If husband and wife both make $40k/year, is that enough to support a family?

my dad was able to support us growing up on 50-60k a year. Family of 4. No vacations. Big mortgage and tons of credit card debt is likely to account for no vacations though.

40k/year each is plenty. If you're single guy living in an apartment, save up tons of money so that you can reduce that mortgage to as little as possible when you do find the right girl and decide to start a family. No mortgage would make life grand, just saying.

1st question:

Where do you live?

that's the ONLY question.

Surprise! wrote:

1st question:

Where do you live?

grew up in a cheap-azz flyover state, parents making 40K each put me AND my sister through college (they also built a nice new house that we moved into when i was a teen).

i make 40K in my current job & barely scrape by on the west cost renting a 1BR...but i LOVE living here so it's all good.

Yes

No

Skip the breeding.

My wife and each make high 40Ks and we'll be retired easily...very, very easily by 60 years old. No kids makes all the difference. It's the selfless, move really.

And think of the bright side: You'll be happier, you won't create being who will suffer (possibly A LOT... which you, of course, have no control over), and you'll be much less of a burden on society and the planet. Everybody wins. And you'll have a lot more time run as well, btw.

Better yet, if you think that is selfish of me, decide to be poor and rather than making a duplicate of you and your wife (that sounds selfish!) adopt a child who is a minority with a disability. (Notice, no one who talks about the selflessness of having kids actually want these little buggers!) That's the truly selfless move.

Good luck!

Enough of us! wrote:

..adopt a child who is a minority with a disability. (Notice, no one who talks about the selflessness of having kids actually want these little buggers!)

Truth there.

I think it would be tough to put several kids through college on 80k a year. I grew up with a single parent income that was pretty similar to 80k. My parents lived frugally but when my dad lost his job we were wrecked.

I think you could make it work but the margin of error would be slim.

Do you need to have kids? You might scale back there. Raising kids can be rewarding but not being able to support a kid can be overwhelming.

Pomme Frites wrote:

I think it would be tough to put several kids through college on 80k a year. I grew up with a single parent income that was pretty similar to 80k. My parents lived frugally but when my dad lost his job we were wrecked.

I think you could make it work but the margin of error would be slim.

Do you need to have kids? You might scale back there. Raising kids can be rewarding but not being able to support a kid can be overwhelming.

Where I'm living is only slightly higher than the national average. I only want to have one kid. I would have more, but there's genetic garbage in my family tree, so I'm kind of scared to have more than that. Of course I need to find a wife first...

I feel like I should be able to do fine with that amount of money, but I guess you don't really know until you're there. I have a friend who supports himself, his wife, and two kids on about $45k/year. Money is very tight of course and they don't live very well (four people in a two-bedroom), but they survive. Considering I'd have double the money makes me think we'd do okay.

under acheivee wrote:

I only want to have one kid. I would have more, but there's genetic garbage in my family tree, so I'm kind of scared to have more than that.

But your not scared to have one? You must be kidding!

Read a bit of a South African philosopher named David Benatar. He has a great line:"Having children is like playing Russian Roulette; only the gun is not pointed at your head."

Sounds like he knows you. Your selflessness knows no bounds.

My dad made a little more than minimum pay, but always did moonlighting. My mom was a stay at home mom who raised 9 kids. From the earliest age possible all of the kids had jobs with newspaper routes, babysitting, yard work and the like. Our parents were able to give us very little help toward advanced education, yet six of us have earned college degrees, all of us held responsible positions in the work force or as business owners. More importantly none of us have been on welfare or disability, and five are now wealthy beyond the dreams of our parents. My two pieces of advice would be this: (1) if you decide to have kids, enjoy them and love them because they can give you more pleasure than any car or vacation; (2) don't spoil them with too many "things", don't worry about keeping up with the "Joneses" and make them earn and take pride in striving for their own advanced education. This will come naturally if they learn the value of work. This means learning how to commit to studying and to accepting and appreciating whatever work they can find when they are young. Once the proper base is set, kids will amaze you with what they can accomplish. Without the proper base, you'll likely end up with self-centered, greed, unethical and unhappy adults. It's actually all pretty simple, and it's largely up to you.

under acheivee wrote:

Can you buy a home for 200,000 with 20,000 down in your area?

if yes have a child

if no babysit for extra cash

for profit parenting

unlike your own brat you can be 'booked up' when Terrible Temper Tantrum Teddy's Mom calls.

Having Kids on Minimum Pay wrote:

More importantly none of us have been on welfare or disability,

Some how I get the feeling you think there is something wrong collecting from an insurance fund you have paid into.

Do you believe being disabled and getting disability insurance is a sign of failure?

You come off as oversensitive to this, so take it for what you wish. My point, and I suspect most understand it, is very simply that we are proud of what we have accomplished honestly and with hard work.

You ask, is getting disability insurance a sign of failure? When over 50% of Americans are obese, I think the handwriting is on the wall. No one forces obesity on people, but a high percentage of them become obese due to a lack of exercise and lazy eating habits. Conversely a high percentage of obese people end up on disability. Yes, disability is often a sign of failure.

I grew up in a family of 5 - stay at home mom and dad was a teacher so money was tight. I got most of my clothes/toys at garage sales and had very few name brand items. We didn't have cable. We were not well off, but we lived in our means. Sure, I wanted the name brand stuff, but I'm alive to tell the story. The grass is always greener.... I wanted the name brand stuff, but some of my friends wanted their parents to be in town more often, not have to move every 5 years for corporate re-lo, etc.

According to the US Census bureau, the median annual household income in the US in 2011 was $50k. So clearly $80k is enough in the sense that most households manage with a lot less.

The answer to your question really depends on what kind of material possessions you think you "need" beyond those you need to survive.

Obviously part of answer depends on where you want to live and work. Costs and salaries in downtown Manhattan are quite different from those in rural Montana.

That's substantially higher than the median income for a household in the US ($60,000), so I sure hope you could make it.

Factors that you may want to consider: daycare costs about $50/day per child, if you need it, which ends up being about $10,000/year. Do you have a support system that would allow you to forgo daycare? This is the biggest child related expense I can think of, aside from a major medical issue.

Do you have medical insurance? Major/minor medical issues can bring you down. Medical treatment is available outside of the U.S. at 1/10th the price but without the same protections for malpractice, etc..

Owning a house is still a reasonably good investment, especially long term, but don't over extend yourself on a mortgage. Pay attention to the school system in the area you live in, regardless, so that you don't have to send your kids to a private school.

Own your cars outright by buying used cars and doing your own repairs -- at least the minor ones like brakes, suspension components, etc., whatever you can handle with the help of the Internet and a shop manual. That will save you from bearing what is a major expense to most people.

I make around 50k now, and have a mortgage, no debt other than that, with a nice sized house. Wife & kid, will have another soon.

There is no hard figure for having a family, money does help, but if you aren't good with controlling your spending & saving money, you'll be in the red quickly. I have a pair of cousins who make around 180k together, and are near bankruptcy because they bought an outragously big house, new cars, and racked up credit cards with the concept of "we make it, we'll eventually pay it off". Not true. Show restraint, and you'll be fine. If you don't, you run the chance of losing everything you worked for and going back to renting hole in the wall apartments.

Doing your own car repairs is a good idea and I've owned the Chilton's manual for every car I've owned, but I would think twice about brake work. Antilock brakes aren't like your father's brakes and being able to stop the car the way you expect to is kind of nonnegotiable.