169 grand family income guy wrote:
I don't consider myself wealthy and I wasn't trying to brag. But I am comfortable. If you buy a new car you can drop $25,000. If you pay a mortgage you could pay 15,000 a year. If you need two cars cause you both parents work and have to have cars for work, health and house insurance plus food and kid expenses it would leave probably nothing.
So the question was serious and it the MEDIAN family income.
Have you ever met someone who made car payments instead of paying $25,000 for a new car?
You have a lot of dumb assumptions here, so I will take them on one at a time:
1. CAR - you can buy a perfectly good car for $10-12k. Used. It might be out of warranty, but cars are more reliable than they used to be. Just don't buy a German one that is $$$$ to fix.
Of course, you can lease a new one for $250 a month. With very little down, but then you make those payments until you die. Or buy one and put $5k down and the payment will be $300. No, it won't be an Audi or an Acura.
2. MORTGAGE - if you pay a mortgage it WILL be $15,000 a year OR MORE. My PITI is $850 a month and I live alone. If someone bought a house recently, they are likely to have a PITI above $1200 and that makes $14,400 a year.
It doesn't necessarily mean they will be broke all the time and poor.
3. TWO CARS - If you need two cars to work, you probably don't make $50k. That would be $25k apiece and it would be hard to find TWO people who would be trapped into jobs like that. I live in a capitol city that also has a BIG 10 Univ in it and everyone that works for the State or the Uni makes more than $25k. The janitors make $17 an hour.
I can see a married couple with one , two or three kids where the husband works and they only make $50k and it has been pointed out how this works.
I have a friend who makes $70k at a Union job and his wife is at home with three small boys. They do great. They live in a $220k house. He has great insurance through work, he drives a company car (so NO gas, NO insurance, NO maintenance).
They go on decent vacations, like to the Caribbean or to Florida. They have two cars (one personal) and it is a very nice $30K mini-van.
He has 5 or 6 nice $2000-5000 bikes.
He is 35 and has worked since he was 18 and she went to college and worked before the kids until she was 28. They set themselves up carefully and didn't get into debt before the kids came and they do great.
Now, I realize that they DO NOT make $50k and they have the HUGE benefit of ONE free car, but only one works and they are so far above the scraping-by/poverty-level you seem to think is the only possible way.
4. FOOD - With a family, food can easily be $1000/mo ++. I get that. But even if you make $50k, that is $3300/mo if you don't save for retirement, and after a house payment ($1200-1500) and car expenses ($200-500), utilities ($300-500) ... that still leaves $800-1600.
You also don't have to pay $1000/mo for food.
You won't be going to Starbuck's for an $8 snack every morning, but you can still eat well.