Americans say they need to earn $186K to live comfortably — but is it enough?
Americans say they need to earn $186K to live comfortably — but is it enough?
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$186k? Yeah, uh, where exactly in the US? I'd venture a guess in most places anything over $100k is pretty comfortable, if you're financially responsible.
EDIT: I've come to the conclusion that a good chunk of Lemmy users either live in Seattle, or have no actual concept of money.
Housing prices have gone insane
But my housing prices in Bum Fuck Nowhere are fine, so that must mean it's true every where else. /s
That's the whole point; location. The amount necessary to be comfortable is very dependent on your location.
Property prices correlate strongly with local income levels. Owners know how much you make and they fix prices of wages, rent and other cost.
Hence why u can make objectively high income and feel like a peasant.
Buying power is eroded to the point where 100k is just getting by wage in Seattle or some shit
Yeah and I'm not getting this fat ass cloud SE job while living in fucking Yoder, Wyoming
Here's my experience. I make $180,000/yr. Family of five. Wife stays home and has a consulting gig she does when she wants to. We live in Northwest Arkansas. Far from the most expensive place in the country but experiencing massive growth and becoming increasingly expensive. Our only debt is our mortgage and a loan on our minivan. We own our other vehicle outright.
We live reasonably comfortably. Definitely not extravagant. We're also tightwads and I stay in top of our finances. We paid $345k for a fixer-upper home. Average home price in our area for similar homes is probably closer to $450k. It's liveable but ultimately needs a full remodel. I figure it will take about 5 years doing most of it myself. If I had to pay contractors to do all of it, it would not be feasible. Most of them are so busy they don't even give you the time of day anyways.
Material costs are insane. I mean absolutely bonkers. I would guess I'm spending double what I did for the same materials I used for my last remodel project on our previous house, four years ago. The five year plan is partly because we can't afford to go any faster.
If I made $100k/yr, we would never have bought a house. Wouldn't have even been able to save enough for the down payment. I also seriously doubt we would have had our last two kids.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I'm pretty fortunate. I have things I worry about but money isn't one of them. I know where my next paycheck is coming from and if it doesn't come, we have enough money in the bank to get by for a while.
The same cannot be said for the vast majority of Americans, even ones making $100k/yr, which is not nearly as good a salary as it used to be.
I mean… lots of people would refuse to live in Arkansas even if you straight up gave them a house.
I agree, but a significant portion (maybe even most) of our country's population do live in very high cost of living areas such as the west cost, DC, Boston, and Miami.
The situation is vastly different in most of the country's less remarkable cities, like San Antonio, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Nashville, and I think articles like this only ever account for one side of the equation or the other.
To someone living in DFW (my home), "needing" almost $200k is insane. Honestly I doubt I'd know what to do with that money unless I just bought a bunch if shit I don't want.
I've come to the conclusion that a good chunk of Lemmy users either live in Seattle, or have no actual concept of money.
More likely that most of the people making 6 figures are living in moderate to high cost of living areas plus the inherent draw of tech-minded people on a platform such as this.
I live in an extremely rural part of the US on about $65k/yr. It's absolutely not enough. I moved here specifically so I wouldn't need roommates to pay my bills, but I'm looking at that after only two years into my mortgage anyway.
cries in Los Angeles
hides the inner pain in Boston
Population of top 10 most expensive cities
- New York City, New York: 8,467,513
- Los Angeles, California: 3,849,297
- San Francisco, California: 815,201
- Honolulu, Hawaii. Population: 1,000,890
- Washington, D.C. Population: 670,050
- Boston, Massachusetts: 654,776
- San Diego, California: 1,381,611
- San Jose, California: 983,489
- Seattle, Washington: 733,919
- Miami, Florida: 439,890
Total Poulation: 18,996,636
Total US population: 33,300,000
Minimum Total percent of US population living with this issue: 57%What you fail to grasp is just how very many people live in very very few places.
This gets even crazier when you account for the greater Boston population. Boston being an ancient city relative to America, has an incredibly small size. The metropolitan area extends far beyond it as the second most densely populated part of America after NYC with 4.9 million people living in greater Boston. If you account for that the 10 most expensive regions account for nearly 70% of the us population.
Uh, you're off by a factor of 10 there. Population of the US is closer 330 million, so it'd be 5.7%
Oh fuck me I missed that zero. Thanks, this is what I get for doing all that math on my phone scratch pad
Well, I’ll just grab the top 50 cities and it’s the same point.
The whole point is a shit load of people live in a very tiny space relative to the total size of the country as a whole. This drives online conversion around how expensive things are since online we actually interact with people from all over
Did you drop a 0 on US population?
Where most people live. That's how averages work.
or have no actual concept of money
Right here.
Nailed it