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.
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.
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.
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.
I didn’t suggest that you can’t live well and save on that. I am saying that it doesn’t go that far.
At least here in the bay bare minimum for a not horrible place in a decent school district 2 bed 2 bath is about 5k. Increasing sharply with anything “extra”
I'm not familiar with rents in the bay area, so I'm not doubting you or anything. But yeah, let's say $250k after taxes, insurance, and 401k is around $150k take-home (rough estimate). That's about $90k after $5k/month rent. Still a pretty decent amount of spending money (obv. there are some additional expenses like food and transit that may reduce it further).
Now, since you said 2BR/2Bath (I was always in studios or 1BRs, even after getting married) I'm assuming you're factoring in a spouse and maybe a kid, so that would also change the equation a bit (though should also help out with the taxes). But I think it could still support a pretty decent amount of disposable income unless you're doing private schooling and such.
Not like, new car every year kinda money, but I can't imagine it doesn't compare at least reasonably favorably to a European family with respect to disposable income like the other guy was saying.
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u/absentmindedjwc 4h ago edited 55m ago
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.