This is my first year earning 300k and I finally feel like a comfortable member of the middle class

coach wrote:

highhoppingworm wrote:

In fairness there are other reasons to send your kids to daycare. They do learn stuff w/ trained professionals who are way better at early childhood education than my wife or I and they do get socialization they would t get at home obviously. My 3 year old literally loves school.

Does a 1 year old "need" socialization and early childhood education from a professional? To each his own, if a parent wants to send a toddler to day care and work whether at a high paying job or not it's her business.

It didnt make sense for us and my wife enjoyed staying home, going to mommy and me classes, visiting her parents so they could spend time with their grandchild.

Didn’t intend this as judgement in any way. There are obviously other ways to make sure your gets kid appropriate stimulation than daycare. Just trying to show there are more factors to this decision than purely $.

Denver area

Wife and I 130k combined.

3 kids oldest plays travel hockey

2700sqf house

30 minutes to Avs/Nugs

90 min to Breck/Vail

Def not pay check to pay check.

Double our salary and we are living large

old&fat wrote:

Denver area

Wife and I 130k combined.

3 kids oldest plays travel hockey

2700sqf house

30 minutes to Avs/Nugs

90 min to Breck/Vail

Def not pay check to pay check.

Double our salary and we are living large

when did you buy that home? what year, what price

if you have older kids playing travel hockey bet it would before the california crew escaped there and drove the prices up into the stratosphere

hombre3000 wrote:

OP, you must not live in CA. Our HHI is 600k (Bay Area) and we're barely scraping by. Definitely don't feel solidly "middle class"

And to the haters who think 600k is middle class in Bay Area, here is rough breakdown of our monthly expenditures: (family of 5):

$6500 (primary mortgage)

$1500 for transportation (car payments, insurance, gas, repairs, Ubers, etc)

$2000 for dining

$1500 for groceries, other household consumables

$1200 / month for vacation fund

$3000 / month for retirement

$2000-$3000 for misc or unexpected expenses (braces, deductibles, fines, taxes, whatever)

$2500 for 2nd mortgage (ski home)

After taxes that leaves us about $1800/month leftover to spend or save. how the hell can you survive on $1800/month in California?

Considering you just listed everything you need to live with $1800 left in addition to a hilarious $1200 "vacation fund", what else is it that you need?

The first 300k is always nice but I didn't feel a true sense of accomplishment until I got to a million. Knowing I was probably the first of my peers from school to be a self made millionaire, thats a good feeling. Really sticking it to the doubters (who are ironically mostly losers). That is a real milestone for anyone. But a million these days ain't much.

To the OP, why are you starving your children? $1k/month to feed them? I have three girls that play sports and we are north of $2k/month.

hombre3000 wrote:

OP, you must not live in CA. Our HHI is 600k (Bay Area) and we're barely scraping by. Definitely don't feel solidly "middle class"

And to the haters who think 600k is middle class in Bay Area, here is rough breakdown of our monthly expenditures: (family of 5):

$6500 (primary mortgage)

$1500 for transportation (car payments, insurance, gas, repairs, Ubers, etc)

$2000 for dining

$1500 for groceries, other household consumables

$1200 / month for vacation fund

$3000 / month for retirement

$2000-$3000 for misc or unexpected expenses (braces, deductibles, fines, taxes, whatever)

$2500 for 2nd mortgage (ski home)

After taxes that leaves us about $1800/month leftover to spend or save. how the hell can you survive on $1800/month in California?

The vacation fund gave it away dude. Can’t even go to Hawaii one week a year on $15k for a family of 5.

How could you post your salary here “comfortably” when your salary is a couple hundred thousand below the average here?

How do you spend $2000 on dining??? That could easily be $0-$50 a month. Stop eating out. Simple. Not that hard.

joed|rt wrote:

Now all you need to do is move away from the coast and you are set. There are plenty of places in the interior of the country you can still buy a decent sized house with a couple acres for less than you made with lower taxes.

What are some lower cost areas/states that have decent running weather and a decent local running scene?

runningwiththetrolls1212 wrote:

happy guy wrote:

Combined income of about 110k. Very good health insurance. 3 kids. Saving for retirement and putting money into 529s. Happy.

how much are homes in your area, how old are you.

most 100k plus job nowadays are in coastal urban areas (la, sf, seattle, nyc, dc, boston etc).

those areas are extremely difficult to buy homes

areas with cheaper homes, pay people a lot lower, so its still difficult to buy, and you are now in an economically depressed area with lower career outlooks (good luck with your software engineering career goals in omaha nebraska)

East Coaster is what it sounds like. Also worth considering is that the type of person who biyches about $300k salary finally feeling middle class is some WASPy east coast yuppy whose baseline expectations for quality of life boggle the mind of the average global citizen. Private school or public school in an elite neighborhood, select sports, expensive travel vacations, luxury brands, and spoiled on campus college summer camp experience.

You dudes mad I feel like a king only spending $25,000 a year? U mad, bruh? 💪

I put your income of 300k and 4 person household into the following link. I put down the OP lives in Los Angeles. Even in Los Angeles 300k is upper class for a 4 person household https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/

blazerxc wrote:

How do you spend $2000 on dining??? That could easily be $0-$50 a month. Stop eating out. Simple. Not that hard.

The point of the OP was explaining how he doesn't "feel" middle class.

The middle class should be comfortable enough to eat out regularly and not have sacrifice something else. Sorry, but eating tuna casserole and beans and rice to pinch pennies is not my definition of "middle class"

And since this is the Bay Area, dining is more expensive than it is in flyover. Where you might spend $150 on a meal for a family of 5 in Kansas, that same meal here is going to run you $300 or more.

No, the point of the OP was to pathetically rehash the frequently used lame bait of “I make good money but am scraping by with my family” thread.

hombre3000 wrote:

$2500 for 2nd mortgage (ski home)

After taxes that leaves us about $1800/month leftover to spend or save. how the hell can you survive on $1800/month in California?

Why is everyone ignoring the 2nd ski home? If you are paying more for your second ski home than most middle-class people are paying for their primary home, you are not middle-class.

surveysays wrote:

No, the point of the OP was to pathetically rehash the frequently used lame bait of “I make good money but am scraping by with my family” thread.

I think when you live in HCOL area, even at $300K/year and if you live in an area with modest houses in good school district, you would be average. So there’s definitely a perception that you’re middle class even at $300K and if you don’t have experience living in LCOL area of the country.

But if these people would actually step out of their bubble and go live in LCOL area, you’ll quickly realize that your life of middle class is actually really really good. You’ll realize that there’s a reason the LCOL area is low cost.

I feel grateful being able to live in HCOL area and probably make less than what many people in this area make, but I know I have it good. It’s all just perception.

hombre3000 wrote:

blazerxc wrote:

How do you spend $2000 on dining??? That could easily be $0-$50 a month. Stop eating out. Simple. Not that hard.

The point of the OP was explaining how he doesn't "feel" middle class.

The middle class should be comfortable enough to eat out regularly and not have sacrifice something else. Sorry, but eating tuna casserole and beans and rice to pinch pennies is not my definition of "middle class"

And since this is the Bay Area, dining is more expensive than it is in flyover. Where you might spend $150 on a meal for a family of 5 in Kansas, that same meal here is going to run you $300 or more.

I mean, I make about 80k a year (plus some wicked retirement benefits) in a medium cost of living area, not coastal elite but major urban area in the mid-South I guess, and I cook for myself mostly with the pandemic. It's not beans and rice, it's things like habanero marinated chicken, stuffed peppers, parmesan crusted salmon, etc. Yes, I have to cook it, but come on. The beans and rice crap you're saying to pinch pennies would set his home cooking budget to like 300 a month, not 1500. Don't be an out-of-touch moron. Even when I lived in NYC, I wasn't paying anywhere close to 2k a month eating out, that would take some work (or you're definitely not going to "middle class" restaurants).

Well done, but don’t get used to it. Your president will be gnawing into your salary soon enough to pay for his wish list.

hombre3000 wrote:

OP, you must not live in CA. Our HHI is 600k (Bay Area) and we're barely scraping by. Definitely don't feel solidly "middle class"

And to the haters who think 600k is middle class in Bay Area, here is rough breakdown of our monthly expenditures: (family of 5):

$6500 (primary mortgage)

$1500 for transportation (car payments, insurance, gas, repairs, Ubers, etc)

$2000 for dining

$1500 for groceries, other household consumables

$1200 / month for vacation fund

$3000 / month for retirement

$2000-$3000 for misc or unexpected expenses (braces, deductibles, fines, taxes, whatever)

$2500 for 2nd mortgage (ski home)

After taxes that leaves us about $1800/month leftover to spend or save. how the hell can you survive on $1800/month in California?

lolololololololol