What is a good income in DC?

[AdumaU]

Did my calculations and about $175k is a solid middle class income in the DMV area if you have no debt. I'm almost 6 years out of school making $90k and my fiance is making $50k as a postdoctoral fellow and we still need to watch our budget, but we make it work.

So let's say you both are making $87,500 and contributing 10% into a 401k and $5000 a year into a Roth IRA and one of you pays $200 a paycheck for health/vision/dental to cover your family.

$1765 + $1888 for a combined net income of $3653 per paycheck or roughly $7300 a month, not including declaring any dependents if you have children. But let's assume you have 2 kids. So $1842 + $1965 = $3807 or $7614 a month

I think that's a decent amount. You'll still have to set a budget, but you can pay a mortgage and have kids and save for college.

[gomason]

Originally Posted by coldbliss

This is the NUMBER ONE reason why the cost of living in the DC region is so expensive. Educated professional elites share social circles from their college days. Only fitting that lawyers would marry doctors. Business executives would marry architects. Dentists marrying federal government agency executives. No social bonds between upper economic class and lower economic class. Exacerbates financial inequality. Inequality creates more poverty. More poverty creates broken households and more crime. More crime means greater financial strain on city/county budgets.

I think it's more than just sharing social circles from college. Two people from upper middle class are going to have a lot more in common in general than one person from the upper middle class and one person from the lower class.