$100,000 is a lot of money, top 7% in USA

Christopher Columbus wrote:

Success is also about putting yourself out there, being visible, and networking every single moment of your life. The $ will follow.

Work smart, not hard...

I just came here to say: moron

Precious Roy wrote:

$100k is just fine if you are single, even in expensive cities like Boston and Seattle. $100k is not that much if you have a house and a family. After taxes, health insurance, and 401k, you may have about $50-60k left over. It takes about $2k a month to pay a mortgage, ins. and taxes on a very middle class home in most cities. In more expensive cities, $2k a month won't get you anywhere within 30 miles of the city unless you want to live in cracktown. Then you've got about $500 a month for transportation, at least $500 for cell phones, internet, streaming services, phone, water, gas and electric. That leaves you with about $1000-$1500 for food, entertainment, clothes, pets, emergencies, etc. That is very tight.

It's only tight because of your choices. You don't need streaming services. You shouldn't have a wife that doesn't work. You are dumb. Including investments and then saying things are tight is stupid. You are dumb. If you are going to include investing then things should be tight for everyone at every income level because you should be investing any left over money. Try not to be so dumb.

I live in NYC and make $100k base as a single 25 year old (work in financial services). It’s absurd to me that I live this way, which is way better than I had growing up, even though both my parents are college-educated professionals. Despite the absurd cost of rent and taxes here, I find I can still save / invest about $20-25k a year while frequently going out to eat / party / travel. I don’t pay too close attention to my expenses and things always seem to work out.

$100k is probably not enough to be the sole breadwinner for a family in this part of the country, but it’s a lot of money. Anyone who says otherwise has fully given in to “lifestyle creep”

You are dumber by telling someone to have their wife work. Money is not more important than children. My wife stayed home for 10 years. Now back to the first dumb guy. Get rid of streaming and cable and high priced cell phones. You aren’t really speaking from experience or you would know that taxes are almost nonexistent in the situation that you described. I made $110k when my wife was at home and our total star and federal tax bills combined were $7k. Insurance was $6k and and we contributed $10k to a 491k. All combined, that is only $23k vs the 40-50 mentioned above.

I make in excess of 100k and ride the bus

ck3237 wrote:

I make in excess of 100k and ride the bus

What city? What job?

wreth wrote:

ck3237 wrote:

I make in excess of 100k and ride the bus

What city? What job?

Same here. I lived in NJ and commuted via bus to Manhattan for years. I worked in compliance for a large bank.

Me Also wrote:

wreth wrote:

What city? What job?

Same here. I lived in NJ and commuted via bus to Manhattan for years. I worked in compliance for a large bank.

Ditto, but work from home so bus when going out in SF...nothing better than a $2.50 ride to get a great dinner. Though I don't mind lyft line for $5 if the bus time is over 15 min.

barbara jean wrote:

Enough with this hard work makes you rich bull. Unless you are a fruit picker getting paid by the pound, how successful or rich you are, IN TODAY'S WORLD, has absolutely nothing to do with how 'hard' you are working.

Yeah. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett. They didn't work hard at all.

Great point.

crazyb wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

So 100k sounds like a lot compared to most of the USA but most of those jobs are in places where 100k gets you a small apartment and a bus commute.

LOL on the bus. I've never heard of any $100K workers riding the bus unless the bus was privately owned by their employer.

Now retired, but I took the bus to work every day and was making $100k+ per year. Coulda drove, but parking was about $25 a day, and the garage was 500 meters from my office. The bus dropped me off 200m away. Door-to-door, driving would have saved me 7 or 8 minutes. Got to read on the bus, too.

Lots of people in cities take public transportation to work.

urdumb wrote:

It's only tight because of your choices. You don't need streaming services.

Streaming services are an absurdly cheap form of entertainment that has zero discernible effect on the bottom line for someone making 100k.

urdumb wrote:

You shouldn't have a wife that doesn't work.

Where did he say the wife doesn't work? By the way, what if the cost of childcare is equal to or greater than what your wife could make in the workforce?

urdumb wrote: Including investments and then saying things are tight is stupid. You are dumb. If you are going to include investing then things should be tight for everyone at every income level because you should be investing any left over money. Try not to be so dumb.

Spoken like a poor person. Investments as a category should not be simply what's left over after spending. Your minimum investment targets should be prioritized ahead of other consumption. That's what makes it tight--the fact that most of the investment money has already been allocated. Any invested residual cash is obviously not part of the budget that he's walking through here.

crazyb wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

So 100k sounds like a lot compared to most of the USA but most of those jobs are in places where 100k gets you a small apartment and a bus commute.

LOL on the bus. I've never heard of any $100K workers riding the bus unless the bus was privately owned by their employer.

You must not live in a city, or like most Americans you're addicted to your car. My best friend makes $300K per year and takes the bus to work probably 3 days a week (and walks the other two). This is in Boston if it matters.

Do any of you utterly deluded idiots realize that money is intrinsically meaningless? How dull must you be to even consider it an aim. The planetary bottleneck is approaching, and all of you materialistic inferiors will be swept away for the higher humans (with exceedingly superior creativity and affect levels) to finally actualize the promise and riches held by this planet and all of its species. You local-level bodies, obsessing over your salaries, are genuinely pathetic and lower order. Goodbye!

No matter what your income is, if you choose to spend more than you make, you will struggle. I make about 75K in Columbia, SC with a stay at home wife and 3 young kids and we do not struggle one bit. No debt other than the home, which is on track to be paid off early (only a 15 year mortgage to begin with). I'm able to max out my Roth IRA and contribute to my kids' 529s every year and we have solid amount invested in a brokerage account. I have co-workers who make the same as me that complain about how broke they are and how they will never be able to retire. The difference is they have expensive homes, brand new cars, the latest iPhones, go out to eat every other day, take expensive vacations, etc. So for every person like me who says 75K is plenty to raise a family on, there are probably 10 others who would say it's nearly impossible.

All great points...........but at the end of the day you have to live in Columbia, SC. Cost of Living is low in these areas for a reason, and typically high in desirable areas - for good reason.....

You answered your own question - staying late, working weekends. When you could be out living your life but instead you're grinding at your job, that's hard work.

Honestly running is not hard work. Running is fun. It's my hobby and I do it for free and I'd do more of it if my body would cooperate and I had more time.

It all depends on how you live and what you desire. I look back 10 years ago breaking $30k my first time I was excited and thought I finally made it. However I think that was the first time I made my own money and was proud. Today my income is closer to $200k and now it is more about what income you have available. I am never satisfied financially and will always want to earn more because it is the way I compare myself to others.

riccc wrote:

I know everyone here making $150,000 is somehow scraping by and thinks $100K is nothing but it's top 7% and unless you are a financial idiot you should have no problem getting by on that salary. $200K puts you in the top 2%.

This is due to the total inequality in wealth and earnings.

You can be in the top 2% and still be struggling in America.

Of course the dozen or so guys on Wall Street making over $1 billion per year, which is 10,000 times $100k per year, are not struggling.

The reason grad students at ETH making the equivalent of 80k per year complain about money the same way people from the boondocks making 20k per complain about money is because if they went to school in the boondocks they'd only be making 20k and have even less to do.