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02-10-2009, 05:05 PM
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Who's living a middle class life on < $75k in a HCOL area?
wincrasher had an interesting thread on how much it took to have a basic middle class life. I thought it would be fun to see how people are actually living for comparison. I'll start separate threads for HCOL and LCOL areas.
Here are the parameters for answering this thread. You're married, with 1-2 kids, living in a neighborhhood without crime or violence, and making it work in a HCOL area on less that $75k. What is your gross income? What are you spending per month on the following: Rent/Mortgage Home Insurance Car Payment Car Insurance Health Insurance Life Insurance Phone Internet TV Trash Water Electric/Gas Groceries/Supplies Gasoline/Oil Other Entertainment /Fun Retirement savings Other Savings Taxes Describe your house or apartment, and the neighborhood Describe your cars -- did you buy new or used, and for how much How did you get to this point? Last edited by zetta : 02-10-2009 at 05:14 PM. 
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02-10-2009, 05:14 PM
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How do you define HCOLA? I live in a HCOLA that we consider LCOLA. But HCOLA compared to most the country. LOL.
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02-10-2009, 05:16 PM
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Just use your judgement of whether your area is HCOLA or LCOLA compared to the rest of the country. For instance, most of CA is HCOLA, most of South Carolina is LCOLA.
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02-10-2009, 05:18 PM
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Well done Zetta - this will be fun.
If you are in debt, then you need to live in a dietCOLA.
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02-10-2009, 05:46 PM
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What is your gross income? $75k as of 12/31/08. I just got a raise but we were making $45k in 2003, and raises since then to $77k starting January 1. We have lived our lifestyle on much less.
What are you spending per month on the following: Rent/Mortgage $1100 Home Insurance $100 Car Payment $0 Car Insurance $125 Health Insurance $800 Life Insurance $50 Phone $60 Internet $40 TV $60 Trash $0 Water $90 Electric/Gas $100 Groceries/Supplies $500 Gasoline/Oil $300 Other Entertainment /Fun $350 Retirement savings $333 Other Savings $250 Taxes - Income/SS $800 Property Taxes $375 Vacation fund $125 Car Repair Fund $100 Preschool $300**Temporary - back to savings in 2010 Describe your house or apartment, and the neighborhood - Our house is 2600 sf in an "upscale" neighborhood. Upscale for the city we live in, but upscale is relative if you ask me. I'd consider it middle class. Some of our neighbors think it is Beverly Hills - pfffftttttt. It's flipping Sacramento. Describe your cars -- did you buy new or used, and for how much - The cars we drive now, we bought one year used for $7888 & $12k. The first we bought in 2002. The minivan we bought in 2006. We paid cash for both, mostly with money we saved before having kids. Always drove old clunkers (think $1k price tag) before that and I find little difference in our repair bills now. We save $100/month to ideally replace both cars in 15 years for about $10k. How did you get to this point? I touched on it in the other thread. Dh lived at home through college, worked and saved a ton. I worked through college to pay my way while living on my own. But used to living on nothing, I saved most my wage for a year out of college. We bought a home and saved dh's income for 2 years before kids. He stays home with the kids. Savings before kids paid for a large down payment on home and a comfortable lifestyle until my wage caught back up to a 2-income level. Buying a home in 1999 has kept our cost of living down considerably. Rents and housing costs have skyrocketed since. Our home is still worth considerably more than we paid in a city where most are upside down. I decided I do live in a HCOLA area because everyone is fleeing here for cheaper living elsewhere. BUT it is also our secret to doing well here. We moved here from an area that cost about 3 times as much. That is why we have such a nice home. We couldn't afford a house back home. Here we went all out because it was "cheap" from our perspective. & all of the costs of home ownership are far cheaper than even renting back home, so we feel like we have it pretty good. We never borrow for anything (but mortgage). We buy used if it's all we can afford. Our house is filled with hand-me-down and used furniture. No one would know just looking at it. I never want to borrow another dime again, personally. Oh yeah - our health insurance is insane, but I have an awesome retirement benefit that kind of makes up for it. IT's really a wash. My boss contributes 10% of my income to a 401k-like plan. IT's in my name; like a 401k. So our current retirement contribution rate is 15% though we only contribute 5%. I wouldn't call our lifestyle basic at all. We don't want for much. Though I would label us pretty middle class all the same. When we moved here in 2001 we figured we could live on $40k/year. Maybe a bit idealistic. But the expensive part of kids was affording their health insurance. We went from paying nothing to $10k/year pretty rapidly. I think we could do okay on $50k, with our current benefit situation. We could certainly downsize our home considerably. $75k was definitely the tipping point from "temporary one income living" to "maybe we can do quite well on one income indefinitely," for us. Most of our peers have large house payments and large car payments though. They would tell you $75k is not enough. Last edited by MonkeyMama : 02-10-2009 at 06:03 PM.
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