Our situation is close to Buffalo Gal"s, in that we give to charity, save for future kids and have animals (two large breed dogs and two cats, but still under 50K
This is a really interesting discussion. I grew up in Dubai and visited India very often before I moved here at 18, and I was amazed at the standard of living out here. It's incredible how much Americans consume and what they consider to be basic necessities. I don't hold it against anyone, it's always harder to do with less than what you are used to, but in many other countries, paper towels are not basic necessities, you use and wash rags. Ziploc bags/containers/clingwrap/aluminun foil are not necessities, you use and wash non-disposable pots with lids. Basic cable, juice and soda, giant tvs - not a necessity.
So why should americans have to compare with living standards in the rest of the world? Because globalization was practically invented here, and now we're competing with the rest of the world. Those wages that are stagnating here? They're rising in all those countries that for decades were completely stuck. America, and the west in general, has had an amazing amount of prosperity in the last century, and now the rest of the world is catching up.
I live here now, and with the decline in average standard of living, it affects me too. I certainly don't want to see my wages stagnate or fall. But in the global economy that America has created and taken advantage of for years, I have to learn to accept that my competition is not just the guy next door, it's the guy the next continent over, struggling to feed his family too.
It depends on where you live, a lot - the poster who mentioned "relatively" rich made a great point. Feeling rich has more to do with comparing to the people around you, and some days it certainly seems like "everyone" has nicer houses and bigger, newer cars than mine.
I think it also depends on some major expenses - I put myself through college and ended up with a modest student loan (now paid off). My parents never gave me a car, never helped with any down payments, didn't help with college, etc. So that's a lot of capital-type stuff that many of my peers had given to them, that I never did.
So, even though I make a nice living, it's not a huge surprise that I feel like many of my peers have more than I do. They had more to start with and less to pay off.
A question like this is very subjective because each person or family is dealing with different circumstances. I don't think Catherine was implying that you can't live making six figures, but making that amount should not be perceived as you are well off or considered rich.
If you live in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, or any of the surrounding suburbs, I can tell you personally it is very hard to maintaining a decent lifestyle making 100k. If you have wife and kids you have to be on a very strict budget to make it work. I’m not saying making 100k is nothing to sneeze at, and those of us who make that should be fortunate and thankful, but it’s not what it’s crap up to be.
I'm from NYC and my wife and I have over 100k combined. It doesn't get us as far as we'd like. We have a modest car, own our co-op, and don't have a flat-screen tv. We don't live in Manhattan. We don't have premium cable (basic plus a Netfix plan). Can we save and contribute to our IRA's and 401(k)'s - yes, though not maxed out. Are we living the good life? Well, we can't quite afford to go out and buy a house right now. I know we're privileged compared to many in the country and even in NYC but the point of this post was what 100k meant in life and the truth is it's not worth what you might think. We have two kids and would love to get a mini-van but it ain't gonna happen right now. Hell, we spend around $13k for child care for our baby! With 100k, if you are in a high cost city, you are not set up for the good life! It's still a lot of work to make ends meet. That may sound strange to some, it makes us scratch our heads, but it's true.
When people talk about luck, I'm always reminded of the story of the farmer and horse. Here is one version of the story -- you can find dozens of versions around the net. Here's another. To use the metaphor of the article above, what if Jane meets the man of her dreams hitch-hiking in the desert and Eddie gets a brain tumor at his new job before his health insurance kicks in. Lucky or not?
This isn't to discount the idea of being prudent or prepared, just to argue that a lot of whether any particular event is "lucky" is perspective, which can always be changed based on future contingencies.
Definitely it depends on where you are living. In upstate NY, we have two cars (including one brand-new one as of 2006), one of us is a full-time student, we give away 10% of our income, we have a 1200-square-foot apartment, have two large-breed dogs, and save at least 25% of our income for retirement, future kids college fund and savings for cars and future house. No debt except for the credit card which is paid off every month. We are diligent about not eating out and unnecessary expenses, but other than that we live an awesome and I daresay luxurious life.
This is on one income, $35k pretax. But we live in a neighborhood with a median income of $13k so we are RELATIVELY RICH.
I have relatives in other cities like Chicago and Atlanta, and their expenses seem sky-high to me.
Where you live and how many peeps you have to support definitely makes a big difference in how six figures "feels" in terms of the sort of lifestyle you can afford. A childless couple in Iowa is totally apples-n-oranges to a 3-4 person family in one of the coastal cities. There's also a big difference between being a single-income family where one person makes 100K, and a family that needs two FT workers making 50K to get to that figure.
Another thing that's misleading is that higher taxes and other factors (EIC, access to social benefits) mean that 100K won't give you twice as much to spend at 50K, and 50K won't give you twice as much spending money as 25K.
That said, we're in kind of a similar boat, in that our household income is upper-middle class but we still need to practice a lot of money discipline in order to save for retirement, avoid the debt trap, and be able to afford the things that matter to us. I wouldn't say we're "struggling," and I'll smack anyone who implies I'm "whining," but no--it's not the grand and glorious lifestyle that you imagine it to be when you're on the underside of the household income average. Comfortable, but no luxurious.
I see on the other blog how they're going after the couple for not saving for college. It wouldn't be hard to save some money for college if you were making "six figures" the whole 18 years leading up to that point. But a lot of people who do wind up disqualified from financial aid by the time their kids are in college were making minimum wage or not much better at the time they were born.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is that it is human nature to always feel that if only you had 110% of your current income, you'd be doing fine. Another is that the cost of living is different in different parts of the country. These are very valid observations regarding the relationship between lifestyle and income. But they are not the reason I wrote this post.
The reason I put my personal information out there on the web is to put a real life face and voice to the straw man argument of the latte drinking middle class family who can't seem to hold onto the riches that are pouring through their fingers. My credentials on this are impeccable. My husband and I started contributing the maximum to our retirement accounts in our early twenties. We saved up for a down payment on our first home, which we bought in one of the richest markets in the state, while we were still in graduate school, living on grad student stipends. I was 24. Between our retirement savings and real estate investments we have built up a very respectable net worth since then, which I am not going to share here, but some people retire with no more savings than what we have in the bank. All of that while making considerably less than we have in 2007. We are not going to draw down our savings to buy a mercedes, so the discussion is really about what we can afford while living within our budget.
And we are very frugal. We currently record every purchase we make, even a buck in a vending machine, so I can say confidently that there is no magical vortex down which our money is disappearing. Just the usual, housing, utilities, repairs, gas, food, clothing, a little bit of entertainment, but there are no unusually bloated categories. If we wanted to save more money, yes, we could move. That's not the point. The point is that when we are in roughly the 80 percentile of income in the nation, we still can't really afford the things that people think middle class familes are supposed to have. There's something very strange about that.
Thanks for the discussion, and keep it coming. I would be happy to answer questions about what our expenses are in individual categories. To answer one person's question, I live in Ann Arbor Michigan, which I would guess is probably a nice median in terms of cost of living. Nowhere near as expensive as the coasts, but much more than other communities in the midwest.
FMF, yes that is a good observation about single income vs. dual income. I expect the reason for it is that a homemaker adds a great deal of value to the family that otherwise would be spent on child care, cleaning services, housekeeping, and general chaos.
While I try to do the weekly planning, I also keep my eyes open for "reduced for quick sale" produce and meat/fish to supplement our usual weekly supply of fresh produce with the also-rans.
If you can eat these items first, or process them for later consumption, you can stock your pantry/fridge/freezer and continue to build up items for use. For example, I buy up a couple of packages of overripe bananas every month, then peel and freeze them (I also do this routinely with the bananas we don't eat fast enough in the summer, when they ripen quickly). These are either added to smoothies, or pureed/smashed with a fork for addition to quick breads or pancakes. I also buy quantities of mangoes when they are on sale, and make Crockpot mango-ginger chutney for curries and as a side dish or addition to rice. This lasts forever in the fridge, but can also be canned.
Peppers can be roasted (remove any funky spots first), and then skinned and preserved in olive or other oil. They are also very nice as a puree or added to a sauce. Buying roasted red peppers in oil (with whole garlic cloves) is an expensive proposition. These also make lovely gifts for people (a la Mason jar gifts).
This was so funny to read...I bought a bag of the green ones out of curiosity--they were in a white bag and I wasn't sure if they were all green or maybe a different green, the "new color of love" :) After opening it and seeing that yes the whole bag was green I decided to buy more and save them for St. Patrick's Day! I never did figure out why they were green--thanks for enlightening me!
There's some discussion on my site that a $100k family with one parent working is better off than a $100k family with both parents working. Certainly there are less costs if one parent is at home (lower daycare, transportation, clothing, etc. expenses.)
I wouldn't be expecting a great deal of sympathy in regards to your six income figure.
In 2006, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be around $48,000. The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) in the year 2006 was roughly $26,000.
You are double that.
If you want to whine about how tough you have it at $100,000 a year you might want to first think about how everyone else is doing and decide you have it easy compared to the average working American family.
Just a side note: after hearing about a friend hit with a $1500 pet medical bill, we got both our cats health insurance. It's about $20 a month, but means we probably wont ever have to put a price tag on our pet's life.
"it's NEVER enough until you actually know what it is that you want out of life and save/spend accordingly."
I have figured out what I want from life, and it isn't "stuff." In a few months my car will be 20 years old and the only car my four children have ever known. Ninety-five percent of our clothing, bedding and household goods have come from the Salvation Army. Even before my husband died, I told him that even if I was a millionnaire I would shop at SA. When we must buy, it's second hand when possible.
We recycle and compost so much that we put out garbage every other week, thereby lowering that expense. We conserve water, lowering that expense. I read the newspaper on-line, eliminating that expense. We do not watch television and get movies from the library--no expense there. We get books and magazines from the library. We use everything to the last drop. I give away all that I can. Our drawers and closets shut because they are not crammed full. Our basement has only a freezer and some empty boxes kept for future use.
Our annual income for five is less than $40,000. People can't figure out how we can live on so little income and yet not "seem" poor. It's all about choices. I choose to want little. It leaves more time and space for relationships to grow and flourish, which is something I do want.
I have written extensive comments in the FreeMoneyFinance entry this one refers to (under the name gtFMF) and I was almost shunned for stating that our $160k pre-tax income only goes so far.
I wholeheartedly agree with the writer of this entry, let's see if the rest of the readers do too.
I found this post after one of my students included a reference. I am sad to say I had to give her a "D."
I cant tell if you are being disingenuous and have an ax to grind or don't know about labeling, contents or English language usage.
On your first set of critiquea:
"As it turns out, antibiotics were never added to milk or were ever present in milk. ....
Similarly, the same can be said of the other claims, regarding pesticides and hormones. First, hormones will always be present in milk; it’s part of the biology of a cow. To call milk ‘hormone-free’ .....
Finally, pesticides. The FTC has ruled that a manufacturer cannot make a "no pesticide" claim as it is untruthful, because pesticides are never added to milk or milk products. ..."
The antibiotics are used as growth factors in cows, not added to the milk. Horizon is stating that their cows are not getting the mass dose of antibiotics that other milk cows are getting. It is a true claim by Horizon and other organic milk producers and the use of mass does of antibiotics as growth factors in livestock is highly controversial.
Hormones. You imply that organic milk producers say their milk is "hormone free". You use quotes. What are you quoting? Nothing Horizon claimed! The issue is mass doses of hormones given to non organic milk cows. These resulting milk from Hormone dosed milk cows is LOWER in omega 3 fats and quite a few nutrients the FDA and many peer reviewed publications consider essential and helpful for human health.
You further claim "growth hormones, again according to the USDA, are only ever approved for beef cattle, plus lamb and veal."
BS BIGTIME on your part. The mass doses of milk production inducing hormones given to non organic cows are not called growth hormones. Growth hormones are given to slaughter destined livestock. Milk production hormones and egg production hormones are given to milk cows and egg production hens respectively!
Lastly on your pesticides claim the issue is whether the cows are eating corn with huge doses of pesticides as are all the non organic milk cows in the US. Have you ever even been near a farm or grain facility? not only is US corn subject to massive doses of pesticides in the field, it is often dosed in storage! That is 90% of what non organic milk cows eat -- one of the most highly pesticide dosed agro procuts there is.
I cannot believe your post, it is wrought with a total hacking of the English language.
Lets be sensible. Lots of organic product shave a negligible advantage but lots of organic products do.
The highest pesticide dosed foods are corn (especially corn destined for livestock -- and nowadays farmed fish), grapes, broccoli, strawberries and leafy vegetables.
One can find sensible tables with amount of pesticide dosing (and as importantly retention and ability to wash off) and price premium for organic. Who you are feeding is also an issue. Milk products are most heavily consumed by children. Children for obvious reason will carry he pesticides with them for longer periods and the usage of pesticides has greatly increased fro when todays adults were children.
If you are 50 years old and eat grapes once a month -- don;t worry if they are organic. If you feed your child grapes twice a week, you should know this is a heavily pesticide dosed product and you should consider organic.
Lastly although I am stunned at your inaccurate screed against Horizon, I would recommend horizon anyway. If you or your children drink a lot of milk you are better off with milk that produced by cows which are grass fed. Again PEER REVIEWED studies show the resulting milk has much more favorable ratios of healthy fats and DHA and ERA
Albert Einstein was correct ... everything is relative, and six figure incomes is no different. At a point when six figures reaches critical mass, and there is enough experience and expectations set for what is "normal", we begin to see things like this. Six figure incomes may be challenging for a variety of reasons, just like fix figure incomes are and seven incomes. We are what we eat ... in the case of our financial condition, we are what we spend.
When people make more money they tend to spend more. I think the keys is to keep your spending at a certain percentage of your income. My husband and I try to always spend less than 50% of our take home income. We live in Northern California and it is pretty expensive here, as I stated in a forum thread, a family of 4 earning 90k a year here is low income because the median for a family of 4 is 100k. However, it is definitely possible for people to spend 50% of their take home even here.
Honestly, doesn't it depend on where you live? I live in a nice suburb of New York City. Where you live directly affects the quality of the school district you send your kids to (assuming public school). Our town is certainly nice, but is nowhere near the upper levels in this general area (it's somewhere in the middle).
Starter homes here go for $450k and up. My home, which has 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms, 1400 square feet, on 4800 square feet of land, with no separate dining room, no garage, no basement and no family room, costs in excess of $500k. The taxes are over $8k per year as well. So, how is a family of 4, where the in-laws come to stay frequently, supposed to get by on less than $100k per year when the house itself is costing well over $3k per month? In addition, I usually work at home and this house isn't really big enough in that scenario. I don't have a private area to work, which is a problem. To get a house "the next level up" would probably cost over $700k.
That said, yes, we could move to a less expensive area and trade in our house for a mansion (or just get an equivalent house and lower our expenses dramatically). But our family and friends are here. Our children's friends are here. Our jobs are here. Our roots are here.
So, moving is not an option that we are interested in. It just means we need to make more money and that a low-six-figure salary, in this area, isn't putting you in the upper class.
With obvious exceptions, (medical things come quickly to mind), we all make our own choices. My family of six is just squeaking into six figures and while we obviously don't enjoy the same standard of living as the same income would have provided 20 years ago, we are doing pretty well. That said, we pay the big mortgage to live in an outstanding public school district and on a cul-de-sac so that my kids can safely play outside without my constant fear of the ball running into the street. We don't drink expensive coffee, but we do spent on decent wine. We don't drive new cars, but they are not terribly old either. I do splurge on brand names for certain things, such as warm winter coats, but we also do a lot of our shopping at consignment shops and thrift stores. We give and save generously, but occasionally we might shift that money temporarily if it suits the big picture. I could go back to work full-time or even add more hours to our part-time, but that creates other costs, both real financial costs and general household happiness costs. These are the choices that my family makes, and one of the privileges of living in a free country is that you get to make those choices yourself. I find it incredibly frustrating for anyone to belittle other peoples' choices unless they are just flagrantly wrong. One of the things that I like about Wise Bread is that people usually are able to enjoy a healthy and educational discussion without attacking each other. Please try to keep it that way.
You know, it's all relative. We 'struggle' to maintain our self-imposed budget of $250,000 a year ... yet our $2m home is paid off, I paid cash for my car (a very nice one indeed).
Yet, only a few short years ago we were living off my wife's salary and were actually $30k in debt. On my blog I talk about this, and what to do about it, but the point here is that it's NEVER enough until you actually know what it is that you want out of life and save/spend accordingly.
I think many people missed the point. For so long the ideal had been to get that six figure income and they you can have "all that" or at least quit stressing about everything financial. We were told for so long that if you do the right things and achieve a stated level life will then suddenly get easier.
Sure there are people who live WAY beyond their means and spend large sums of money on things they don't need to be. But the reality is that the cost of everything has gone up while wages have been stagnant for about the last 10 years. Work benefits and insurance benefits have also eroded. You used to get two weeks vacation and 1-2 weeks of sick leave. Now many people get only 2 weeks of PTO. This means if you have a family emergency or young kids who get sick frequently your not getting a vacation for about four years. Health insurance has eroded too. I remember the days of no copays and full coverage with no co-insurance. I didn't even have to pay for my health insurance a couple of places. Now it is our second largest expense, just for our insurance, that doesn't even include out of pocket.
The cost of everything has gone up. In the last 10 years where we currently are the cost of a basic starter home has gone up about $50,000 more. Gas is double, electricity is double, groceries are easily double and have gone up about 20% or more in the last year.
People were given an illusion that we were not losing relative wealth for the last decade. General consumables like TVs, small appliances and gadgets have come down in price by tossing out quality and places like Walmart squeezing manufacturers. Sure you can get a $6 toaster but it is a piece of junk. You might be able to still get a pair of $20 jeans but they might be junk too. Credit was everywhere so as your wages were whithering you could still feel financially ok.
Well now all of this is coming together and coming home to roost. Wages are starting to show their real relative worth and credit is drying up.
Our situation is close to Buffalo Gal"s, in that we give to charity, save for future kids and have animals (two large breed dogs and two cats, but still under 50K
This is a really interesting discussion. I grew up in Dubai and visited India very often before I moved here at 18, and I was amazed at the standard of living out here. It's incredible how much Americans consume and what they consider to be basic necessities. I don't hold it against anyone, it's always harder to do with less than what you are used to, but in many other countries, paper towels are not basic necessities, you use and wash rags. Ziploc bags/containers/clingwrap/aluminun foil are not necessities, you use and wash non-disposable pots with lids. Basic cable, juice and soda, giant tvs - not a necessity.
So why should americans have to compare with living standards in the rest of the world? Because globalization was practically invented here, and now we're competing with the rest of the world. Those wages that are stagnating here? They're rising in all those countries that for decades were completely stuck. America, and the west in general, has had an amazing amount of prosperity in the last century, and now the rest of the world is catching up.
I live here now, and with the decline in average standard of living, it affects me too. I certainly don't want to see my wages stagnate or fall. But in the global economy that America has created and taken advantage of for years, I have to learn to accept that my competition is not just the guy next door, it's the guy the next continent over, struggling to feed his family too.
It depends on where you live, a lot - the poster who mentioned "relatively" rich made a great point. Feeling rich has more to do with comparing to the people around you, and some days it certainly seems like "everyone" has nicer houses and bigger, newer cars than mine.
I think it also depends on some major expenses - I put myself through college and ended up with a modest student loan (now paid off). My parents never gave me a car, never helped with any down payments, didn't help with college, etc. So that's a lot of capital-type stuff that many of my peers had given to them, that I never did.
So, even though I make a nice living, it's not a huge surprise that I feel like many of my peers have more than I do. They had more to start with and less to pay off.
A question like this is very subjective because each person or family is dealing with different circumstances. I don't think Catherine was implying that you can't live making six figures, but making that amount should not be perceived as you are well off or considered rich.
If you live in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, or any of the surrounding suburbs, I can tell you personally it is very hard to maintaining a decent lifestyle making 100k. If you have wife and kids you have to be on a very strict budget to make it work. I’m not saying making 100k is nothing to sneeze at, and those of us who make that should be fortunate and thankful, but it’s not what it’s crap up to be.
I'm from NYC and my wife and I have over 100k combined. It doesn't get us as far as we'd like. We have a modest car, own our co-op, and don't have a flat-screen tv. We don't live in Manhattan. We don't have premium cable (basic plus a Netfix plan). Can we save and contribute to our IRA's and 401(k)'s - yes, though not maxed out. Are we living the good life? Well, we can't quite afford to go out and buy a house right now. I know we're privileged compared to many in the country and even in NYC but the point of this post was what 100k meant in life and the truth is it's not worth what you might think. We have two kids and would love to get a mini-van but it ain't gonna happen right now. Hell, we spend around $13k for child care for our baby! With 100k, if you are in a high cost city, you are not set up for the good life! It's still a lot of work to make ends meet. That may sound strange to some, it makes us scratch our heads, but it's true.
When people talk about luck, I'm always reminded of the story of the farmer and horse. Here is one version of the story -- you can find dozens of versions around the net. Here's another. To use the metaphor of the article above, what if Jane meets the man of her dreams hitch-hiking in the desert and Eddie gets a brain tumor at his new job before his health insurance kicks in. Lucky or not?
This isn't to discount the idea of being prudent or prepared, just to argue that a lot of whether any particular event is "lucky" is perspective, which can always be changed based on future contingencies.
Definitely it depends on where you are living. In upstate NY, we have two cars (including one brand-new one as of 2006), one of us is a full-time student, we give away 10% of our income, we have a 1200-square-foot apartment, have two large-breed dogs, and save at least 25% of our income for retirement, future kids college fund and savings for cars and future house. No debt except for the credit card which is paid off every month. We are diligent about not eating out and unnecessary expenses, but other than that we live an awesome and I daresay luxurious life.
This is on one income, $35k pretax. But we live in a neighborhood with a median income of $13k so we are RELATIVELY RICH.
I have relatives in other cities like Chicago and Atlanta, and their expenses seem sky-high to me.
Where you live and how many peeps you have to support definitely makes a big difference in how six figures "feels" in terms of the sort of lifestyle you can afford. A childless couple in Iowa is totally apples-n-oranges to a 3-4 person family in one of the coastal cities. There's also a big difference between being a single-income family where one person makes 100K, and a family that needs two FT workers making 50K to get to that figure.
Another thing that's misleading is that higher taxes and other factors (EIC, access to social benefits) mean that 100K won't give you twice as much to spend at 50K, and 50K won't give you twice as much spending money as 25K.
That said, we're in kind of a similar boat, in that our household income is upper-middle class but we still need to practice a lot of money discipline in order to save for retirement, avoid the debt trap, and be able to afford the things that matter to us. I wouldn't say we're "struggling," and I'll smack anyone who implies I'm "whining," but no--it's not the grand and glorious lifestyle that you imagine it to be when you're on the underside of the household income average. Comfortable, but no luxurious.
I see on the other blog how they're going after the couple for not saving for college. It wouldn't be hard to save some money for college if you were making "six figures" the whole 18 years leading up to that point. But a lot of people who do wind up disqualified from financial aid by the time their kids are in college were making minimum wage or not much better at the time they were born.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is that it is human nature to always feel that if only you had 110% of your current income, you'd be doing fine. Another is that the cost of living is different in different parts of the country. These are very valid observations regarding the relationship between lifestyle and income. But they are not the reason I wrote this post.
The reason I put my personal information out there on the web is to put a real life face and voice to the straw man argument of the latte drinking middle class family who can't seem to hold onto the riches that are pouring through their fingers. My credentials on this are impeccable. My husband and I started contributing the maximum to our retirement accounts in our early twenties. We saved up for a down payment on our first home, which we bought in one of the richest markets in the state, while we were still in graduate school, living on grad student stipends. I was 24. Between our retirement savings and real estate investments we have built up a very respectable net worth since then, which I am not going to share here, but some people retire with no more savings than what we have in the bank. All of that while making considerably less than we have in 2007. We are not going to draw down our savings to buy a mercedes, so the discussion is really about what we can afford while living within our budget.
And we are very frugal. We currently record every purchase we make, even a buck in a vending machine, so I can say confidently that there is no magical vortex down which our money is disappearing. Just the usual, housing, utilities, repairs, gas, food, clothing, a little bit of entertainment, but there are no unusually bloated categories. If we wanted to save more money, yes, we could move. That's not the point. The point is that when we are in roughly the 80 percentile of income in the nation, we still can't really afford the things that people think middle class familes are supposed to have. There's something very strange about that.
Thanks for the discussion, and keep it coming. I would be happy to answer questions about what our expenses are in individual categories. To answer one person's question, I live in Ann Arbor Michigan, which I would guess is probably a nice median in terms of cost of living. Nowhere near as expensive as the coasts, but much more than other communities in the midwest.
FMF, yes that is a good observation about single income vs. dual income. I expect the reason for it is that a homemaker adds a great deal of value to the family that otherwise would be spent on child care, cleaning services, housekeeping, and general chaos.
Catherine Shaffer
Wise Bread Contributor
While I try to do the weekly planning, I also keep my eyes open for "reduced for quick sale" produce and meat/fish to supplement our usual weekly supply of fresh produce with the also-rans.
If you can eat these items first, or process them for later consumption, you can stock your pantry/fridge/freezer and continue to build up items for use. For example, I buy up a couple of packages of overripe bananas every month, then peel and freeze them (I also do this routinely with the bananas we don't eat fast enough in the summer, when they ripen quickly). These are either added to smoothies, or pureed/smashed with a fork for addition to quick breads or pancakes. I also buy quantities of mangoes when they are on sale, and make Crockpot mango-ginger chutney for curries and as a side dish or addition to rice. This lasts forever in the fridge, but can also be canned.
Peppers can be roasted (remove any funky spots first), and then skinned and preserved in olive or other oil. They are also very nice as a puree or added to a sauce. Buying roasted red peppers in oil (with whole garlic cloves) is an expensive proposition. These also make lovely gifts for people (a la Mason jar gifts).
This was so funny to read...I bought a bag of the green ones out of curiosity--they were in a white bag and I wasn't sure if they were all green or maybe a different green, the "new color of love" :) After opening it and seeing that yes the whole bag was green I decided to buy more and save them for St. Patrick's Day! I never did figure out why they were green--thanks for enlightening me!
There's some discussion on my site that a $100k family with one parent working is better off than a $100k family with both parents working. Certainly there are less costs if one parent is at home (lower daycare, transportation, clothing, etc. expenses.)
I wouldn't be expecting a great deal of sympathy in regards to your six income figure.
In 2006, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be around $48,000. The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) in the year 2006 was roughly $26,000.
You are double that.
If you want to whine about how tough you have it at $100,000 a year you might want to first think about how everyone else is doing and decide you have it easy compared to the average working American family.
boo-hoo
100 grand is a lot. and making six figures is still a lot of money.
you are talking about making half that each. that is why it doesnt feel all benzes and dinner out.
Just a side note: after hearing about a friend hit with a $1500 pet medical bill, we got both our cats health insurance. It's about $20 a month, but means we probably wont ever have to put a price tag on our pet's life.
hth
"it's NEVER enough until you actually know what it is that you want out of life and save/spend accordingly."
I have figured out what I want from life, and it isn't "stuff." In a few months my car will be 20 years old and the only car my four children have ever known. Ninety-five percent of our clothing, bedding and household goods have come from the Salvation Army. Even before my husband died, I told him that even if I was a millionnaire I would shop at SA. When we must buy, it's second hand when possible.
We recycle and compost so much that we put out garbage every other week, thereby lowering that expense. We conserve water, lowering that expense. I read the newspaper on-line, eliminating that expense. We do not watch television and get movies from the library--no expense there. We get books and magazines from the library. We use everything to the last drop. I give away all that I can. Our drawers and closets shut because they are not crammed full. Our basement has only a freezer and some empty boxes kept for future use.
Our annual income for five is less than $40,000. People can't figure out how we can live on so little income and yet not "seem" poor. It's all about choices. I choose to want little. It leaves more time and space for relationships to grow and flourish, which is something I do want.
I have written extensive comments in the FreeMoneyFinance entry this one refers to (under the name gtFMF) and I was almost shunned for stating that our $160k pre-tax income only goes so far.
I wholeheartedly agree with the writer of this entry, let's see if the rest of the readers do too.
I bet if you didn't have kids you'd be driving that Benz and wearing that freshly pressed shirt.
I found this post after one of my students included a reference. I am sad to say I had to give her a "D."
I cant tell if you are being disingenuous and have an ax to grind or don't know about labeling, contents or English language usage.
On your first set of critiquea:
"As it turns out, antibiotics were never added to milk or were ever present in milk. ....
Similarly, the same can be said of the other claims, regarding pesticides and hormones. First, hormones will always be present in milk; it’s part of the biology of a cow. To call milk ‘hormone-free’ .....
Finally, pesticides. The FTC has ruled that a manufacturer cannot make a "no pesticide" claim as it is untruthful, because pesticides are never added to milk or milk products. ..."
The antibiotics are used as growth factors in cows, not added to the milk. Horizon is stating that their cows are not getting the mass dose of antibiotics that other milk cows are getting. It is a true claim by Horizon and other organic milk producers and the use of mass does of antibiotics as growth factors in livestock is highly controversial.
Hormones. You imply that organic milk producers say their milk is "hormone free". You use quotes. What are you quoting? Nothing Horizon claimed! The issue is mass doses of hormones given to non organic milk cows. These resulting milk from Hormone dosed milk cows is LOWER in omega 3 fats and quite a few nutrients the FDA and many peer reviewed publications consider essential and helpful for human health.
You further claim "growth hormones, again according to the USDA, are only ever approved for beef cattle, plus lamb and veal."
BS BIGTIME on your part. The mass doses of milk production inducing hormones given to non organic cows are not called growth hormones. Growth hormones are given to slaughter destined livestock. Milk production hormones and egg production hormones are given to milk cows and egg production hens respectively!
Lastly on your pesticides claim the issue is whether the cows are eating corn with huge doses of pesticides as are all the non organic milk cows in the US. Have you ever even been near a farm or grain facility? not only is US corn subject to massive doses of pesticides in the field, it is often dosed in storage! That is 90% of what non organic milk cows eat -- one of the most highly pesticide dosed agro procuts there is.
I cannot believe your post, it is wrought with a total hacking of the English language.
Lets be sensible. Lots of organic product shave a negligible advantage but lots of organic products do.
The highest pesticide dosed foods are corn (especially corn destined for livestock -- and nowadays farmed fish), grapes, broccoli, strawberries and leafy vegetables.
One can find sensible tables with amount of pesticide dosing (and as importantly retention and ability to wash off) and price premium for organic. Who you are feeding is also an issue. Milk products are most heavily consumed by children. Children for obvious reason will carry he pesticides with them for longer periods and the usage of pesticides has greatly increased fro when todays adults were children.
If you are 50 years old and eat grapes once a month -- don;t worry if they are organic. If you feed your child grapes twice a week, you should know this is a heavily pesticide dosed product and you should consider organic.
Lastly although I am stunned at your inaccurate screed against Horizon, I would recommend horizon anyway. If you or your children drink a lot of milk you are better off with milk that produced by cows which are grass fed. Again PEER REVIEWED studies show the resulting milk has much more favorable ratios of healthy fats and DHA and ERA
Albert Einstein was correct ... everything is relative, and six figure incomes is no different. At a point when six figures reaches critical mass, and there is enough experience and expectations set for what is "normal", we begin to see things like this. Six figure incomes may be challenging for a variety of reasons, just like fix figure incomes are and seven incomes. We are what we eat ... in the case of our financial condition, we are what we spend.
When people make more money they tend to spend more. I think the keys is to keep your spending at a certain percentage of your income. My husband and I try to always spend less than 50% of our take home income. We live in Northern California and it is pretty expensive here, as I stated in a forum thread, a family of 4 earning 90k a year here is low income because the median for a family of 4 is 100k. However, it is definitely possible for people to spend 50% of their take home even here.
Honestly, doesn't it depend on where you live? I live in a nice suburb of New York City. Where you live directly affects the quality of the school district you send your kids to (assuming public school). Our town is certainly nice, but is nowhere near the upper levels in this general area (it's somewhere in the middle).
Starter homes here go for $450k and up. My home, which has 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms, 1400 square feet, on 4800 square feet of land, with no separate dining room, no garage, no basement and no family room, costs in excess of $500k. The taxes are over $8k per year as well. So, how is a family of 4, where the in-laws come to stay frequently, supposed to get by on less than $100k per year when the house itself is costing well over $3k per month? In addition, I usually work at home and this house isn't really big enough in that scenario. I don't have a private area to work, which is a problem. To get a house "the next level up" would probably cost over $700k.
That said, yes, we could move to a less expensive area and trade in our house for a mansion (or just get an equivalent house and lower our expenses dramatically). But our family and friends are here. Our children's friends are here. Our jobs are here. Our roots are here.
So, moving is not an option that we are interested in. It just means we need to make more money and that a low-six-figure salary, in this area, isn't putting you in the upper class.
With obvious exceptions, (medical things come quickly to mind), we all make our own choices. My family of six is just squeaking into six figures and while we obviously don't enjoy the same standard of living as the same income would have provided 20 years ago, we are doing pretty well. That said, we pay the big mortgage to live in an outstanding public school district and on a cul-de-sac so that my kids can safely play outside without my constant fear of the ball running into the street. We don't drink expensive coffee, but we do spent on decent wine. We don't drive new cars, but they are not terribly old either. I do splurge on brand names for certain things, such as warm winter coats, but we also do a lot of our shopping at consignment shops and thrift stores. We give and save generously, but occasionally we might shift that money temporarily if it suits the big picture. I could go back to work full-time or even add more hours to our part-time, but that creates other costs, both real financial costs and general household happiness costs. These are the choices that my family makes, and one of the privileges of living in a free country is that you get to make those choices yourself. I find it incredibly frustrating for anyone to belittle other peoples' choices unless they are just flagrantly wrong. One of the things that I like about Wise Bread is that people usually are able to enjoy a healthy and educational discussion without attacking each other. Please try to keep it that way.
You know, it's all relative. We 'struggle' to maintain our self-imposed budget of $250,000 a year ... yet our $2m home is paid off, I paid cash for my car (a very nice one indeed).
Yet, only a few short years ago we were living off my wife's salary and were actually $30k in debt. On my blog I talk about this, and what to do about it, but the point here is that it's NEVER enough until you actually know what it is that you want out of life and save/spend accordingly.
I think many people missed the point. For so long the ideal had been to get that six figure income and they you can have "all that" or at least quit stressing about everything financial. We were told for so long that if you do the right things and achieve a stated level life will then suddenly get easier.
Sure there are people who live WAY beyond their means and spend large sums of money on things they don't need to be. But the reality is that the cost of everything has gone up while wages have been stagnant for about the last 10 years. Work benefits and insurance benefits have also eroded. You used to get two weeks vacation and 1-2 weeks of sick leave. Now many people get only 2 weeks of PTO. This means if you have a family emergency or young kids who get sick frequently your not getting a vacation for about four years. Health insurance has eroded too. I remember the days of no copays and full coverage with no co-insurance. I didn't even have to pay for my health insurance a couple of places. Now it is our second largest expense, just for our insurance, that doesn't even include out of pocket.
The cost of everything has gone up. In the last 10 years where we currently are the cost of a basic starter home has gone up about $50,000 more. Gas is double, electricity is double, groceries are easily double and have gone up about 20% or more in the last year.
People were given an illusion that we were not losing relative wealth for the last decade. General consumables like TVs, small appliances and gadgets have come down in price by tossing out quality and places like Walmart squeezing manufacturers. Sure you can get a $6 toaster but it is a piece of junk. You might be able to still get a pair of $20 jeans but they might be junk too. Credit was everywhere so as your wages were whithering you could still feel financially ok.
Well now all of this is coming together and coming home to roost. Wages are starting to show their real relative worth and credit is drying up.