There’s been much ballyhoo lately about cost of living and affordability in media lately (deservedly so, imo) but I’m curious how hard it is for those of us who are a little more capable than normies (we like to think).
Feel free to be somewhat vague. Not asking anyone to doxx themselves. I’ll start.
In my mid-thirties. Married, two kids. Combined income is just under 100k. We live in a low cost of living area which has helped us a lot. We were able to buy a house in ‘21 with a 15 year mortgage and it feels like we got on the last lifeboat off the Titanic. We’ve been able to build about a 200k net worth, about half of which is home equity.
Day to day expenses are getting tougher, however. We’ve never had a car payment but our older kid has started school and that has put a strain on us since he goes to a private Christian school. I’ve worked in education and I consider sending a kid to public school to be akin to child abuse.
It feels harder and harder to save and invest. Just making ends meet with two kids in this red state feels like a Herculean task. Wondering if anyone else feels the same way.
Gen X, married, one kid, wife and I both have mid 6 figure income from white collar corporate jobs, 7 figure net worth, live in one of the highest COL parts of the US, in the midst of clown world. We can afford to send our kid to private school and own property, and we generally don’t have to think too hard about spending money on stuff we need or want, although we don’t have extravagant tastes. If we did have extravagant tastes, we’d have to make some tradeoffs. So to sum up, we’re comfortable, we don’t have so much money that we can spend like maniacs, but we also don’t want to spend like maniacs, so I’m not worried about money. Nonetheless it was a struggle to get to this point, and I’ve seen how globalist shit and woke shit have both fucked me, and how it’s shaping up to fuck my kid even worse, so I’d like to avoid that somehow.
Edit for added color: I drive a shitbox car, for example, while everyone in our social circle has an Audi or a Tesla (w/ some anti-musk sticker of course) or a BMW or whatever.
Fellow shitbox driver here. 2000 Honda Accord still going strong.
Respect
I love my shit box.