I mean by all standards they should be completely fine.
I make less than $30k/year and make it work without credit. I honestly want to see their bills and what their living situation looks like because if you can’t manage $150k/year comfortably you’re definitely doing something wrong.
I’m a software developer, a couple years outta college. My girlfriend and I are living together, and make about $120k/yr combined. We have no problem, I save a lot of my income and still have a bunch left over for hobbies. She has maybe a couple grand in student debt left and I’ve never been in debt in my life. I’d be willing to bet that a large portion of the issue is car payments and payments on a house that’s fancier than they need.
It’s also wild that roughly the same percentage (36%) of people making $50k-$150k are also living paycheck to paycheck. Live within you means. It isn’t hard.
Now live in San Francisco, have 2 kids and a house.
Probably not even possible on 120k
Edit: im not in San Francisco, but I don’t think you could own where i am with a dual income of 120k and have a place that would work for 2 kids. At least moving here today. 5-10 years ago it’d work no problem. Cheapest 3 bedroom condo is 525k with $620 monthly fees, but almost all of them are 700k+ (in CAD)
If I had kids, I wouldn’t live there. If I lived there I wouldn’t have kids until I was able to move.
It obviously isn’t as simple as that, and it’s a personal choice, but that’s how I see it. Kids isn’t just an emotional choice, you’ve gotta be able to raise them within your means.
Where I live, we could own a house and have a couple kids, but it makes more sense to rent right now. Where we currently live, we could have a couple kids, and they’d each have their own room, but it’d be a bit tight.
You get used to the money and spend more until you are broke. Maybe it’s peer pressure, irresponsibility or a lack of financial education.
I don’t disagree, but $150k is just not that much money any more for a household. My wife and I make probably around $110 or so. I got lucky and bought a house 6-8 years ago (I’d never be able to afford interest rates or what that house appraises at now) we have a couple of <$20k used cars with good rates, and a household of 6-8 depending on which of my kid’s friends basically live with us this week.
if I were buying my house today, we’d need to make much closer to the 150 just to maintain our current middle class lifestyle, and trust me, it’s not like we’re eating steak every night (or probably even every month.) I mean, sure, there are things we can do to make that money go further, and we will likely have to do as my kids get older/more expensive.
Other places may have higher cost of living. Hard to tell. But it does sound like a lot of money.
