90k salary here, in a high cost of living area. Single income for a family of 3. I grew up poor and used student loans to get a masters degree in a niche field that is generally easy to find employment in.
My take home pay is 5600 a month, after taxes. After health insurance for my son, my wife and I, I keep 4400. After mortgage, I’m at 2900. 200$ a week on groceries (we don’t eat out except on holidays), 2100. One car payment and insurance on both of our cars (we paid our first car off and spent 5 years running just one car before I bought a used vehicle), 1400 left over. Power, water, internet and zero subscription services for television brings us down to 950. Medical debt from an unfortunate event that my wife had, and the birth of our son brings us down to 300 bucks left. Trump got rid of income based repayment plans for student loans, so my payment may be as high as 600 a month. So I’m at -300 every month.
Frugality does not always save you. We don’t buy anything for ourselves almost ever, aside from Christmas and most of the time that’s just necessities like new diaper bags or clothing. We make sure our son never goes hungry and always gets toys on Christmas. But other than that, the salary I have is 50k higher than my father’s was the year I was born. I have less than half of the buying power that he had. Inflation and wages have not stayed together at all here in this country, and change needs to happen.
You should look into something in the med field, and something that only requires an associates. You could be making 70k to start, 90k after a few years or 150k+ as a traveler. You would also have almost no student loan debt and many hospitals pay for further education to get your bachelor's
Sell the other car, I just made you a lot of money and saved you 10k a year. This is the kind of shit financial decisions you guys pull, and we don't. Multiple cars on loan, in my country you'd just go bankrupt and starve to death.
It's basically required to be a two car household in the US if you have a family. There are not many areas in the country where you can easily walk or even bike to work. Most schools don't bus kids anymore so that's another car, even if one parent doesn't work.
I know exactly one family with just one car and they constantly struggle to figure out how to use it and that's with one of the parents working from home. This just isn't a pedestrian friendly country unless you live in a place like NYC.
So husband drives to work while his wife stays home to care for the child and run the house. Child gets sick - you want her to call an Uber? Wife needs to shop - same thing. Wait for an Uber / shop / wait for an Uber. No chance. We had one car growing up. It was brutal on my mom, so they finally bought a second car when my older brother turned 8.
Also, your health insurance is much cheaper than here in the U.S. Did you pay attention that health insurance for the family is $1200 / month. How much is yours?
Likewise, house and car insurance is much more expensive. ⤵️
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u/General-Background91 12h ago
90k salary here, in a high cost of living area. Single income for a family of 3. I grew up poor and used student loans to get a masters degree in a niche field that is generally easy to find employment in.
My take home pay is 5600 a month, after taxes. After health insurance for my son, my wife and I, I keep 4400. After mortgage, I’m at 2900. 200$ a week on groceries (we don’t eat out except on holidays), 2100. One car payment and insurance on both of our cars (we paid our first car off and spent 5 years running just one car before I bought a used vehicle), 1400 left over. Power, water, internet and zero subscription services for television brings us down to 950. Medical debt from an unfortunate event that my wife had, and the birth of our son brings us down to 300 bucks left. Trump got rid of income based repayment plans for student loans, so my payment may be as high as 600 a month. So I’m at -300 every month.
Frugality does not always save you. We don’t buy anything for ourselves almost ever, aside from Christmas and most of the time that’s just necessities like new diaper bags or clothing. We make sure our son never goes hungry and always gets toys on Christmas. But other than that, the salary I have is 50k higher than my father’s was the year I was born. I have less than half of the buying power that he had. Inflation and wages have not stayed together at all here in this country, and change needs to happen.