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You can have a very decent living for 100k a year. A large % of NJ Residents earn less than 100k. However, whether if you feel well off or not depends on your lifestyle spending habits.
One thing I would agree with you are your complaints about the commute to the city. The time it takes to commute absolutely sucks and is expensive.
I'm doing fine with less then 100K in NJ. Put kids thru college and paid their bills, bought a home in florida also. Don't live above your means. Simple.
I'm doing fine with less then 100K in NJ. Put kids thru college and paid their bills, bought a home in florida also. Don't live above your means. Simple.
I never made $100K until the last few years of my career, almost when my daughter was out of high school. Couldn't buy a house where I lived in NW Bergen County, but I could pay the rent, pay my bills, take an occasional vacation, and give my kid everything she needed, like braces, plus stuff she didn't need, like horseback riding lessons. We didn't have as much money as some of her classmates, but we were OK. Lived in a nice, safe town, the schools were good enough that she went on to get two Bachelor's degrees and is going back for her Ph.D.
I'm doing fine with less then 100K in NJ. Put kids thru college and paid their bills, bought a home in florida also. Don't live above your means. Simple.
Yup!
It's all about not living beyond your means--which is something that a lot of people can't seem to accomplish.
During my working years, I never made as much as $100k, yet I managed to pay off a 30 year mortgage in 17 years, I took some very nice international vacations, I bought myself a new car--for cash--every 6-8 years, and I still had enough money left to invest for the long term. The saying, "Pay yourself first", was my motto, and I managed to save/invest at least $1k every month on that salary, while not depriving myself of anything that I needed.
Now that I am retired, my income all-told is only ~$80k (Yes, it REALLY does pay-off in the long run if you have the self-discipline to invest wisely while you are in your younger years), and I still live very comfortably.
I never made $100K until the last few years of my career, almost when my daughter was out of high school.
I don't know how long ago this was for you, but making 100k even say as recently as the early 2000's went a lot further than making 100k in 2016. I know that goes without saying, but I think older generations kind of downplay that fact. Us millennials have it pretty tough.
Oh, they moved out of Seattle 20 or so years ago. It was getting expensive then.
How does $300,000 for a 3-4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath on a 1/4 acre with about $6,500 to $7,000 in taxes sound? You can find that in South Jersey. Taxes are a little high, but it's not really worse than the Philly suburbs. It's not Northern New Jersey.
Exactly. If that family of 3 had a HH income of 130,000 (lets just say two teachers), all of the above is VERY affordable. You'd be living the Dave Ramsey dream. That income DOES NOT require commutable distance to NYC.
I don't know how long ago this was for you, but making 100k even say as recently as the early 2000's went a lot further than making 100k in 2016. I know that goes without saying, but I think older generations kind of downplay that fact. Us millennials have it pretty tough.
~34K in 1980 = $55K in 1990 = $72K in 2000 = $100K in 2016.
Of course, NJ housing has gone up faster than that.
$100K salary means you can roughly afford a $350K house ... which I mean is perfectly livable but the retired folks saying $100K is a lot of money to raise a family in NJ (it's not; it is a lot still if you're single) should think about whether their place if bought today would go for more than that.
It's really context dependent -- as a single person, $100K is a great salary. For a family, not so much. For neither is it what it was 20 years ago.
Last edited by ALackOfCreativity; 06-25-2016 at 10:22 AM..
~34K in 1980 = $55K in 1990 = $72K in 2000 = $100K in 2016.
Of course, NJ housing has gone up faster than that.
$100K salary means you can roughly afford a $350K house ... which I mean is perfectly livable but the retired folks saying $100K is a lot of money to raise a family in NJ (it's not; it is a lot still if you're single) should think about whether their place if bought today would go for more than that.
It's really context dependent -- as a single person, $100K is a great salary. For a family, not so much. For neither is it what it was 20 years ago.
I don't know how long ago this was for you, but making 100k even say as recently as the early 2000's went a lot further than making 100k in 2016. I know that goes without saying, but I think older generations kind of downplay that fact. Us millennials have it pretty tough.
Yes i'm a millennial and i'm feeling the pain. with a family of 3 where you are paying about $7000 towards property taxes and close to $5000 just for the commute. And including the car payments, day care and other bills, there isn't any disposable income
Yes. People tend to forget how impactful it gets over time when it isn't quantified.
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