
$350k a Year, and Just Getting By - pmoriarty
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/why-financial-confessionals-viral/600358/
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ramraj07
Looking through the list of the 350k couple, the main things that pop out:

1\. $8000 a year for "entertainment"? Somehow they thought including Netflix
in the list will make us ignore the outrage that the number is! Best guess is
probably a couple music festivals and a couple destination weddings every
year, without regard for whether they are totally worth it.

2\. A three week vacation doesn't sound bad but surely it can be cheaper than
that!

3\. Noticed when I moved to New York, that an expected spend for a date night
can go north of $200, even when couples barely make 6 figures each. Sounds
like someone sold a lot of people lies similar to De Beers about what needs to
be spent to truly buy romance. Guessing this couple has similar ideas!

------
kthejoker2
Manufacturing outrage over personal irresponsibility is the true American
pastime.

------
WheelsAtLarge
While poverty has an absolute dollar point. Say someone making less than X
would definitely be poor.

But what's interesting is that it also has a relative point. If a person lives
and works where the majority earns and spends a million dollars a year then
someone that makes and spends $300k will feel poor since they can't buy the
same amount of goods and services. Yet, most people would laugh at calling
someone like that poor.

An interesting example is how the children of John D. Rockefeller were raised.
They were raised without the trappings of wealth. The clothing of the younger
kids were hand me downs, they got a small allowance and they had to do chores
around the house. Yet they lived and went to school in the richest area in
America and their father was the richest man in the world at the time. I bet
those kids felt disadvantaged since their peers had the trappings of wealth.
Yet we would all laugh at the thought.

Another interesting example is Gavin Newsom, California's current governor.
When you hear him speak about his childhood you get the idea that he was
raised in a very poor area in California. He actually grew up in one of the
most affluent areas in San Fransisco. I bet his family was poor relative to
his peers so, therefore, he feels he grew up disadvantaged.

~~~
defertoreptar
I think it can just be brought down to consumption. Someone who spends 300k a
year is not going to feel like they're living in poverty. Rockefeller's
children, if they lived the lifestyle of what could be bought by the middle
class, wouldn't feel rich because they were unable to consume what the rich
do.

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jusob
"...spending ... hefty amounts on vacations, entertainment, and a weekly date
night". They spend too much money on non-essential, so they don't save enough.
Great article! I earn a million dollar a year but spend 2 millions in night
clubs, so I am very poor.

~~~
WalterGR
That's... not the point of the article.

If you read further, for example,

 _In these viral budgets and diaries, urban professionals—they are almost
always urban professionals—describe spending on $7 lattes and $70 bikini waxes
and $70,000 private-school tuition. Some describe themselves as middle-class.
Many describe themselves as unable to save. Self-evidently, this is nonsense:
Spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on vacations and babysitters and
housekeepers and fancy salads means you are choosing not to save, not that you
are unable to save._

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hkmurakami
"and produced by or for members of an upper crust insistent that they are in
fact middle-class."

Honestly, this is a natural response to a society where being anything other
than middle class (whether above or below it) is seen as a dirty thing. It's
almost self defense.

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recycler03
I'm sympathetic to the view point of the people who feel like they are just
getting by even though they clearly aren't. I'm there now. I'm also
sympathetic to all the people who just roll their eyes. Been there before. Let
me try to bridge the gap.

My spouse and I earn about $390k a year between us. We are in our early 30s,
live in an outrageous COL city, and are expecting our first child in 2020. I
often feel like we are messing up financially even though objectively we're
not in most metrics.

We're not like the people these articles talk about. We are consciencious
about where our money goes and we are running a quite healthy surplus.

On my side of the house, I'm running about a ~$5,500/month after-tax surplus
since my 401k contributions and SS taxes maxed out and while covering the
majority of our bills except for my spouse's student debt. This surplus also
doesn't include a ~$40-50k annual bonus which at least for this year is just
totally unspent money.

Reasons we don't feel well off:

\- Looking into daycare around here, the three nearest places advertise
$2100-$3700 a month per child. Thinking about a huge new expense like that
makes you feel like you're falling behind even when you're not. That'll be a
huge chunk of my surplus extracted.

\- Lots of people have left my job to go to a FAANG. Even the ones who we
thought were okay-but-not-great report big raises. Are they exaggerating?
Maybe. When a young, so-so colleague passes you by, it makes you feel like you
are messing up.

\- We don't own a home. Buying an apartment here, especially with room for a
whole family, would be a huge money sink so we just can't afford it. When your
parents managed to own a home but you don't, you feel like you're falling
behind. Also, we're missing out on that home equity.

\- We are feeling priced out of this neighborhood by our growing need for
space. Not to the extent that we can't pay more, but instead to the extent
that we refuse to throw more away on rent.

\- We don't have the physical trappings of wealth. My only two possessions of
note are a five year old, $1200 guitar and a two year old, $1600 laptop. These
are luxuries but not extravagantly luxurious. I bought both before we "made
it." We're wealthy in that we live in an expensive city and the numbers on our
bank screens are bigger than the numbers on some other people's screens, but
we're not touring the world or buying art. Our home is nowhere near as nice as
the generic upper-middle class home in the background of every commercial.

\- This level of income is pretty new to both of us, so we don't have huge
amounts of cash stacked from our 20s. It feels temporary, like good luck that
could go away at any time. Student debt is also $2000+/month.

\- My spouse has a terrible boss and just has to put up with it for now. The
blessing of compound interest is that most of your return comes from just
waiting. The tyranny of compound interest is the number of doubling periods
until you retire overwhelms other factors like savings rate. We can be very
aggressive in our savings and probably afford to bail on the last doubling
period and retire a few years early. We definitely can't afford to bail on the
last two doubling periods though. You don't feel rich when you have to go to
work every day and tiptoe around an asshole boss.

\- We both have "other dreams" that we can't pursue until we've set aside more
money for retirement. "Real rich people" could do so.

\- Neither of us has a family financial safety net aside from each other.

\- There are always huge possible medical expenses in America. My mom is
getting up there in age and I worry how much longer she can live
independently. We have no idea what it would cost to get a nursing home or to
take an adult with medical needs into our home should the need arise. It feels
like one bad roll of the dice is all it takes to set you back to square one or
even further.

\- don't have the money to fix anything more broadly wrong with the world. We
can't fix the political system, income inequality, anything. We donate to a
meaningful charity every year, volunteer, and vote. We cannot hire lobbyists
or fix the things we think ill in America right now.

\---

So, in summary, I guess I'm saying we feel "just like everyone else" because
despite the fact we earn a lot of money, we:

\- are subject to many of the same high variance events that wipe other people
out

\- aren't able to buy a home like our parents did

\- have inelastic demands (childcare!) that are extortionately priced here

\- have to go to work like everybody else and will have to for decades still

\- don't have the means to effect meaningful change on any scale beyond our
own (rented) backyard

\- know people making more for the same work, with less experience, etc, which
somehow does matter psychologically.

\- are acutely aware that we (the ones with high incomes) are taxed much
higher than the real rich (the ones with high wealth). Between the huge chunk
of our income that goes to taxes (price of civilization, etc etc) and the huge
chunk that goes to our landlord (who probably gets to buy his civilization at
half off compared to us), it feels like the game is rigged even from this
vantage point.

~~~
mping
Thanks for the detailed account. Most of the stuff you mentioned can be
totally fixed with a shift of perspective. In fact, as long as you compare
with your peers you will feel somewhat unhappy. I'm pretty sure lots of people
at FAANGs feel like getting by in comparison to some one else who apparently
is better off. There's a lot of people in the world who would kill to have
your problems though.

As for more practical, you can move to a city with lower CoL, get a job at a
FAANG, hire a fulltime nanny (find other couple(s), 2k/month x2 is 48k/year,
shouldn't be hard) to take care of the kids at someone's place.

