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I don't make $100K and I don't live paycheck to paycheck, but I can see how it can happen where I live.
I make $80K a year and live outside DC (not the cheapest area). After taxes, insurance, and 401K, my take home is $65K a year. Things like my mortgage tick up every year due to tax increases, usually about $600 more each year ($50 added to my monthly mortgage payment each year). I live in a 35-year-old townhouse in a suburban neighborhood, it's nice, but not a mansion. My mortgage payment is currently $2140 a month. It's going up to $2190 a month in June. My HOA fees are also up every year too. The two combined are a few hundred shy of half my take home pay. And that's not including little maintenance costs here and there. And my salary has been frozen for two years now so income isn't keeping up with expenses and lately rising grocery prices had been pinching things more.
By the way, according to Zillow, if I bought my house today, my mortgage would be $3265 a month.
I am lucky in that I have a nice "emergency fund" that I can tap into if needed (I can't add to it anymore, but I haven't had to take anything out yet either). And I have no debt aside from the mortgage (no car loans, student loans, or credit card debt). I also don't have a cable bill (I cut that a few years ago to save money).
Even though I don't have any of those bills and I am a good saver and frugal, I've run the numbers and, in time, I will slowly be priced out of the area (or I have to slowly reduce saving for retirement--which is a non-starter since there are no pensions for me, it's all 401K and IRA). Luckily, My job is now remote and in May my daughter graduates from high school and I can move out of the area to someplace cheaper (and I am).
But if someone was in my same boat, was as frugal as me, made just $20K more than me, but just bought a home or is renting, yeah, I can see paycheck to paycheck unless they were willing to not save (or not save much) for retirement.
If by 'remove books' you mean take out the books with descriptive sexual experiences, then I am all for it. Conservatives are not interested in banning To Kill A Mockingbird or Tom Sawyer. The liberals are the ones who hate those.
<--- not interested in banning any books but agree with Rocko's post -- maybe if they had the kids reading finance books instead of these ancient works of fiction -- people would do better in life. Just sayin'
I totally agree with this, I now live back in the metro Seattle area where I was on and raise. Prior to that, Anchorage, AK and before that, the metro NYC area. A $100K income in these areas are enough to meet all your basic needs without worrying if if you have enough to pay the electricity bill at the end of the month.
" the average $100k earner"
"With your head in the hot oven and your feet in a bucket of ice "on average" you feel OK"
To me, these "the average" are a waste of time and useless.
A $100k does NOT go near as far in Hawaii as it does in say the hills of W Va. for example.
The United States are too diverse for "the average'" to have any real meaning or make any sense.
in statistics there are 3 or more measures of central tendency)when i got my degree it was 3 basically: mean, median and mode)... which "average" is the best case? At best we need to have the average broken down to different regional areas for this exact reason.
I don't make $100K and I don't live paycheck to paycheck, but I can see how it can happen where I live.
I make $80K a year and live outside DC (not the cheapest area). After taxes, insurance, and 401K, my take home is $65K a year. Things like my mortgage tick up every year due to tax increases, usually about $600 more each year ($50 added to my monthly mortgage payment each year). I live in a 35-year-old townhouse in a suburban neighborhood, it's nice, but not a mansion. My mortgage payment is currently $2140 a month. It's going up to $2190 a month in June. My HOA fees are also up every year too. The two combined are a few hundred shy of half my take home pay. And that's not including little maintenance costs here and there. And my salary has been frozen for two years now so income isn't keeping up with expenses and lately rising grocery prices had been pinching things more.
By the way, according to Zillow, if I bought my house today, my mortgage would be $3265 a month.
I am lucky in that I have a nice "emergency fund" that I can tap into if needed (I can't add to it anymore, but I haven't had to take anything out yet either). And I have no debt aside from the mortgage (no car loans, student loans, or credit card debt). I also don't have a cable bill (I cut that a few years ago to save money).
Even though I don't have any of those bills and I am a good saver and frugal, I've run the numbers and, in time, I will slowly be priced out of the area (or I have to slowly reduce saving for retirement--which is a non-starter since there are no pensions for me, it's all 401K and IRA). Luckily, My job is now remote and in May my daughter graduates from high school and I can move out of the area to someplace cheaper (and I am).
But if someone was in my same boat, was as frugal as me, made just $20K more than me, but just bought a home or is renting, yeah, I can see paycheck to paycheck unless they were willing to not save (or not save much) for retirement.
This pretty much sums up the current situation for many people. I have a little more than you after living housing cost due to living in a lower-cost area (although inflation here is above 10% so might not be for long) and in a house being that I am in Florida but I have kids so in reality, I have less at the end of the month.
This is at 100k, only 30% of Americans make 100K or more. I do not know how people making $50K, $40k are saving for retirement (which is stock market only now), keeping food in the frig, and supposed to afford to have kids, buy a home ect. The American dream is getting harder and harder and the current US birth rate shows where the middle class has cut back its spending, on having children.
Yet somehow my Baby Boomer parents and family seem to think 100K equals a life of luxury because that was the cost of a house in 1990.
Most $100k jobs are going to be concentrated in HCOL areas. $100k isn't a whole lot of money when rents for a very modest place are now $2000+ per mo.
My modest neck of the woods is not so modest anymore. The prices in the article (linked below) from January 2022 have already increased 20% in just 2 months. We are starting to hit the crisis level for locals since wages have no way of keeping up with the increase. I never thought Central Florida would have bidding wars for middle-class houses.
Home prices are also up over 30% in one year and will only get worse. And just in case people are wondering, Florida is a low pay state for most jobs. There is no way people here can absorb these increases, and I am concerned Florida will look like California with the homeless crisis if this continues for the next several years.
Quote:
Overall in 2021, the Tampa metro area ranked number two in the nation for fastest rent growth at 25.6 percent, just behind number one, Riverside, California. The year-over-year growth rate in rent prices in 2021 was 10.1 percent nationally, Realtor.com reported.
" the average $100k earner"
"With your head in the hot oven and your feet in a bucket of ice "on average" you feel OK"
To me, these "the average" are a waste of time and useless.
A $100k does NOT go near as far in Hawaii as it does in say the hills of W Va. for example.
The United States are too diverse for "the average'" to have any real meaning or make any sense.
Which makes these "studies" ridiculous on their face. There is a MASSIVE chunk of America where $100k annual is straight baller. And there are plenty of spots where it has you at or below the local poverty line.
But generally, in a country where the median individual income is ~$36k, an annual income of $100k is a pretty solid wage that most folks will, or at least should live on just fine. Comes down to individual choices and behaviors.
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