516
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
516 points (96.7% liked)
News
23320 readers
3288 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I’d love to see this as a paycheck breakdown. Unless you have a history of debt, a huge house, or like 8 kids I don’t see how it’s not possible to do at least moderately well on 150k/y
Edit: before folks reply with a comment about people being worse off, I know. I agree. This is just a scenario description.
It is very easy to be strapped with a modest sized house or apartment in the "right" zip code.
As in a 1.2mil mortgage on a 3 bedroom house that's never been renovated since the 70s. That mortgage could be 5k / month.
150000 a year is 8.7k a month, after taxes. If you have student loans, any medical debt, kids, that remaining 3.7k is pretty critical. You aren't swimming in liquid chocolate every night and wiping with singles.
If you own a home things can happen out of nowhere. I personally just had to replace my sewer line last month. 17k for the work and 1.5k for new concrete. Not covered by my home insurance because I didn't opt for the rider on my account. My fault there... My finances are a bit different than the above description but if you were the 150 + paycheck to paycheck situation, you'd be in hot water.
This isn't a "woe to the 150 crowd" comment. I'm well aware folks are way, way worse off, but when a 150 household talks about being paycheck to paycheck, it's totally possible.
At least in CA where the property tax is 1%, last time I fed the info into one of those calculators a few months ago, a 1.2m house (exactly the type you describe) with a standard 20% down-payment would run closer to $8k/mo with good credit. That includes property tax and homeowners insurance, which is required to get a loan.
So yeah, that doesn't leave a whole lot to live off of.
There's also the upkeep cost for repairs and to renovate.
We've let our gutters stay broken for several years now because we just can't afford to get them fixed. We had to have an emergency repair to our heat pump yesterday and that's going to be hundreds of dollars out of pocket. We're on a single income. My wife gets paid well (not $150,000 a year well) and our mortgage is low, but we're barely making it.
$150k is twice what my parents made combined back in the 90s, and they lived a solid upper middle class life in an upscale suburb of a small city. Always had a nice TV and my dad and I both had PCs that we upgraded every year AND they saved up two years worth of college for me. Amazing how quickly things have changed. They bought their house for $180k and it's now worth nearly $500k.
My career now is generally a higher valued one than theirs, but adjusting for inflation, my pay has always been lower than theirs at the same point in their careers. And that's the story. Incomes may have doubled since the early-mid 90s, but everything else has tripled or quadrupled.
Inflation has doubled since 1999 so I'm not sure what your point is
Isn't a mortgage as high as your whole salary for 10 years unwise from the get go?
In general yes, but many many people are doing this to attempt a "normal" home the likes of which they grew up in, and that they themselves want to raise a kid in.
OR consider a household where 2 incomes of around 150 were earned when the house was purchased, but now one earner is not earning appreciably any more...maybe a stay at home parent or illness or whatever.
Again just saying some possibilities, not the normative experience.
I guess the rough reality is that some people want to live where their family lives but can’t easily afford it. I don’t know how far you need to live from SF for prices to return to reality, but I suspect it’s a 1h+ drive
Bay area
Yeah I could see 150k being poverty level there.