40 might be a bit of a stretch with inflation, but even with 4 kids and a dog my yearly expenditures to live in a very nice (3800 sqft) house with 2 (paid for) cars is only about $67k/year.
$37k mortgage
$15k bills - electric, water, Internet, car insurance, cell phones, etc.
$15k - food, gasoline, clothing, haircuts, other "necessities" (many of which are not)
Then of course there's vacations, Christmas/birthdays, and unexpected large purchases (e.g. the out of warranty laptop broke), so maybe add on another $10k?
But we could also easily tighten the belt a bit and cut those bottom 2 items to $20k with only a little bit of pain.
When you're walking home after taxes with $175k/year you definitely get a little flabby on what should be sensible cost cutting (e.g. I'm sure I'm paying a few hundred dollars a year for streaming/subscription services I don't use enough to justify, but it's not worth the hassle.)
We are of course extremely privileged to not have any major medical issues, a good support system for child care, 2 work from home parents, and to have somehow avoided most of the crazy tuition hikes of the 21st century.
Right, but we're also an above median family size (again: 4 kids.)
I could easily drop 20-25k from that spending if we didn't have kids - in fact, at the time I had my first kid, my mortgage was $24k/year, my bills were nearly 40% lower than they are now, and I didn't track food and clothes budgets back then but even if they were 80% of present day levels (I suspect it was much lower) that'd put us right around $40k/year.
But I also am on the real estate property ladder, so I think it'd be foolish for me to spend any less of our income on our housing than I do, so counting it as pure "expenditure" is a bit misleading.
Also since someone asked this year I paid $2,200 in healthcare distributions on top of $750 annual premiums.
Not to mention I see no mention of healthcare costs. I - a single 30-something with some chronic issues, easily spend $5k on healthcare a year - more if I get hospitalized, which has happened 3 times in the decade.
That’s not even counting the portion that comes out of my check.
What kind of answer are you looking for? There are people who live on less than $40k without even meaning to. It's not an outrageous number, but sure, would be harder with chronic health issues and so-so insurance.
$37k mortgage $15k bills - electric, water, Internet, car insurance, cell phones, etc. $15k - food, gasoline, clothing, haircuts, other "necessities" (many of which are not)
Then of course there's vacations, Christmas/birthdays, and unexpected large purchases (e.g. the out of warranty laptop broke), so maybe add on another $10k?
But we could also easily tighten the belt a bit and cut those bottom 2 items to $20k with only a little bit of pain.
When you're walking home after taxes with $175k/year you definitely get a little flabby on what should be sensible cost cutting (e.g. I'm sure I'm paying a few hundred dollars a year for streaming/subscription services I don't use enough to justify, but it's not worth the hassle.)
We are of course extremely privileged to not have any major medical issues, a good support system for child care, 2 work from home parents, and to have somehow avoided most of the crazy tuition hikes of the 21st century.