The “no worries line” is sitting somewhere around 100k salary right now. Before the pandemic I’d have said 70k, but I see this as the point where you have enough money to pay somebody else to think about it for you be that an investor, fiduciary, advisor w.e.
It should be, but it isn’t. As I’ve said in another comment, I know several people who make around $100,000 a year, and they are struggling to make mortgage payments, pay for groceries to feed their families, etc…
$100,000 a year used to be more than enough to sustain a family, but, today? It’s not.
I agree with the person responding to you and would just add that “rich” shouldn’t be defined as “this is how much everyone should have”. Rich is more like “could afford to not work for decades if not forever” or something along those lines.
A social safety net (like free/cheap healthcare) does a lot too. 100k USD is great until something catastrophic (e.g. cancer, car accident) happens. And don’t get me started on unemployment support.
I didn’t say rich, that’s not having to work and living off investments.
I said the “no worries line”. If you’re making 100k and living paycheck to paycheck, it’s not economic pressures that are keeping you down, it’s your perceived required lifestyle. Leasing cars is stupid, instead of paying 1k/month for a showy BMW, go buy a civic outright. Living downtown is nice, but can you actually afford it or is it taking 2/3 of your income? That civic lets you move to a lower cost of living area. If I made 100k doing what I do now (landscaping business) I would be perfectly content having everything I need and most things I want.
lots of people choose to work because their investments don’t provide enough income to live the life they want to live.
these threads just fail to understand, there is no human contentment. very few people are going to be like, be happy living off 60K from investmetns, living a simple life. The people who have those investments to live off of… want more, WAY more. They want boats, houses, cars, all luxury and all in plural. They want to travel as much as possible as poshly as possible, so on and so on.
I regularly interact with people who are multi-millionaires who could retire at 30/40, but they will tell you how they are poor and struggling and how unfair and cruel their life is that they don’t have more. because no matter how many millions they have, they never will feel secure.
There’s different kinds of “no worries lines”. My family is above 100k, and we’re not in the “If we miss a paycheck we won’t be able to eat this week” range, but we’re certainly in the “An unexpected medical bill or necessary home repair could wipe us out” range.
The true no worries line - where unexpected expenses aren’t an issue and you expect to be able to comfortably retire some day - is considerably higher, at least where I live.
Yeah same. We’re comfortably a 200k house hold when both of us are working. We’ve got enough. But rich to me would be being able to take some time off and spend time with my kids and not worry about setting my retirement back meaningfully.
Me and my partner got close to that amount in a low cost area and it wasn’t even close to no worries. We lived pretty modestly too. Driving paid off shitboxes, rarely eating out, lived in a relatively small home etc. We still had to really think about things and it didn’t take a lot to throw off our balance. An er visit here or an unplanned vet visit was all it took.
Maybe if we made that amount several years in a row it would have been different. Definitely not close to that amount anymore.
That being said we did get to do fun stuff and were certainly comfortable, but it wasn’t remotely close to not having to think about it.
I’d say 150 to 200k gets you to the no worries and no thoughts range. That’s the range where you can enjoy life, save to retire, and still handle the emergencies while maintaining a modest lifestyle.
No, even $2500/month is a lot in some places in the US. In the Midwest that would get you a really nice place, but in New York City that gets you a studio apartment. The US is huge with a wide range of cost of living.
You can’t take the USA as a whole. There are studio apartments near me for $600/mo, and you can get a 3 bedroom for $1200 easily. You can scrape by on minimum wage here (it won’t be fun, but you’ll survive). If you get one of the “good” jobs, like at the Amazon warehouse, you’re living large on that $20/hr. Even better if you have a partner who also works. I know a couple who both work full time at the Amazon warehouse and they don’t have any kids, so they’re DINKs, and their rent is less than 1/6th of their gross income.
But I’m in a very low cost of living area. My friend who lives in a wealthy coastal city pays $5400/mo for her 3 bedroom with a beautiful view of the San Fransisco bay. The cost of living varies wildly by location.
My sister-in-law wanted to move closer to my wife and I, so she could see her niblings more often. I gave her a check for $10,000, and took her to a foreclosure auction. She now has a two bedroom house, with a nice (but not huge) backyard, and she left that auction with enough money in her pocket to renovate her new house a bit. No mortgage, she owns it outright.
I bought my huge house, sitting on acres of land in 2009, right after the crash. So it’s not a typical result just to be clear, but I paid $40k, and spent another $20k fixing it up before we moved in. $60k, all told, to fully own a house and a ton of land. I have a creek running through my back yard, and I can stand there and fish whenever I want. I’ve got woods on my property, great for hunting. My property/school taxes come to under $1200/yr total, so my “rent” is about $90/mo. Between my wife and I, we made $560k last year, so we’re in the bracket where we don’t worry about money at all. Our essential bills come to about $30k/yr, the rest gets saved/invested, with a bit going to fun stuff.
You can’t do that where I grew up. Condos (basically an apartment you own instead of rent) in my home town go for literally millions of dollars. The cheapest place I could find doing a quick Zillow search was $499k. The good places go for 4-5 million bucks. And holy shit, the taxes are high.
The USA isn’t so much a country, as much as it is 50 smaller countries in a trenchcoat. You know how annoying it is when someone says “Do Europeans really do [thing]?!?!?” without mentioning the country? That’s basically the same situation as asking “Is the USA really like [thing]?” without mentioning the state.
Some of us grow/hunt/raise most of our food. I harvested and butchered two pigs yesterday. That a lot of almost free pork. Some of us shop at Erewhon, where a single imported Japanese strawberry can cost you $20. They have $100 melons. They sell a half gallon (roughly 2 liters) of water for $26. I get my water from a well, and it’s basically free.
The coasts may as well be a different world entirely than the flyover states. I moved to a flyover state because I knew that my life goals were incompatible with living in a coastal city.
$4500 was in my head because that was the projected mortgage+taxes+fees for a 2BR apartment in brooklyn I saw the other day.
There are some apartments in NYC that are that expensive to rent. Average here is $3,650, but that’s skewed by a lot of stupid expensive places. Median is a little lower.
Other parts of the country can be much cheaper, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
You are also missing private retirement funds
Good call.
(and if car dependent 100/month seems very low for transit costs)
That’s a good point. I rely on mass transit, which is much cheaper.
Having enough money that I don’t have to worry about my expenses
America doesn’t have a middle class and hasn’t for some time. The Republicans worked for decades to destroy it, and they succeeded. You’re either poor or you’re rich.
That’s not how that works at all. The middle class is nearly extinct but somewhere around $100k you can attain that not worrying about money status, even buy a humble home. But you’re not even close to rich.
I don’t need to be told I’m not rich. I can’t afford my groceries every week. And I’m single, and I certainly don’t make $100,000 a year or anything close to it.
I also don’t need to be told “how it works“. Because I’m living in a system that’s beating me to death every week when I can’t afford to live.
And I know plenty of people who make around $100,000 a year and still can barely afford to pay their mortgage, afford to feed their families, etc. So don’t tell me “how it works” when you clearly don’t understand it yourself. And you sure as fuck don’t know a goddamn thing about my life.
The arrogance of some random Internet stranger, trying to tell me how my own life works… Wow
I didn’t say anything about your life. Where did you get that idea? Frankly, I don’t care about your life. I didn’t call you poor. I didn’t call your friends poor, etc… All I said is that depending on where you live, $100k can be a comfortable life but it’s no where near rich. I don’t know why you got so defensive.
Again, what are you talking about? What strawman? What specifically did I claim? You’re reading things I didn’t write apparently. And you prove it with your last sentence. I said I didn’t care about your life, not that I didn’t care about you or even that I didn’t care that you apparently have atrocious reading comprehension. Point out a specific strawman or lie.
What do you define as rich?
The “no worries line” is sitting somewhere around 100k salary right now. Before the pandemic I’d have said 70k, but I see this as the point where you have enough money to pay somebody else to think about it for you be that an investor, fiduciary, advisor w.e.
In 13 US states 100k is doesn’t even cover average living expenses. And in 22 others it’s about break even.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/far-100k-salary-every-state-110155959.html
I wouldn’t say that’s anywhere even close to rich.
What do you define as rich?
I’m not sure, but $100k/year isn’t even close. That’s you can finally afford a humble home money. That should be the standard for just a decent life.
It should be, but it isn’t. As I’ve said in another comment, I know several people who make around $100,000 a year, and they are struggling to make mortgage payments, pay for groceries to feed their families, etc…
$100,000 a year used to be more than enough to sustain a family, but, today? It’s not.
Just using a number is a bad metric since CoL can make such a huge difference.
100k in rural low CoL areas would set you up pretty well.
In SF or NYC, 100k is consider to be “poor”
$100k - now - is considered “poor” in a lot of places :(
I hate to break it to you, but it has been for a long time in the right place is in the United States.
I agree with the person responding to you and would just add that “rich” shouldn’t be defined as “this is how much everyone should have”. Rich is more like “could afford to not work for decades if not forever” or something along those lines.
I don’t know. By that definition people who have saved and barely afford retirement are “rich”.
I thought it was clear that this loose definition would not include retirement age people.
$100k, damn, in central europe the median income is more like $30k and that’s already a juicy salary. CoL does a lot.
A social safety net (like free/cheap healthcare) does a lot too. 100k USD is great until something catastrophic (e.g. cancer, car accident) happens. And don’t get me started on unemployment support.
That’s going to largely depend on where you’re living. With that salary you can do just fine in most places in the US.
Rich don’t work for living. Probably have wealth for multiple lifetimes
Rich is when you don’t have to obey laws and you can buy politicians.
I didn’t say rich, that’s not having to work and living off investments.
I said the “no worries line”. If you’re making 100k and living paycheck to paycheck, it’s not economic pressures that are keeping you down, it’s your perceived required lifestyle. Leasing cars is stupid, instead of paying 1k/month for a showy BMW, go buy a civic outright. Living downtown is nice, but can you actually afford it or is it taking 2/3 of your income? That civic lets you move to a lower cost of living area. If I made 100k doing what I do now (landscaping business) I would be perfectly content having everything I need and most things I want.
lots of people choose to work because their investments don’t provide enough income to live the life they want to live.
these threads just fail to understand, there is no human contentment. very few people are going to be like, be happy living off 60K from investmetns, living a simple life. The people who have those investments to live off of… want more, WAY more. They want boats, houses, cars, all luxury and all in plural. They want to travel as much as possible as poshly as possible, so on and so on.
I regularly interact with people who are multi-millionaires who could retire at 30/40, but they will tell you how they are poor and struggling and how unfair and cruel their life is that they don’t have more. because no matter how many millions they have, they never will feel secure.
In that case, we agree. That largely depends on where in the country you are but 100k would alleviate a lot of your worry for sure.
There’s different kinds of “no worries lines”. My family is above 100k, and we’re not in the “If we miss a paycheck we won’t be able to eat this week” range, but we’re certainly in the “An unexpected medical bill or necessary home repair could wipe us out” range.
The true no worries line - where unexpected expenses aren’t an issue and you expect to be able to comfortably retire some day - is considerably higher, at least where I live.
Yeah same. We’re comfortably a 200k house hold when both of us are working. We’ve got enough. But rich to me would be being able to take some time off and spend time with my kids and not worry about setting my retirement back meaningfully.
Me and my partner got close to that amount in a low cost area and it wasn’t even close to no worries. We lived pretty modestly too. Driving paid off shitboxes, rarely eating out, lived in a relatively small home etc. We still had to really think about things and it didn’t take a lot to throw off our balance. An er visit here or an unplanned vet visit was all it took.
Maybe if we made that amount several years in a row it would have been different. Definitely not close to that amount anymore.
That being said we did get to do fun stuff and were certainly comfortable, but it wasn’t remotely close to not having to think about it.
I’d say 150 to 200k gets you to the no worries and no thoughts range. That’s the range where you can enjoy life, save to retire, and still handle the emergencies while maintaining a modest lifestyle.
I believe that really depends on where you live. Also did you mean net or gross?
Some napkin math I did now, if your gross is 100k…
After tax 75k
Edit: I fucked up and did 4500 for housing not 2500. Cheaper housing gives a lot more room!
That leaves you with like $860/mo for fun or any other thing.Of course that’s a lot of assumptions that can change it. But I’d say 200k gross is the start of “don’t have to think too hard about money”
4500 a month for housing is insane, is rent actually that bad in the US? I could rent a villa for that.
You are also missing private retirement funds though (and if car dependent 100/month seems very low for transit costs)
No, even $2500/month is a lot in some places in the US. In the Midwest that would get you a really nice place, but in New York City that gets you a studio apartment. The US is huge with a wide range of cost of living.
that’s a cheap mortgage where i live. it would pay for a 100 year old falling apart shack.
the average mortgage here is like 6K a month now.
the average studio in my city rents for 3.2K a month… you want a 2bed? that will be over 4K
it costs that much because people are willing to pay it and they have the money to pay it. it’s that simple.
USA has lots and lots of very rich people, who are willing to pay lots of money for these things.
Short answer: Not really, but sometimes.
Much longer answer:
<rant>
You can’t take the USA as a whole. There are studio apartments near me for $600/mo, and you can get a 3 bedroom for $1200 easily. You can scrape by on minimum wage here (it won’t be fun, but you’ll survive). If you get one of the “good” jobs, like at the Amazon warehouse, you’re living large on that $20/hr. Even better if you have a partner who also works. I know a couple who both work full time at the Amazon warehouse and they don’t have any kids, so they’re DINKs, and their rent is less than 1/6th of their gross income.
But I’m in a very low cost of living area. My friend who lives in a wealthy coastal city pays $5400/mo for her 3 bedroom with a beautiful view of the San Fransisco bay. The cost of living varies wildly by location.
My sister-in-law wanted to move closer to my wife and I, so she could see her niblings more often. I gave her a check for $10,000, and took her to a foreclosure auction. She now has a two bedroom house, with a nice (but not huge) backyard, and she left that auction with enough money in her pocket to renovate her new house a bit. No mortgage, she owns it outright.
I bought my huge house, sitting on acres of land in 2009, right after the crash. So it’s not a typical result just to be clear, but I paid $40k, and spent another $20k fixing it up before we moved in. $60k, all told, to fully own a house and a ton of land. I have a creek running through my back yard, and I can stand there and fish whenever I want. I’ve got woods on my property, great for hunting. My property/school taxes come to under $1200/yr total, so my “rent” is about $90/mo. Between my wife and I, we made $560k last year, so we’re in the bracket where we don’t worry about money at all. Our essential bills come to about $30k/yr, the rest gets saved/invested, with a bit going to fun stuff.
You can’t do that where I grew up. Condos (basically an apartment you own instead of rent) in my home town go for literally millions of dollars. The cheapest place I could find doing a quick Zillow search was $499k. The good places go for 4-5 million bucks. And holy shit, the taxes are high.
The USA isn’t so much a country, as much as it is 50 smaller countries in a trenchcoat. You know how annoying it is when someone says “Do Europeans really do [thing]?!?!?” without mentioning the country? That’s basically the same situation as asking “Is the USA really like [thing]?” without mentioning the state.
Some of us grow/hunt/raise most of our food. I harvested and butchered two pigs yesterday. That a lot of almost free pork. Some of us shop at Erewhon, where a single imported Japanese strawberry can cost you $20. They have $100 melons. They sell a half gallon (roughly 2 liters) of water for $26. I get my water from a well, and it’s basically free.
The coasts may as well be a different world entirely than the flyover states. I moved to a flyover state because I knew that my life goals were incompatible with living in a coastal city.
</rant>
$4500 was in my head because that was the projected mortgage+taxes+fees for a 2BR apartment in brooklyn I saw the other day.
There are some apartments in NYC that are that expensive to rent. Average here is $3,650, but that’s skewed by a lot of stupid expensive places. Median is a little lower.
Other parts of the country can be much cheaper, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
Good call.
That’s a good point. I rely on mass transit, which is much cheaper.
No. I am above the 100K line, so is everyone I know.
They are worried all the time, and telling me how stupid I am for not being as upset as they are. all the time
The worries they have are different, and rich people I meet with argue with me that their worries are MORE important than the worries of poor people.
Having enough money that I don’t have to worry about my expenses
America doesn’t have a middle class and hasn’t for some time. The Republicans worked for decades to destroy it, and they succeeded. You’re either poor or you’re rich.
That’s not how that works at all. The middle class is nearly extinct but somewhere around $100k you can attain that not worrying about money status, even buy a humble home. But you’re not even close to rich.
I don’t need to be told I’m not rich. I can’t afford my groceries every week. And I’m single, and I certainly don’t make $100,000 a year or anything close to it.
I also don’t need to be told “how it works“. Because I’m living in a system that’s beating me to death every week when I can’t afford to live.
And I know plenty of people who make around $100,000 a year and still can barely afford to pay their mortgage, afford to feed their families, etc. So don’t tell me “how it works” when you clearly don’t understand it yourself. And you sure as fuck don’t know a goddamn thing about my life.
The arrogance of some random Internet stranger, trying to tell me how my own life works… Wow
I didn’t say anything about your life. Where did you get that idea? Frankly, I don’t care about your life. I didn’t call you poor. I didn’t call your friends poor, etc… All I said is that depending on where you live, $100k can be a comfortable life but it’s no where near rich. I don’t know why you got so defensive.
If you’re gonna make a strawman argument, don’t be so transparent about it.
And if you’re gonna so brazenly lie and claim, I said a bunch of things I didn’t, don’t do it when anyone can just go back and see what I wrote.
Why am I so defensive? That’s why.
Wow, again
edit: oh, and if you really don’t care about me, prove it by not replying, unless that was also a lie…
Again, what are you talking about? What strawman? What specifically did I claim? You’re reading things I didn’t write apparently. And you prove it with your last sentence. I said I didn’t care about your life, not that I didn’t care about you or even that I didn’t care that you apparently have atrocious reading comprehension. Point out a specific strawman or lie.
at this point, you’re obviously just trolling, and the only rational thing to do is to block you.
Go on point out one strawman or lie.