My wife had about 130k in student loan debt when we married, and we went on a ten year repayment plan. Total payment is about $1700 a month...
So your rent plus debt servicing should be around $4000... leaving your around $4000 a month for everything else. You should be able to live pretty well on that! That is more than most people make total.
Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years, so, factor that in (probably $2000-2500/month). Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately), etc. I think you can see where this is going.
> Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years
Don't we all.
> Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately)
We all also pay for this.
> probably $2000-2500/month
Dude you still have $1000 probably free just chilling if you are strict.
I don't get this, "you are not where you should be" mindset.
The student debt sucks, but you are doing extremely, extremely well. Making more than some doctors.
What if I told you I was 35? 45? 55? Does your perspective on “not where I should be” change given my already stated negative net worth? I’m old enough to be worried about being employable in this industry in 10 years. Do you not see how a 20 year time horizon for retirement, starting not from 0, but from -100k, is a source of anxiety?
As for “doctor money”, according to https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie... I make below the average salary for every physician specialty except public health & preventative medicine, and I’m several years older than the typical newly minted physician.
I also live in an area where you need to make at least $80k or so to qualify for a 1br apartment, according to the “3x rent in gross salary” rule used by a lot of landlords. With my large, fixed expenses (student loans), I’m not convinced moving to a lower CoL area actually improves my bottom line, either.
I’m not poor, and, like I said, I’m getting ahead slowly now, but I’m by no means rolling in it.
I know where you are coming from. Because of $bad_life_decisions until I was 35 and purposefully choices since then, I am behind financially by any objective measure.
You could say my career trajectory is behind being in my 40s and still being an individual contributor, but I don’t see any scenario where I would have wanted to be a person manager. (Been there done that. Went screaming back to an IC role).
But, I do see a narrow path where I can retire at the standard retirement age and be okay with a paid off house, enough savings to be okay, and hopefully social security between me and my wife collecting half of mine instead of her own.
So your rent plus debt servicing should be around $4000... leaving your around $4000 a month for everything else. You should be able to live pretty well on that! That is more than most people make total.