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I live in the Chicago area (Naperville). I'm renting a 2 BR apartment here for $1,150/month.
I'm 36, have no kids and make around $68,000/year. My income is around $3,000/month more than my expenses.
I live a very frugal lifestyle and I work from home, though. The only reason I have a 2 BR apartment is because I work from home and use one of the bedrooms as an office.
I also travel a lot for work so I get mileage reimbursements and per diems that mostly equate to extra income for me since my car is paid off.
My job also doesn't pay into Social Security which increases my take home pay. Instead, they put 12% of my salary into a 401K (this is on top of the $68,000/year).
I also own a home in a different town that I'm renting out for $1,250/month with a monthly mortgage of $1,050, so there is a little extra income there.
Everyone's situation is different but I find it hard to believe that people who are single, have no kids and are making $60,000/year are having a hard time getting by, unless you live in New York City or San Francisco. If they are having trouble then they need to make some lifestyle changes and change their spending habits.
I used to think 4 or 5 weeks of PTO (personal, vacation, sick) was good for a position, but not anymore.
Salary aside, 37 days is a nice amount of paid time off, even if the sick time is only supposed to be used if sick. Also, the company is offering 10 holidays. whereas many offer 9 holidays. Since the vacation time is generous, and you listed 40hrs or less a week - Is it a government, non-profit or a public sector (such as from a public university) position?
I have 4 weeks vacation, 10 holidays, 2 personal days, and 8 sick days working for a bank.
350K is just an average household income in rich towns
350K isn't even the mean household income in San Francisco (which is higher than the median). You are clearly out of touch with reality. Most people do not make $350K.
As for the people saying it's good to not pay into social security, unless you already have your 10 years in for disability, I always think that is a huge risk. What happens if you become disabled and can't work anymore? There's absolutely no protection with those "alternative" plans, particularly for younger people who don't have their 40 quarters of buy-in. Even if there may be issues for younger folks to get paid for social security later on, they can benefit from SSDI earlier if they become disabled.
As for the people saying it's good to not pay into social security, unless you already have your 10 years in for disability, I always think that is a huge risk. What happens if you become disabled and can't work anymore? There's absolutely no protection with those "alternative" plans, particularly for younger people who don't have their 40 quarters of buy-in. Even if there may be issues for younger folks to get paid for social security later on, they can benefit from SSDI earlier if they become disabled.
As pleasant as this thought is, I have already paid in to Social Security for 13 years before getting a job earlier this year that does not require me to pay into Social Security. Instead, they use that money to contribute to my 401K. That was one thing that appealed to me about the job since I will no longer be paying in to that pyramid scheme and will be able to directly track how much money I will have for retirement.
My employer now requires all new employees to pay into Social Security and I'm now grandfathered in with the option of paying back into it. Not surprisingly, NONE of my coworkers who are grandfathered in to avoiding Social Security opted to pay in to Social Security. The only ones who were thinking about it are over 60 and close to retirement anyways.
Everyone's situation is different but I find it hard to believe that people who are single, have no kids and are making $60,000/year are having a hard time getting by, unless you live in New York City or San Francisco. If they are having trouble then they need to make some lifestyle changes and change their spending habits.
Like you I'm frugal so it's easy for me to save money. But for the average social person who likes to go out and date and hang around friends and have hobbies, 60K can be a bit tight for the majority. The frugal lifestyle is not for everyone.
Where I live it can be a bit of a challenge, especially if you drive a car and don't have the maximum discount. Anyone can save but you have to make sacrifices.
These threads are pretty stupid to be honest you have to factor in the city and state, if you're single, married, kids, commute time, public transportation costs, cost of gas, etc. So really there's about 100,000 different scenarios.
I'm not necessarily a frugal person. But, when I was in that salary range I still managed to do just fine. Even splurged on some luxuries from time to time. That's a good salary for a single.
As pleasant as this thought is, I have already paid in to Social Security for 13 years before getting a job earlier this year that does not require me to pay into Social Security. Instead, they use that money to contribute to my 401K. That was one thing that appealed to me about the job since I will no longer be paying in to that pyramid scheme and will be able to directly track how much money I will have for retirement.
My employer now requires all new employees to pay into Social Security and I'm now grandfathered in with the option of paying back into it. Not surprisingly, NONE of my coworkers who are grandfathered in to avoiding Social Security opted to pay in to Social Security. The only ones who were thinking about it are over 60 and close to retirement anyways.
I sure hope you are paying your Self Employment Tax. If you are earning an income for working for anyone including if you own a business, and are not having social security tax withheld, and the company paying their shares, you must pay Self Employment Tax instead.
The rate consists of two parts: 12.4% for social security (old-age, survivors, and disability insurance) and 2.9% for Medicare (hospital insurance) total of 14.3%.
Go to the IRS link below, for information on this. I have known a few people that did not pay it, and got caught after a few years, and they ended up having to pay half their income or more that year, to catch up.
1. she ignored everything but zeroed in on one thing; so all that i said in that post that was reasonable was completely ignored by her in her post
2. she then takes the employer's side as usual - on an employee dominated board - to get a rib out of posters here; if you've followed her posts, you'll see that employers can rarely do wrong in her eyes and employees can rarely do right
3. She knows and I know - and she knows that I know - thatnot once in my post did i mention that my student loans are "the employers problem." she is trolling by making stuff up because her life is so empty she has to put words in my mouth to attack the employee side
4. Unless she is reaaaaaaally slow and dense, she knows that for an employer to get a well-educated employee from a top school, that that employee will have had to incur student loans 95% of the time; so, for her to say that student loans "are not the employer's problem" means that she is either trolling or she has the mental capacity of a peanut; to even use the words "not the employer's problem" shows that she can't even frame the issue correctly. those words are so loaded that it just oozes trolling.
I agree with your assessment of the situation--she took your comment out of context. From my perspective also, it looked like a reply just to stir up an argument. What I saw from your post is that a salary of 70k was just not enough given that you have these student loans. You mentioned nothing about how a higher salary is the responsibility of the employer because of the loans.
Often, skilled professions come with the necessity of degrees that can frequently cost a lot. For example, in my profession (pharmacy) it very common for the degree to cost upwards of 100k. Many students come out of universities with debts near the 200k range. For an employer to offer a prospective pharmacist a salary at 40k would be ridiculous because the eduction costs way more than that.
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