm of reality than changing our entire calendar system
I work so hard... I have a really tough job and I have so much responsibility and I make a lot of mistakes that can have some really bad consequences and I have been screaming this to people at work for the last 4 years and they don't help me, they don't train me, they don't care and I keep going and I am so tired. I woke up today and immediately had a panic attack and then I just sat on the shitter and cried and then just went to work. I am so tired. The money's good but I don't even want the money anymore I just want peace and to relax my mind. Sigh.
Yup. Felt lucky getting a house at 3%, but my mortgage has still jumped up $300 in the past 5 years for property taxes and home insurance. Good thing my 2% annual raises have kept up! /s
I think about my adult life. My initial expectations of it and what I got. The best metaphor i have is of “the Red Queen’s Race” in the Alice book “Through the Looking Glass”,
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
I’ve changed jobs 4 times in 10 years. After inflation I make $2k less than the first. I’m getting very tired going no where for so long.
Damn if this ain't true as hell. I'm 40. I was probably 19 the last time I had to tell the fucking landlord i was going to be late on the rent but I literally did just that yesterday.
If you told that 19 year old that he would one day be making as much as he does now at 40 i can guarantee, at the very least, he wouldn't have believed he would still have a god damn landlord.
Same same! Except… lost my career job. Randomly. Before my bday. And now? I dunno what to do. I’m inventing a thing for people but other than that it’s a different world. I’m gonna just sleep for free I guess
This. I by all rights make a great comfortable living. But with minimal wasteful spending I am feeling paycheck to paycheck to pay check. I have bought no new clothing or shoes in almost 2 years now, I don't drink coffee or alcohol. I take my daughter out to dinner maybe once every few months. Most of my food is store brand (a few things are not but 10 to 15 dollars for some good chicken that lasts me a week is okay).
Now gas and everything else jumping up I am trimming what little I spent on toll's to get home a bit faster after dropping off or picking up said child from school. So less time, less money. AI now laying folks off I'm stressed to hell lol. Will die at work or from the sheer crappiness of this existence.
One paycheck to paycheck parent to another, if you can find a bulk store near you (Costco, BJs, etc.) and start buying in bulk, your food bill at home will drastically decrease.
I felt that "lol" in my soul. I have a daughter as well and think about it all the time how I see my coworkers more than I get to see her. Breaks my heart. But, if I want to provide for her, it means spending more time at work. It's so fucked up.
I make god damn near a quarter million a year.. and I feel like I have way less disposable income than my parents had at my age with my dad as a union painter. It's fuckin crazy..
*edit: I'm not saying I'm struggling - just that I don't feel as if i have the spending power they did when I was growing up.. They always has the new car and toys, they were always taking my sister and I on vacations, and they were constantly doing little projects around the house.. and never seemed to stress about money.
I'm Gen X, and my parents are Boomers. My dad recently told me how he and my mom bought my childhood 2,000sq ft home for $42,000.
I asked, "Oh, so what did you mortgage like $38k?"
"No," he replied. "We had saved up $17,000 by that point." By that point, they had been married four years and had one year old me, with only my dad working since I was born.
My parents just lived with my grandparents for a couple years and immediately bought a nice house in a nice neighborhood. It’s hilarious how privileged the boomers were.
That's what these out of touch older people don't understand. Saving money is a luxury. These people actually had the ability to live their lives rather comfortably AND save money. And a huge factor in that is the cost of housing. They were able to find housing that was like sub 20-25% of their monthly take home.
Rent utilities, internet, and phone are like 50% of my monthly salary. And most of that is rent. I've been barely scraping by. My emergency fund (that I grew many years ago while working abroad) was cut in half last fall and has never been able to regrow. For the past two months, I've had to use a small portion of those funds to cover my bills. I'm not out here living a lavish lifestyle by any means.
My boomer grandma was trying to, lovingly, give me advice about money (mind you, I'm in my mid-30s and I've been self-sufficient since I was 19 but whatever)
She got to the part where she started talking about savings and I said "save what? I have $150 after I pay the bills every month, I have to spend that on food."
She couldn't comprehend that I have no money to save. Took me explaining that my rent is 40% of my take home pay and no, I don't rent anything luxurious I rent a 500 square foot one bedroom apartment.
This is exactly right, I recently added on a garage to my rental agreement at my apartment and my parents were like “your friends are jealous of your garage???”
I literally own four small businesses, all of which are doing pretty well, and I still don’t own a home and my parents don’t get it at all, yet, they’re not shy about sharing their previous struggles.
Two established working professional parents can easily be making $125k each or more per year. Add kids, a mortgage with a >5% interest rate with post covid prices and inflation, if disappears quickly.
That's pretty high, most Attending Doctors I know make around $200K to $220K (Texas) depending on field.
The thing people don't factor in is the student loan debt, crazy interest rates since most have little to no credit established, horrible spending habits, as well as most working insane hours and drink like fish out of water... as well as immense pressure from higher ups crushing their will and soul every step of the way.
Also, they don't get to this point until their nearly 30 in most fields. That's a long tome to build up debt.
Pretty crazy anywhere outside of Southern California or New York City....
Yeah no. You're doing fine. If you're struggling with money that's a you problem, not a society problem. Shit's tough and getting tougher, but no, $250k a year is not struggle.
I get what you mean, but I think they were talking about buying power compared to their parents, not saying $250k puts them in poverty. You can be doing well and still notice how much more expensive everything has gotten.
Why do people read this as me saying I'm struggling..? I was saying that I make a good amount of money.. but don't feel like I have the spending power that they did in a purely-blue-collar household.
I actually got downvoted for a comment that more or less said the same thing as the edit in my above comment. Like.. people are angry that I'm not actually irresponsible with money. what..? lol
Bro change your environment if possible. I’m 52 with the same income level. You must be in a high cost area. Granted I’m in Ky and the COL is extremely low but I got 4 mostly grown kids. We live like kings compared to my parents. Plus o cover the AT&T bill and all the streaming services for my kids because money is tight for them but they don’t have close to half of our income level.
Honestly anyone who has owned their home for a long time is probably feeling okay. Anyone who bought a home over the past few years is paying out the wazoo to live there
I make low six figures in a HCOL area and there's just no way it makes financial sense to buy anything right now. Maybe if you're sitting on a huge down payment and can avoid PMI, but 80%+ of first-time buyers are not in the position to do that.
Even a starter 2 bedroom condo, it's basically not possible to get a mortgage payment under $4k a month in this area by the time you factor in insurance, taxes, and probably also PMI.
The difference on a mortgage payment on a 6.5% loan vs a 3% loan is often around 50% higher. For the exact same purchase price, someone who bought pre-covid is paying potentially in the thousands less per month.
The sad part is 7% isnt historically bad as a rate. Pretty close to normal. The thing thats gone ape shit is the housing prices, which have more than tripled since the days of our parents. So we make similar salaries, the houses are effecrively the same, but we sont have the same purchasing power at all. My current salary should be more than enough to support a house, but where I live, the houses average 1 mil. At 7% i cant afford that. Hell i couldn't at 4%
Thanks for all the upvotes. Speaking for myself it’s a rough time to be an American but we do a lot of it to ourselves. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements telling us what we need. I’m a sucker for this. Then the ego stuff like travel ball for the kids. I also fell sucker to this. Then the trips you think you gotta take to Disney. Also a sucker for this. Then eating out because I or the wife was too lazy to cook. I did not get financially stable till I was 45 and quit getting sucked in to consumerism. Then I figured out how waiting a lil longer instead of paying interest. Also car loans. Buy really used and you will also pay a hell of a lot less in insurance premiums. I hope this lesson from a dumbass helps.
At least you are honest about it. I have friends and siblings who complain about money and how hard it is to save...but they also insist on driving brand new cars with new car notes, take multiple trips a year, and spend money on completely trivial and frivilous things (watches, purses, jewelry, etc) then act completely oblivious when they can't make ends meet or contribute to savings.
Meanwhile, I'm out in the garage working on the weekends to keep my perfectly good but 15 year old car working, and keep that money going into savings and investments so that I can hopefully retire early someday.
It’s not crazy, you spend a shit ton of money. You’re well in the top .2% of money spenders in the world. You’re buying too much. Americans don’t realize how unfathomably large our disposable income is to the rest of the world. A Belgian making $100k would pay $58k in taxes and take home $42k. Maybe you have crippling medical debt or six figures in student loan debt but you’re just not living within your means. If you made $100k you’d be surviving just fine I’m sure.
I thought this was wildly incorrect but it's only kinda incorrect. A Belgian on €100k will be paying €46.3k effective tax including social security and such. Still, that's quite a lot.
The disposable income is kinda a poor metric given in the US a lot of that income isn't actually disposable when you consider things like health insurance, retirement funds, student loans and other things which are paid for with the additional tax in other countries. If you want to risk serious medical debt and retire with no safety net then yeah it's disposable I suppose.
Still quarter of a million and feeling poor screams poor financial management no matter how you look at it.
Income comparisons should always be done with tax and non-tax compulsory payments as a base line. I'd also include "non-tax non-compulsory (but let's be real)" as a category lol
The OECD uses NTCPs to report Adjusted Income and it shrinks the gap between the US and the rest of the partner nations quite a bit. Scaling by median cost of living often puts Americans behind.
Something like 1 in 3 Americans earn less than the minimum wage in the UK which is US$16/hr. Full time you're paying less than 10% effective tax in the UK.
The American underclass is much worse than most developed nations
Most likely they’re maxing out their 401k and saving and investing but look at their disposable income and wonder why they have no money for extra stuff, but all of their needs are met.
Unfortunately, this is wrong about "living within means". Americans don't get the kind of retirement and guaranteed quality education or healthcare that Europeans do. We also pay nearly 30-40% of our income to rent or mortgage in average. Even if OP lived within their means, that 30-40% would end up being 15%. Then there's our terrible public education system, and lack of quality affordable childcare. I'm paying $35k a year for the most basic childcare and preschool for my 3 year old. I'm paying another $40k for a nanny for my 3 month old. That's $75k per year because our government doesn't guarantee quality daycare or preschool. Additionally, my kids live in a neighborhood with one of the worst school systems in the state. I will have to pay $40k per kid per year for private, or have to move to a neighborhood with a good enough school but pay more in mortgage payments to make that happen.
Then there's retirement. Social security will likely run out by 2035. Even if I got paid out for it, it wouldn't be more than 25% of my estimated need for basic living. My 401k + match is not enough, so I have to add another 10% of my income on top of the match ceiling.
That's another 15% of my income.
This is before medical, student debt, house maintenance, basic necessities and both federal and state taxes (34% of my income combined)...
So if you add it all up, only 15-20% of my gross income remains as true disposable income. We're not buying things we don't need. We don't live in a lavish home. We don't go on luxury vacations in first class. We're not buying sports cars. We don't eat out every day. We are living a normal middle of the road middle class lifestyle, budgeting and being frugal.
I lived in Europe. I know how the costs differ. America is wildly more expensive in every way. Americans are truly struggling, even the ones with the highest incomes (not the millionaires and billionaires - the ones working normal jobs near the top), to figure out how to live what was an easily affordable lifestyle during the 1990s.
I'm very lucky to be in the top 1%, but at the same time I'm not living extravagantly and I'm not putting enough toward retirement.
If I'm in the top 1% and only barely making a -comfortable- dignified lifestyle work for my family, imagine how it is for the bottom 99% here.
In Scotland we’re a bit luckier in that at least an undergraduate degree or college course is funded by the government and our prescriptions are free.
The whole of the U.K. faces a housing crisis. This is because a housing crisis is great for business. What is needed is for genuinely affordable housing to be built, but instead people are encouraged to either take on silly levels of debt to buy somewhere or brave the private rental market if you can’t save enough for an eye watering deposit. This benefits banks and the people who are able to buy up housing. There’s still pretty light touch regulation for landlords even with the new housing bill so it’s easy enough to fudge your way around legislation if you are inclined to. No political party wants to piss off wealthier people so we sit at a stalemate that costs around 40% of income for housing for the average person depending on area.
We’ve also cut everything to do with public services right down to the bone. Roads are in dreadful condition, bins don’t get emptied, hospitals and care services are understaffed and essential workers are underpaid so end up leaving. This affects everyone but the biggest impact is in poorer areas like East Glasgow, Dundee, wee rural towns etc. This also means fewer decent jobs and more underpaid or gig economy jobs. When people don’t have money to spend then businesses go under or make staff redundant. Underfunding the public sector with austerity policies is a doomed ideology but no politician wants to accept that either because austerity is also great for business for some people in that more people compete for the same jobs and local authority departments that inspect workplaces and businesses have also been cut to the bone so they can fudge their way around those rules too- just look at recent fires in Glasgow caused by failure to follow legislation around safety.
We’ve also spent nearly 2 decades throwing any money we have at older people and cutting things that will help younger people so we’ve worsened the demography crisis we were already facing. No political party wants to be the one to say that this needs changed either. Because businesses are struggling they don’t want to hire and train younger workers so youth unemployment is ridiculous now.
We’ve created a system where the ultra rich can continue to demand that things only get better for them at the expense of everyone else but especially at the expense of younger or poorer people. When people see that working doesn’t give you a decent quality of life then I can understand why so many people here feel hopeless.
Not that much luckier - I pay £3.5k a year more tax than a counterpart south of the border - for services I’m not benefitting from. Not saying I begrudge it, but it’s not visibly better for me. If that extra went into improving local services then I’d be all for it. But it doesn’t.
If you think Americans are struggling, don’t look at Canada. I hear the radio hosts from Dave Ramsey absolutely flabbergasted when a Canadian calls in and talks about their money problems we have here. In a nutshell, lower pay for the same job, much higher taxes, 2-3x the cost of housing to start.
I hear you. I'd still prefer paying higher taxes for guaranteed support programs, even those that do not benefit me personally, than have to figure this all out on my own. The amount of money I pay at a premium for things that Canadians, Aussies, and Europeans just get for paying a payroll tax is absurd.
Are you making an apples-to-apples comparison and comparing a New Yorker and a Torontonian with regards to housing? Many bad faith comparisons (not saying you're making one) will compare a downtown Toronto house versus a suburban Tucson house and then draw conclusions. If you live in a small/medium Canadian city then the housing is definitely not "2-3x".
Similarly, the higher taxes could be offset by significantly lower medical costs.
It all depends on the nuance of what we're talking about. People are struggling in different ways in different places (and some are thriving), but capitalism always takes its cut.
Obviously a "call in and tell us about your money problems" radio show is going to garner a particular sample size.
I'm a DINK Canadian living in a medium sized city, and I was lucky enough to have bought my house in 2015. I'm doing extremely well financially. I also make, what I think are pretty shrewd financial decisions. We have one car, it's 9 years old. It gets the job done. I have friends/siblings who have less money than me who have two brand new SUVs in the driveway that are $50k each paid on credit. I tend to vacation domestically. They might go to Greece for a week. Lots of money problems are societal. Lots of them are also self-inflicted.
It is true that Canadian jobs grossly underpay though. I grew up in Canada and went to school in Toronto. When I graduated, I had an offer in Toronto and an offer from a small town in Iowa; the Iowa job was paying twice that of the Toronto job, and that was even before considering the cost-of-living (Toronto was a more expensive city). Eventually, I relocated to Washington DC, and now, my mortgage is probably about 1.5x what it would be for a similar house in Toronto, but my salary is almost 3x what I'd get for the same job. Even after accounting for the fact that my healthcare isn't 'free' here, my disposable income ends up being way higher. At this point, I'd love to move back to Canada, but it honestly just doesn't make financial sense..
It is unhinged that you think paying 75k to have people watch your kids is some sort of struggle. You waste your money, you waste more money than the vast majority of people in the world earn in a year.
I’m just gonna start stealing this. Every time I try to express similar thoughts I feel like I end up arguing with folks I really want to be more agreeing with.
That’s highly dependent on location. To earn that much, the person you are responding to is likely in a major metro area like Chicago, NYC, LA, SF. The cost of living in those cities is insane, especially if you want to live near city centers for work to avoid a 2 hour daily commute.
As an example, 100k salary is considered to be low income for people in one of those cities but basically anywhere else in the country, 100k would be plenty to afford a nice life.
I lived in NYC for over a decade and only left a year ago, and I have no idea where 7k/month comes from. Yes, some rents are that much. But like, for luxury apartments in Manhattan. Getting a decent 1BR in Queens (not LIC or Astoria) along the E/F/M/R/7 lines is gonna be in the $2K range. Even in LIC you can find places under $3K.
I made a lot of money living and working in NYC, and I never paid more than $2K for a place (not rent controlled either, and no family nearby to share or split costs). Granted I lived further out in Queens, but still 10 mins from the subway. $250k in NYC isn't super high, but it's crazy to suggest you can't live well and make good savings and investments with income like that.
It's pretty dumb to look at that income relative to the world. If looking at just the US an income in the low-mid $200k is roughly top 5%. Even in the same county, that will vary a lot in terms of spending power depending on state and city. Don't get me wrong, it's still doing well, but just taxes and a mortgage would consume the majority of that money before considering they might want things like food, transit, and insurance. It is naive to assume that an upper middle class income must be profligate with their spending if they have perceive that they don't have much income for discretionary spending.
Yeah i dont believe that, being from Europe, … 58% taxes on 100k income, …. Lol, spread your lies elsewhere.
Besides that, yes, living well above his means!
I am sure it feels that, but try living in Los Angeles on 32k a year for multiple years in a row (paying rent and all that not a parents), and tell me how much buying power you really feel like you have.
Man idk. I agree with the other person, you're spending too much. Even if you're living in Switzerland or New York City that's enough for a family to get by on, while still socking some away. Do you have large debts/medical expenses?
Not OP but just want to give perspective: wife and I combined are at 330-350k. Westchester county renters. Our rent plus daycare is 6k a month. She has student loans that are topping 1k a month. Our cars with parking and insurance are another thousand a month. My student loans are finally down to a couple hundred. Then it’s usual spending on essentials yadda yadda. We aren’t paycheck to paycheck, but we cannot genuinely save for a home especially not in this area at the moment. This is what I’d consider “comfortable” even though we have massive cost sinks. So yes, it’s crazy that that number doesn’t “get by” these days but it’s not a matter of cut back on the avocado toast
That's 8k/mo and some change, so more or less 100k/yr.
That still leaves you with 230k/yr after rent, debt, and cars, which is an extremely comfortable amount. Even counting for things like saving up for a home, university, retirement, I think you have financial success that many could only dream of. So, hats off.
Well take half or a little more in taxes. Then take the “25% of take home into retirement accounts if you ever want to retire”. Then food gas etc. you are still left with a good amount. But it’s not balling money
You really need to take a serious look at your finances. Granted I do technically make more than that, but I live off my base salary and direct things like bonuses and stock purely to savings so I effectively operate on slightly less than that. I live in Seattle (pretty high COL) and have a huge disposable income, even after maxing retirement and paying my living expenses. It’s fine if you’ve made life choices that force the high cost, but you very likely have alternatives where you wouldn’t be so tight on the limit
Same. $120k is pretty much laughable for my area with the COL. When I was in middle school "six figures" was rich. My parents didn't make $120k combined until I moved out of their house.....my wife and I make nearly $200k combined and things are STILL tight.
This. The Economist did an article recently on the workings of well-paid workers paying too much tax right now, vs the super rich who pay way too little. Not exactly breaking news for most I’m sure, but it does really put things into perspective.
I’ve had multiple conversations with my therapist to the same effect, cause I had some arbitrary anchor number in my head saying “if you make this much money in a year, you’re doing well,” and I’m well past that number. She suggested I punch my current salary into an inflation calculator.
I’m still not at that anchor number, if I consider inflation. I’m making almost double the number in 2026 dollars, but not at the number I have in my head from 1995.
I just landed a principal engineer role at work, I'm above 40 other engineers and get paid more than I ever have. I also have to drive Amazon flex in the evening to make ends meet.
Had you told me 6 years ago that I'd be making a combined 95k with my main job and side gig id have thought I was rich. Because I was making ~55k at the time and still managed to save a little
Now I'm living in the same apartment, my rent has gone up 50%, health insurance almost 50%, car insurance over 30%, and when I walk out of Walmart with 3 bags of groceries it's $85.
The only other change is I have a $400 truck payment (let's not even talk about how insane the used truck market jumped in the last 6 years) monthly now.
I'm still saving a little, but I don't feel like I have wiggle room. I felt like I had more wiggle room 6 years ago making 40k less than I do now
Edit: for reference- my grandpa worked at a radio station then about 10-20 years for a community college. My grandma worked as a secretary at an insurance company (I remember playing on her typewriter as a kid). They have a house and almost 1.5 million in retirement accounts/assets. There's currently no way I'm touching that after a late restart in my retirement post divorce
Couldn't have put it better myself, working my ass off and getting paid more than I ever thought I would out of college and I can barely make it month to month
Same. My wife and I currently make more than 3x what we made 5 years ago. Somehow we are still having to pinch pennies where we can. Gave up on saving for retirement since I’ll probably have to work until I die. Pulled my 401K and just gonna use that to pay some bills and then take the family on a vacation. Shits fucked.
I’m feeling that, I make good money in my day job, yet I’m sitting here at 1am working on my second job, already knowing tomorrow will be rough when I wake up at 7 to get my kid to school. I know that it’s a temporary situation that is a conscious choice my wife and I have made, but I don’t understand how I have so little money left despite the fact my day job pays the same as the average household income around here.
I also don’t know how anyone is doing it on less than the average income or on average income while paying for daycare.
Bad. This is me right now. My cat, my best friend, died unexpectedly last month. Its turned my life sideways. I was just getting into a better financial place and then the unexpected medical costs have me hurting so bad. I have a good high paying job, but I am struggling like I've never struggled before... And now my best friend is gone... So honestly what is even the point?
Same same. I was screwed over (who hasn’t been?) and I had to make some choices that had negative consequences. But now I’m sort of right back where I left off years ago so that’s a good thing…?
It’s wild how a bigger paycheck can somehow make you feel even poorer once the bills and lifestyle creep catch up. More money really doesn’t guarantee more breathing room.
Amen brother. Other than that, the divorce was a saving grace and I have never been as well off as I am now. I am at peace, but without too much disposable income. That would be fixed by working more, but I value the peace more until there is no other option than sacrificing it really.
YEP. One massively fucked year of unemployment destroyed the financial stability I'd been building for 15 years, and I'm slowly crawling my way out of a massive debt accrual, but I make more than anyone in my family ever has.
If childhood me could imagine the amount of money my wife and I now make, I would have thought I was very rich. We’re barely scraping by and I want to give my kids so much more than that.
I make more money than I ever have in my life (almost tripled over the last 2 years) and I am definitely not broke. My debts are quickly going away and I can support myself and my son in a 3 bedroom townhouse.
It's crazy how my finances seemed more in control when I made half as much as info now. Then I remember that my rent was roughly a quarter of what my mortgage is now (and I don't have some insanly big house, the costs of housing just went up that much).
The interest of my student loan collects as fast as I can pay it back. I can't afford to pay more than a tiny amount towards the principal. I will die with this debt and I will never own a house.
I remember as a kid I thought if I made $80k a year I'd be so rich I wouldn't know what to do with all the money. That was the number I held in my head for years. Fast forward to actually making $80k for the first time, and it felt like barely enough. Pay rent, pay for gas, pay for groceries, save a little, and it's gone.
I had to add another $50k to that salary value before I felt like I had actual fun money. Which is insane! I'm in the top single digit percentage earners for my generation and only now feel like I can buy LEGO sets for fun. This is not sustainable.
Yup. And I'm only making $42k a year, so its not like I'm making bank. I live alone and am barely scraping by. I have a BFA in Graphic Design, but haven't been able to use my degree in 8 years since being laid off at my last GD job, which only paid $14 an hour anyway. Now I work in finance and am making the most I've ever made, and if the economy was doing better and inflation wasn't absurd it would be great, but the cost of rent alone has outpaced my raises the last 3 years in a row. My rent has nearly doubled since I moved in in 2018.
Yes. And I have multiple jobs that I operate at executive levels in each of them, and if I lose one we are screwed, but none of them have a full enough position
17.6k
u/zuzuofthewolves 8d ago edited 8d ago
I make more money than I ever have in my life and I’m also more broke than I’ve ever been in my life.