800k household income - does not feel rich

By "entertainment" I assume you mean blow.

poorkid1234 wrote:

before you call me a whiny rich guy, understand that 800k is actually 500k after taxes, which is 60k / month. that money disappears quickly.

wife and I are professionals and work extremely hard. we also have six figures of debt each from grad school, so 10k of that goes to servicing debt (principle and interest).

15k goes to our kids education (private school + 529 for 3 kids, ouch).

that leaves 25k left. where does that go?

10k to our mortgage in expensive as$ California - $2 million shoebox house

5k to entertainment (eating out, going to zoo, movies, etc with kids is NOT cheap)

3k to cars (loan, gas, insurance, repairs, etc)

3k to groceries

4k leftover for savings / retirement / investing. lol. how can you live off of 4k/month.

we are poor.

You're not poor you're stupid.

Hire a an adult to handle your finances.

The fact you are complaining as a person who makes more and does better than most of the world's population shows what kind of ignorance living in the best country in the world gives you. Nobody cares that you can't afford Disney plus. Go work harder if you want to be rich, it might actually do something instead of whining about it on a pathetic running platform

Everything you're upset about, you've brought upon yourself.

Typical let’s run troll. This dude probably lives at his parents basement lol 😂

lmfao wrote:

I make 40k/year but no kids so I feel rich. Want to swap places?

Same. I’ll gladly take the wealthy dude’s place. I make $76k a year and live paycheck to paycheck with a small 1 bedroom apartment and absolutely no savings to speak of and paying $0 per month towards my $200k in student loans. My entertainment budget for food and going out per month is essentially nothing. My margin is so thin if I have a $50 dinner bill once a month, I’m behind on the month. All my extra money goes to my ex wife. I eat off the dollar menu at McDonald’s, raman, cans of tuna, and hot dogs for my meals. Living the life.

My car’s power steering went out last week. It’s an encased electrical system so I have to replace the rack and pinion. The part alone costs $600-$1000 and labor will be at least that much. So it goes without saying I’ll be driving with no power steering for the foreseeable future. I did it before about in an old Civic, and it wasn’t so bad. But all the electrical stuff in the Fusion is pretty heavy. Even at highway speeds you have to crank the wheel. I had to make a u turn from a dead stop at a red light the other day and and almost had a massive hernia incident.

You poor guy. I feel for your plight. There are soup kitchens, needle exchange programs, rehabilitation clinics, counselors and social workers, international aid organizations, and nonprofits that could all help you get back on your feet after enduring such deprivation. Thoughts and prayers, my friend.

ALOT of people do, and with much less income than you.

poorkid1234 wrote:

10k to our mortgage in expensive as$ California - $2 million shoebox house

5k to entertainment (eating out, going to zoo, movies, etc with kids is NOT cheap)

3k to cars (loan, gas, insurance, repairs, etc)

3k to groceries

4k leftover for savings / retirement / investing. lol. how can you live off of 4k/month.

we are poor.

Firstly, if you have 4k left over every month for savings, you're not poor. If you're poor, you don't have savings.

Second, you spend 5k on entertainment and 3k on groceries. Every month. For 5 people, you can get enough groceries to eat healthy meals every night for $1000. Stop going out to see movies, just get Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu. Go out to a park and have a picnic, or go to a museum, or an aquarium, or any of the other free/cheap entertainment options near you. There, that's another $7000.

poorkid1234 wrote:

before you call me a whiny rich guy, understand that 800k is actually 500k after taxes, which is 60k / month. that money disappears quickly.

wife and I are professionals and work extremely hard. we also have six figures of debt each from grad school, so 10k of that goes to servicing debt (principle and interest).

15k goes to our kids education (private school + 529 for 3 kids, ouch).

that leaves 25k left. where does that go?

10k to our mortgage in expensive as$ California - $2 million shoebox house

5k to entertainment (eating out, going to zoo, movies, etc with kids is NOT cheap)

3k to cars (loan, gas, insurance, repairs, etc)

3k to groceries

4k leftover for savings / retirement / investing. lol. how can you live off of 4k/month.

we are poor.

Pobrecito!

Living below 1k mo. But no payments or debts. And happy to be thriving small! DIY is fun, gardening is everything, creative shopping is science.

The OP's lack of ability to get simple arithmetic correct in his trolling is either sloppy or a deliberate clue.

I don't think this is real but I do think rich folks in a capitalist system feel pressured to spend more of their money on higher-end items so they're coming in close to even every month. If someone made up like OP actually thought about how normal people lived they could scale back & save tons of $$$. $1 million house instead of 2. Public schools -- if you pay $2 million for a house you gotta have decent schools or move, sheesh. $5k on entertainment. Most Americans take home less than $5k/month. Go out less. Cook food at home with your $3k (lol) grocery budget. How can you live on $4k/month? Welcome to pretty much every household & those are the people you're blaming for being careless with money. Yikes.

I wonder what groceries do people buy if they think $3000 for 5 people is outrageous. That's just 600 per person. I live in an area where groceries are 2-3 times cheaper compared to shopping at Whole Foods and spend about that much. I do prefer stuff that would be organic, local, coming from small farms vs large corporate manufactured and shipped around the globe, but I'm not overly crazy about that, just reasonable. I don't eat sturgeon caviar or truffles and I always keep looking for great wines around $20 because $30-40 is too expensive, I would have to limit myself to like 1 bottle per week.

You wouldn't expect someone who's earning six figures to shop in Grocery Outlet and 99c only, would you?

AOL Lawyer wrote:

The OP's lack of ability to get simple arithmetic correct in his trolling is either sloppy or a deliberate clue.

I think it says more about the responders than the OP. This has now been pointed out four times at least, yet there are still responses taking the post at face value. In fact, we were well into the second page before it was first pointed out.

The OP did well, he could have started a thread where you could never prove or disprove the story and the thread would just degenerate to "It's true - It's BS" arguments. Instead he started a thread with lots of minutiae to suck people in with. That same minutiae gives them lots of points to argue over. Yet in the first sentence is an absurd math error that should have hit the reader straight between the eyes. But they missed it because they rush to get into nitpicking the details

n9 wrote:

I wonder what groceries do people buy if they think $3000 for 5 people is outrageous. That's just 600 per person. I live in an area where groceries are 2-3 times cheaper compared to shopping at Whole Foods and spend about that much. I do prefer stuff that would be organic, local, coming from small farms vs large corporate manufactured and shipped around the globe, but I'm not overly crazy about that, just reasonable. I don't eat sturgeon caviar or truffles and I always keep looking for great wines around $20 because $30-40 is too expensive, I would have to limit myself to like 1 bottle per week.

You wouldn't expect someone who's earning six figures to shop in Grocery Outlet and 99c only, would you?

That might be true for some adults but for these 3 kids?

Are they drinking $20 bottles of wine too?

n9 wrote:

I wonder what groceries do people buy if they think $3000 for 5 people is outrageous. That's just 600 per person. I live in an area where groceries are 2-3 times cheaper compared to shopping at Whole Foods and spend about that much. I do prefer stuff that would be organic, local, coming from small farms vs large corporate manufactured and shipped around the globe, but I'm not overly crazy about that, just reasonable. I don't eat sturgeon caviar or truffles and I always keep looking for great wines around $20 because $30-40 is too expensive, I would have to limit myself to like 1 bottle per week.

You wouldn't expect someone who's earning six figures to shop in Grocery Outlet and 99c only, would you?

the cash flow is certainly not the issue, but no way you should spend 3 grand on cars per month. Maybe $1000. my wife and I have one small car payment at present (paid cash for last car) since as one poster mentioned you can buy decent cars cash up front-still leaves room for insurance and repairs---shouldn't be paying a lot monthly for a depreciating asset(s). my 2 cents.

You never answered my question. Is your wife hot? And if so, pics?

I ran the income and expenses that I had through my tax software (Lacerte). Your total payroll taxes, assuming you got no refund, nor owed anything on your annual taxes, on $800k wages, married with 3 kids, a mortgage and property taxes, for IRS, Social Security, Medicare, and California income taxes would be roughly $246k for the year. That's 20.5k a month.

You probably just looked the taxes up on some chart, since you probably don't actually have a paystub that shows $720k withheld for the year. Most people do that type of simplified tax calculation incorrectly.

If you really pay in $720k, you're getting a $484k tax refund. I find that unlikely.

You might be counting your company medical insurance, flex plan, and 401k contributions in with that "taxes" number, however, that would not reach $60k a month either, and the 401k would be "savings".

So overall, your scenario looks fake. Or maybe your math skills need improving.

I did work on a case like this some years ago, I forget the details. The person making a large income but was "broke" although he was getting a large refund every year (like $30k), but said that was for the new cars and the month-long vacation every year, so we couldn't give THAT up!

Most people who make a high income and have no money are suckers for every shiny bauble that comes their way. I also know people with millions in the bank who live on $50k a year very nicely.

It doesn’t feel rich because it isn’t