If you clear 1.3 million and don’t fly first class on your international vacations… what’s the point man.
If you cant visualize making 1.3M and not seeing any value in first class airplane seats you will never achieve that level. The point is that many people at those income levels dont see the value in a $8,000k airplane ticket vs a $1200 coach international seat. Most of the truly wealthy people I know don't like to overspend on anything that's not a long term investment, like education, housing. The image portrayed in our society of rich people vs how they actually are is totally wrong. For every one rich person you see in a jet, or with a ferrari, there are 50 others that you would never know have the same amount of wealth. I can afford first class but its the last thing I would spend money on. I can sleep fine in any airplane seat.
If you make $1.3M and are so savings obsessed that you can’t spare <0.5% of on pretty standard luxuries… who cares. The point of making money is to spend it. There’s no high score screen when you die.
Also your wife, who’s smarter than you, will be very unhappy.
You might be able to live comfortably if you do not live in a very expensive area of the country.
You'd live very comfortably even in an expensive area. Tell me in which town you can't live well on $20K/month of take-home pay? I just checked Malibu, CA real estate listings and found a small but not shabby 3bd / 2ba house with a view of the ocean for $1,295,000. It's not right on the beach, but it's in a nice, secluded neighborhood up in the hills. The maintenance, property taxes and insurance would probably add up to $2,500/month, leaving you with $17,500/month after housing costs are subtracted.
Assume you live somewhere that is NOT super expensive (SF, NYC, San Diego, etc). Is an annual income of $300,000 (as an individual) enough to do basically whatever you want, within reason? Seems like it would be. I currently make around $100,000 and feel like I live very comfortably, though I feel like I wouldn't be able to pay for big family vacations abroad each year and stuff like that. I'm single, so it's a moot point right now, but I'm thinking about the future, goals, etc, and $300k/year seems like it would be enough to do just about anything a normal person would want to do.
Anyone here have experience with this kind of income?
Wife and I are in mid-late 30’s and will make a little over $600k this year. I clear right at $500k and she is at $138k (healthcare practitioner). We live in a modest house ($600k), don’t drive luxury vehicles, have paid off all student loans, with the only debt we carry being our mortgage. A little over $650k in 401k’s. We take a vacation every 2-3 years and don’t spend extravagantly (usually fly and lodge using points). We live in a state with no state income tax.
If you are single, no large student loans (med/law school), don’t take on a $1000 a month car payment, and don’t live in a state like NY/CA/DC; you should be able to live incredibly well while investing in your long term future on $300k. Max out your 401k, set up a backdoor Roth, keep a healthy money market, and you can retire a millionaire by 55. I made the mistake of not investing enough early on in my career and regret it.
The household income of my spouse and I is around $1 million. Any suggestions on what we can do / buy to make having kids easier?
Do: make frequent love to your wife without protection or birth control of any sort, i.e. put your penor in your wife’s vijay as often as possible, and shoot your seed deep inside her. I also recommend enthusiastic cunnilingus beforehand to make her system as receptive as possible. Buy: buy some la perla lingerie (no sweat on your salary) or any other item that increases your ardor for your lady. This will hopefully result in your performing the “Do” section we discussed above with regularity.
That’s about all you can do to ease things, truly. Hopefully, since you’re in the Bay Area, your wife is a petite asian beauty, which helps immensely with the ardor (and the ‘lingus! IYKYK)
To OP: yes, in most cases $300k is very helpful, but things have gotten tighter since 2020 due to increased costs. We're mid 40s on the SF peninsula, aka UHCOL. 3 kids. We used to bring home more than 300. Now we bring home right around 300 combined. Intentional slowdown. We were very frugal from 25-40, and still are in many ways. No nannies, landscapers, cleaners, etc. Public schools. Zero debt. 3mil primary residence paid off for years. 1mil vacation home paid off and rented out when we’re not there. 4mil in VTSAX across IRAs and taxable. 6-10 year old hondas. Still fly economy. Splurge on travel, eating out, kids activities. 2025 was typical travel year: feb 1 week in Hawaii. Spring break 1 week in SoCal. Summer 20 days in Europe in $1500 per night hotels, 1 week in BC. Thanksgiving in NYC. Winter break in Cabo. A dozen weekends during the year between Tahoe, Napa, and SoCal.
Still working 32 hours per week, probably would retire sooner if healthcare was “free.”
So I'd say we’re doing everything we want and thankful for that. My only desired upgrade would be lay flat seats on long flights, but the cost increase for 5 people is crazy.
I think someone is not understanding flight. I only travel First Class now and rarely do I ever pay for a First Class ticket. For starters, I travel 12+ times internationally for work and pile on points which translate to free upgrades 80% of the time. People don't realize how cheap it is to upgrade to FC on most flights, we're talking $100-$400 and what a difference for any flight longer than 3hrs. Time is money. Less stress is more life.
Yea but when you're in your drooling years spending 200k a year on assisted living you burn through money quickly. Its a little delusional to think you will be happy going from 427 k in income to 100k in retirement and be ok. My kids college is paid for too from merit scholarships and that's not the point. If you want financial freedom to do whatever the f you want you need millions, and if you have some semblance of a soul you might enjoy giving some money away in the future too.
I guess the issue is who would want $500k income in RETIREMENT? That means you didn't live during your 20-40's... we have lived a life and can live perfectly fine on $100k-ish with our financial planning and situation. The most dynamic part is now if we choose to retire in the US or not (we can live elsewhere).
"Living a life" = spending more money? What kind of an idiotic statement is this?
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However, defining class in terms of net worth assumes that net worth correlates with income. That sad fact is that need money rolling in every month in order to pay bills. For example, somebody with a $40K/yr income who receives a $1M inheritance, although they are in the top 18% of households in terms of net worth, can't magically live an upper-middle-class life. Moving into a house in an upper-middle-class zip code would mean property taxes alone eat up half their post-tax income.
For most of those 18% of people, the majority of their net worth is their primary residence. If you get a $1M inheritance, you can invest that money however you want, and you can get a decent return.
The household income of my spouse and I is around $1 million. Any suggestions on what we can do / buy to make having kids easier?
Do: make frequent love to your wife without protection or birth control of any sort, i.e. put your penor in your wife’s vijay as often as possible, and shoot your seed deep inside her. I also recommend enthusiastic cunnilingus beforehand to make her system as receptive as possible. Buy: buy some la perla lingerie (no sweat on your salary) or any other item that increases your ardor for your lady. This will hopefully result in your performing the “Do” section we discussed above with regularity.
That’s about all you can do to ease things, truly. Hopefully, since you’re in the Bay Area, your wife is a petite asian beauty, which helps immensely with the ardor (and the ‘lingus! IYKYK)
Late 30s with 2 young kids--have been making 450k-510k for the past 5 years. Some things are definitely easier and my anxiety about money has gone down. I used to stress about money especially with 300k in student loans but followed dave ramsey and paid them off very quickly. My wife stays at home and we can comfortably pay for a mortgage on a million dollar house and still save into brokerage and 403b about10-12k a month after including my match.
We have been spending about 40k on vacations annually and have no debt besides the mortgage--2 new SUVS bought with cash total of about 100k. Can put kids into whatever activities we want and buy nice seats to all the baseball and basketball games we goto. Retirement and savings about 1.2 million with 350k in home equity. We live in midwest city with a population around 1 million and are in a good school district.
We have a spend rate around 15k a month average so to keep that up well need a lot in retirement. I used to want to retire early but since we spend so much ill likely work until 60-65.
