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

As others have said, it depends on where you live. Don't expect to make it without struggle if you are in the San Francisco area. If you are in the Midwest or the South, you'd be in excellent shape.

OP,

What job do you expect to only make $40-55k?

Yes, you can support a family with one child on $80k a year. But, there will be considerable sacrifices. First, your wife will not have the option to stay home with your kid for very long, unless you are able to save up a lot of money before child birth. Second, you will have to try to minimize housing cost as much as possible, while making sure that you are in a school district that is good enough to send your kid to public school. That will usually mean living in a suburban area that is far from the city. If you work in the city, that will mean that you may not see your kid much during the week. Third, vacations will be state parks and visiting relatives. Skiing, traveling out of the country, staying in hotels, etc. will be budget busters.

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.

What is the obsession with paying for your kids' college? You are not forced to do this nor is it anywhere near necessary. They have student loans for this very reason. Or have your kids pay for it themselves by getting a job.

If you can't raise a family off $40k each, you are severely mismanaging your money.

Having Kidson Minimum Pay wrote:

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.

Overly sensitive I don't think so. You are guilty of painting with too broad a brush.

Disability is not failure. If you think being obese is failure then label the obesity failure just don't lump all illnesses and the subsequent disability they cause as failure on the victim's part.

Don't lump the woman and child run over on the sidewalk by a drunken drive as failures because their disability insurance paid the medical bills that helped them get walking again. Don't lump children of someone dying from cancer or orphaned and homeless by fire a failure because they utilize a welfare program designed to protect them from going hungry and homeless.

Having issue with the willfully obese is one thing labeling disabled people failures another.

Welfare and public assistance as a multigenerational family business is not the same as using these programs in the way they were intended.

Tom Hyland

under acheivee wrote:

The profession I want doesn't pay that much. I'd be at about $40k/year and would ceiling out at about $55k/year. After that the only increase in pay I'd get would just be to keep up with inflation. I figure if I had a wife who made about the same though, or even a little less, that'd be $70k-$85k/year between us, which seems like a lot to me, but then I'm also a young single guy living in an apartment. Would that much money be enough to support a family and not have to worry too much about putting food on the table and going on a yearly family vacation of some kind?

Good grief. You make that in an expensive part of the country then it will be tough. You make that in 90% of the country and you will do fine.

You just can't go crazy with spending.

Buy a smaller house (even in a great community), OR save up to put a BIG downpayment on a house so that your mortgage is very small.

Before the two of you have children, you could throw ~HALF your income at a house and buy a $120,000 house (or townhouse) outright somewhere within 4 years. Not good enough for you? Ok, go for a $160,000 and take 6 years to pay that off.

Buy reasonable cars.

Don't go crazy with cable or cell phone plans.

I started a family in 1996, and shortly after our daughter was born, we went down to my ONE income and moved to Ohio. At the time I made $41,000 a year. We bought our first house shortly after (the house we still live in), and we still had some student loans we were paying back at that time. We had a second child in 2000 and my wife was a stay at home mom for ~15 years before going back to work half time in 2011.

I make more than $41,000 now, and her income helps, but we were still doing fine financially even when my salary was under $50,000.

You can do it.

This is a pretty pointless question. There's so many varying situations and expectations.

I would have to really, really love my job to intentionally choose a position that pays that much. I'd be giving up all the fun things I spend my money on that actually makes life enjoyable for me. That's a trade off I'm not willing to make.

The only replies on this thread worth paying attention to are by people in the actual situation you are asking about. My wife and I make 70-80k between us, live in the most expensive real estate market in the US (the DC area), are around 40 years old, have one kid, own a nice house in a nice neighborhood with excellent schools, own a nice car, have no debt aside from our (good and easily manageable) mortgage, have plenty of savings, and spend plenty of money on unnecessary things, including trips to run marathons and European trips, each at least once a year. Of course you can get by with a family of three on that income. It's not remotely difficult. We didn't even start making any money until our 30s. Before then we were students accumulating debt, all of which we've now paid off. We get no financial help from parents or anyone else, and didn't inherit any money or property.

Psh that's it? I'm 28, single and only make 25k a year. I live in the top floor of the most expensive apartment complex in Hong Kong. I own a Lamborghini, but usually don't use it as my chauffeur drives me everywhere. Every couple weeks I fly my private jet. I'd explain more, but I have to see if my butler is done cleaning my $10k suit.

Some lunatic wrote:

Not in NYC

Or any city worth living in.

let me complete your sentence wrote:

Some lunatic wrote:

Not in NYC

Or any city worth living in.

Given that median household income in New York City is $57,683/year, it seems that making it on $80,000/year should be very doable.

Good Lord you people are profligate with money!

Rotors and pads are still fair game!

Tom, I don't know if you just want to rationalize something, or just want to argue, but I think most would find my premise pretty clear: "Yes, disability is often a sign of failure". It is you who would like to generalize the situation--not I.

Most of us out here can see what is taking place around us, we can listen to what many others are saying, and we can read the national statistics. It is getting so that examples such as you present are the exception, and not the rule. Obesity, careless lifestyles, and gaming the system, are more the rule than the exception these days--that is failure no matter how you want to couch it.

Critical Thinking wrote:

Given that median household income in New York City is $57,683/year, it seems that making it on $80,000/year should be very doable.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html

Good Lord you people are profligate with money!

Put down the thesaurus and work on reading comprehension.

keters peter wrote:

What is the obsession with paying for your kids' college? You are not forced to do this nor is it anywhere near necessary. They have student loans for this very reason. Or have your kids pay for it themselves by getting a job.

I got through college on my own and it took away from my educational success. I couldn't attend the best school I got into and I worked up to four-jobs at a time while pursuing a very time consuming major and walking on to the track team. Eventually, I had to quit the track team to make room for classes and work.

I may have learned some life lessons about time management and appreciating hard work but it didn't lend itself to a better education. I survived but I'm happy that my son doesn't have to have the same experience.

Surprise! wrote:

1st question:

Where do you live?

_____________________

Exactly.

Midwest - sure, you could.

New England, Northeast, probably not.

I live in New England, no kids, wife makes about 80k, I make a little more than that, and we are in a small house, with not much disposable income.

If we lived in OH, MN, MI, IN, we would have a much nicer house, more spending money and be able to east very well.

i make about 80k myself, unmarried, in the midwest, with a big mortgage, 8k in student loan debt, 0 credit card debt, and 0 car payment. cheap insurance, cheap cable/internet/phone, and i can barely take care of myself. i have no kids, but i probably wouldn't even consider having kids until either a.) i downsized my house, or b.) my spouse and i had an aggregate income of around 150k+.

just my take.