I see this sentiment a lot. What I've never heard along with it is how much money the single-earner of the household pulls in. Care to share?
I do have a friend who was making little enough to qualify for SNAP that made it work. It was definitely tight for him for a while, but after a series of promotions he's making a lot more.
My wife is also a SAHM, but we are in a rather unique position (I make a lot of money and we fostered and adopted children with attachment issues). Now that the kids are old/emotionally stable enough she's looking at working again and the earnings would be less than 1/4 mine; with us already in a high tax-bracket the total added income is an even smaller amount. Still probably going to do it though because she wants to work, and no matter the budget adding even just a few thousand on the margins can make a big difference.
Many couples even find their way into that dynamic involuntarily when one spouse becomes disabled, often in an even more challenging way, but still find a way to make things work.
This is one of the big 'unseen' risks with dual income couples. Elizabeth warren talks about it a lot in her book 'The Two Income Trap'. While it seems having two incomes makes you more robust against any job loss.. The opposite is true, and the data bear it out. Essentially if you both earn 100k, then you will adjust your lifestyle to depend on 200k in income. Now if one spouse loses their job, the other spouse has to make up the 100k somehow. Most cannot and go bankrupt. It is actually very hard to increase your earnings when you start hitting the upper income levels. While easy to go from 120 k to 150k for example, it becomes harder when you're earning 200k to go to 250k.
On the other hand, if you have a working spouse and a non-working spouse (realistically, most non-working spouses have some work experience) and are earning 100k, then you create lifestyle expectations around 100k. If the 100k guy loses his job, then, in most cases both historically and today (and again, Warren gives substantial data to support this claim), the non-working spouse is often able to find a job that will pay almost as much. Either way, in the single income case, they new gap between expectations and earnings is much less than the gap in the dual income case. Historically, much fewer single income couples go bankrupt.
Now, obviously, if you both work and depend on only one income, that's fine, but most people (and again, the data bear it out unequivocally) cannot do this.
$60k seems to be just above the median individual income for men 25-34 (1134*52=58968):
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/median-weekly-earnings-of-...
When I analyzed this a couple years ago, the minimal yearly expenditure to live a more Spartan version of our lifestyle (without compromising on things like food or heating) but with the same home was a little over $40k. Everything over that for us is just prioritization. Covid inflation may have altered the cutoff since then, but I don't think it changes the qualitative picture significantly.
The mortgage alone for a house to fit a family of 4 would be close to $40k in many medium-high COL places.
Well, clearly the solution is for everyone to work remotely for a high-COL area based company and live in a low COL area. Gee, why didn't everyone think of that.
My point being, you still need to be earning roughly 50% more than median to make things work. Your original math seems to point to you lucking out somewhere, e.g. low rate mortgage or being a high-earning in a low-COL area.
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How long is the path from High School Diploma/GED to being a fully licensed commercial electrician?
How many people have full support of their network while earning that license through apprenticeship?
Of course not everyone can do software, so I pointed to something like electrical work with lower barriers to entry (and which is obviously local). The local program I'm looking at says a residential apprenticeship is 4000 on-the-job hours and commercial is 8000, so 2-4 years assuming 40 hours/week. Same as going to college, except you get paid during that time, starting at 33k and 38k respectively and increasing during the apprenticeship. If you lived with family and kept expenses low, that could easily represent $100k saved when others are graduating from school.
Obviously not everyone can be an electrician either, but for example public school teachers here make 60k after 3 years of experience, going up by about 2k with each YOE. I'm sure there are other similar "normal" jobs that people would think of as middle class where it's doable.
I don't know how many people have a support network. Certainly we should be shaming parents if they won't help their kids once they turn 18. Especially if the kid is on a responsible path and starting a career, and just wants to save before leaving home.
Anyway, point is it's not that unattainable to be a single income household if it's important to you. Obviously it's easy for me, but the stats show it's not that rare:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2021/home.h...
Married, spouse present women overall have a 74.5% labor force participation when they have children 6-17 and 65.4% when they have children under 6. i.e. 25.5% and 34.6% stay at home, respectively. Married, spouse present hispanic women have 36.8% and 47.5% respective homemaker rates. I doubt it's because they're all making 1.5x median. They just place a high priority on family. For some people, staying at home is even the economically optimal arrangement, and they can't afford to have a second income.
I'm very puzzled at your comment, but anyways here: Bureau of Labor Statistics release about American National Average salaries for Q1 of 2024, with quite a lot of breakdowns for demographics
According to statistics, the average cost of food and housing in the country of ABCland (consisting only of town A and town B) is $6/unit food, $6/unit housing. From this one concludes completely incorrectly that food and housing are as expensive for the average resident of ABC land.
Except... that's not true at all. No matter where you are in ABC land, housing and food have extremely different costs. Now suppose, wages are $12 in both A and B. Do you think the results will look the same in town A and town B? Why? or why not? Will both suffer the same problems? Why or why not?
And that's the point, if DOL says that wages are on average $60k, that says nothing about what the cost of living is in any particular area. For all you know the poster above could live in a high cost of living area, in which case, this is a modest wage. Or he could live in a low cost of living area where this is exorbitant. Or he could live in a place where food is cheap, but housing expensive, or vice versa. Without knowing the details of where the wage is being used, it's impossible to form a coherent narrative.
We use the average because we do not know the details of where the wage is being used. I'm aware that I've even made a pretty big assumption that the OP we're talking about is even living in America, but lacking any more specific information all we have to fall back on is probability. Hacker News is majority American users, so I feel it's a reasonable assumption.
America is made up of many small markets, sure. But the nature of averages is such that some people will be below the average, most will be clustered around the average, and some will be higher, regardless of which market they live in
Some markets may have a higher income floor than others, but the highest minimum wage in the USA right now is 17 an hour, which is roughly 35k per year if you're full time. That means there are no markets in the country that have a higher yearly income floor than the national average.
So here's my narrative: It actually does not matter what market this person lived in, whether it was super high cost of living or otherwise. They were still earning a salary that was likely 2-3x more than what many other people in their market were likely making, which is a pretty privileged spot to be in no matter where you live
It also is important to remember the context. This OP was talking about living on just one income, allowing their wife to not work a job and be a full time child raiser instead. Having someone making 2x the average means they are earning as much in one income as 2 average earning parents would be, even in the same market. That was the intention of my criticism in the first place: It's relatively easy to say "just have one partner stay home and raise the kids" when you earn as much as two average people!
This is true regardless of the market you live in because you will still be able to afford a much higher quality of life than a single income making the "average". Adjusted for the market you live in, of course, but still!
ETA: but our oldest is 15. When we started this in 2008, I was making $12.75 / hour.
We wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable, but it’s doable.