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Comment by Xichekolas | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking the exact same thing when I read that.

Sadly I know _many_ people that make six figures and complain about things like student debt and credit card debt. One guy claimed he was lower middle class (he was making $110k at the time, with only a wife, who didn't work, to support). If $110k is lower middle class, then I must be in poverty.

It's like the idea that they can lower their living standard slightly to achieve financial goals just doesn't occur to some people. People that make good money and manage it poorly garner zero sympathy from me.

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I don't know about "lower middle class", but in Manhattan and San Francisco, $110k is definitely "bachelor-class". You might not be able to comfortably raise a child, commute from Jersey to Manhattan, and make student loan payments on $110k/yr.

Then you say, "well then don't live in Manhattan", which is probably true-but-not-obvious, but also implies you're going to take a wage cut to work somewhere else. And not everyone is as geographically mobile as a 25 year old hacker.

I should have qualified and said this was Kansas City. $110k definitely can raise a family there. It's not exactly the carefree level of money, but when the average house costs $185k, it's no where near 'lower middle class'.

You can easily commute from Jersey to Manhattan, make student loan payments and raise a child on $110k/yr. I did the first two on only $20,000/year (though I admit, my loans were a lot more sensible than those of the couple described in this article).

You could also live on $110k manhattan if you are willing to live north of 111th st. A 2br 2bath up there ran $2100/month back during the bubble (less now).

I was offered a job at Bloomberg in 2003, at a significantly better starting than $110k/yr, moving from Ann Arbor, MI. I did this math. So, three things:

(1) I'll spare you yet another hypothetical family budget monthly itemization.

(2) I'll concede that it is clearly possible to raise a family in New York on $110k/yr.

(3) I'll assert again that it is not comfortable to raise a family in New York on $110k/yr, nor does it appear to be easy.

There are obviously a lot of sacrifices you can make to make the budget work out, but in a family scenario, not all sacrifices are tenable.

Could you define comfortable? I'm really curious to know what goods and services are beyond your reach at $110k/year.

I've also done the math and lived it. Commuting from jersey is better, but even manhattan (north of 111'th st) is quite livable.

$110k is ~$6600/mo net working Manhattan, living in Jersey.

Aggressively assume $2500/mo to rent a house (forget buying). Assume part-time child care @ $900, commute @ $400, lowball utilities @ $500 (I pay more than that in Chicago), food @ $1000, car insurance for one car @ $200, and dependent health care at $150.

At $110k/yr, you're now less than $1000/mo over break-even. Lose an alternator in the car, you're in the red. Fill 3 cavities, you're in the red. Fly to Tucson for a funeral, you're in the red.

Can you do it? Yes. But I'm not going to call it easy.

You can rent a 3bdrm apt for $1500 in JC, easily enough space for a family of 3-4. Utilities, figure $100-200/month. (Savings of $1200 over your numbers). Maybe you want a really big house?

The apartments I'm talking about are close to the path, so forget the car (save $200). Path+subway every single day is $185/month (save $215), for a 23 min commute.

So using your numbers, you are $1000 over break-even. In reality, you are closer to $2500 over break-even. How is this uncomfortable?

I mostly agree with you, but isn't $1500 a bit of an underestimate? Jersey City isn't that cheap; $1500 is definitely impossible in Newport or near Exchange Place, and I thought that even around Journal Square it would cost more than $1500 a month for a three bedroom apartment.

$1500 is roughly what you would pay in Journal Square or the heights. The really nice areas you mentioned cost a bit more, of course.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/aap/jsy?query=jersey+ci...

Food @ $1000?! Maybe if you eat out every day...Most American families would laugh at this. If you cook at home and plan properly, you can easily feed a family on far less.

We almost never eat out (we like to cook). I have two kids. Our monthly isn't $1000, but it will easily shoot well over $500 if we don't keep meal-plan-discipline. I totally believe a typical middle class family comes close to $1000/mo on food and food-related expenses.

How do you spend $1000 a month on food? That's $10 a meal! You can't spend $10 a meal even if you eat half a pound of Safeway steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At the other end of the spectrum, dry rice is 33¢ a pound, beans and corn are 50¢ a pound, vegetable oil is $1.29 a liter; multivitamins, water and gas are basically free. The standard corn/beans/rice diet costs about 10¢ per pound of cooked food, which is a meal for four people, 1% of what you were spending.

If you started out married to my wife, you would quickly find yourself single! With alimony payments. Trying to date?

$1000 isn't 10/meal/person for a family of 4; it's $8. A meal at McDonalds --- where allegedly lower-middle class people eat because it's cheap --- is $5-$6 in a major metro area.

There are obviously meals we can spec here that cost nowhere close to $8/person. But:

* A plurality of families in America don't cook every night; that doesn't make them clueless crypto-rich people, it makes them normal. If you don't cook, your meal cost goes up.

* A couple contemplating a family life together could reasonably break up over the issue of feeding itself for 5-10 years off bulk dry rice, beans, and corn.

Yes, if you eat every meal at restaurants, you can spend $1000 a month on food. Even if it's McDonald's. That's why only extremely rich people eat every meal at restaurants.

$1000 isn't $10/meal/person; it's $10/meal.

If a family is concerned about the corn/beans/rice diet, which costs like US$40/month according to my "other end of the spectrum" figures, then maybe they could splurge and add some oatmeal, some greens, some fruit and vegetables, milk, herbs and spices, spaghetti with sauce, peanut butter sandwiches, ramen, the occasional chicken. That could raise the price to US$100/month or even higher. But it isn't going to bring it close to US$1000/month.

At $10/meal total, you're feeding 4 people for $2.50 each. A package of chicken breasts costs $9.00, kragen.

Albertsons.com currently offers a "Beef Chuck Shoulder Steak Boneless USDA Select Max Pack" of 4 pounds at US$4.49 per pound: https://shop.albertsons.com/eCommerceWeb/ProductSearchAction...

US$2.50 of raw shoulder steak is therefore half a pound of steak; you'll be grossly obese and get gout by 35 if you eat that every meal. I don't know if that includes delivery, but it's on their delivery site. On the same site, boneless chicken breasts cost the same amount but drumsticks are a quarter of that, and that's before the discount for buying with your Albertson's Preferred Card, or buying on sale, or buying in bulk at Costco instead of Albertson's. I can't find any packages of chicken breasts there that cost $9.00 for a pound.

Where do you shop?

You live in Argentina and you don't know how to cook beef?

What can you do with chuck, kragen? You can, if you are among the 4% of people in the US with the means and expertise, grind it into hamburger or chili meat. You can, if you are among the 10% with a crock pot, make pot roast.

Otherwise, you can cube it and braise it for a stew, and that's about it. Most families can't do much with $20 worth of chuck.

A package of chicken breasts --- enough for 4 people (in my house, 3-4 breasts) is between 1.5 and 2 pounds.

I'm not sure your evidence is rebutting my argument.

Okay, so as not to be a jackass, I will stipulate:

- You can spend more than US$1000 a month feeding a family of four on 100% Safeway (or Albertsons) steak. I was wrong about that. It looks like your bill could go up to US$2000.

- I definitely don't know how to cook beef. In fact, I'm mostly vegetarian. I didn't move to Argentina for the steak. I'm surprised to learn that chuck steak is inedible without special equipment, except in a stew.

- Enough pre-deboned chicken breasts to feed four people for a meal also costs US$10, which is similarly US$1000 a month, if you eat something that pricey three meals a day.

I still want to know how you spend US$1000 a month on food without factoring in restaurants. Even approximately? I'm sure you're not eating a 100% meat diet, are you?

$1000 over break-even would be wonderful. I'm nowhere near that point and yet I've saved more than enough to buy a few new alternators or flights to Tucson.

And I'm guessing you're single.

So if I get married I'll run $1000 over my budget every month? And never update my budget?

Yes. If you have kids, which I think you just acknowledged you don't, every thought you have about budgeting and your comfort levels are going to change.

Median household income income in the US 48,000 USD (2006).

Let's say you get to keep 1/2 of the 60,000 per year over that for rent. That's easily 2,500 extra rent to cover living close to Manhattan / San Francisco over the national average and you probably don't need a car. The secret is to avoid Starbucks and other expensive things that are not part of the normal middle class lifestyle but seem so important to yuppies.

That's a gross oversimplification. Drink a $5 cup of Starbucks every working day, and you've added $100 to your budget. Cut that expense; congratulations, you've saved 3% of your college loan payment. (Can you tell I've had this argument with Erin before?)

The big-ticket items I don't trust you're considering:

* Child care will cost between $1000-$2000/month.

* Commute will add $300-$500; parking $500-$900 (plus car payments --- $250-$400, plus car upkeep --- $100, plus gas, $150).

I know that people do live on $50k/yr, even near major metro areas. But I also know that 3 fillings at a dentist for my 7 year old cost over $1000, so I don't know how people do it on 50k/yr. I don't know, but I am pretty sure, that it isn't comfortable.

Just to spin your head...

I currently live on $14k a year.

Granted, I'm 25 and live in a college town in the midwest. My share of the rent is $255/mo (live with g/f). I spend $115/mo commuting. My car is paid for. My high deductible insurance is $60/mo. I spend about $220/mo on groceries and another couple hundred eating out and entertaining myself. Of course I have no children.

I'm in no way saying everyone should live like me, but I'm quite content living so cheaply. It's not because I have to (I make about $60k/yr) but the vast majority of it goes towards 'vacations' of 6 months or so between jobs (sometimes that involves traveling). I could easily afford a mortgage if I was willing to be tied down, but I'd rather not be. I tend to work for 6-12 months and then take that much time off. The rest of it goes towards my Roth IRA and savings.

I live on 12k a year in one of the richest counties in the nation. It's easy. You know that stuff you think you want? You don't actually want it, you want the feelings associated with buying and showing things off. Sit down sometime and take stock of the things you actually use and derive enjoyment from on a daily basis and you'll be sitting there with a very tiny and cheap list. This is easier now than it used to be. Broadband internet is unlimited entertainment for $20 a month.

Yeah, living in a hurricane prone area last fall made me examine my 'list' as you call it. I thought to myself: "If my apartment were obliterated and I could only take what would fit in my car (an Aveo), what would it be?"

In the end my list was: My girlfriend, my cat, a week of clothes, my computer, my magic cards, and a couple books.

All the rest of it is just stuff that takes up space.

Once you realize what really matters, you start to question purchases. For a while I thought I really wanted to start a DVD collection, but then I realized it wouldn't be something I'd save from a burning building, so what was the point in having it? Even if the cost of the DVD is only about what two movie tickets cost, at least you don't have to store the movie tickets.

You are doing it wrong. Commute in manhattan (one of the cities Retric mentioned) is $81/month.

http://www.mta.info/metrocard/mcgtreng.htm#30day

Yep, also with 2 workers, that 5$ cup of coffee is 200$/month.

$5 thats roughly how much I pay for lunch

It won't cost that much if you make lunches for the week at home on the weekend.

Drinking $5 cups of Starbucks is not Lower Middle Class.

Yes, as a matter of fact $100 per month is a lot of money. Start saving even a little bit now and you'll be surprised at how it adds up. Your college loan payment is so huge that even 3% of it would have a big effect.

By the way, my dentist charges less than $100 per filling. Does the nitrous oxide cost an extra $700? (Ah, I miss getting fillings as a kid.)

It is infinitely harder to find a tenable pediatric densist than it is to find someone to fix your own teeth. It's so far apart that they aren't even the same problem. And so, I suspect, childrens dental work costs quite a bit more.

It's really not that bad if you pay for dental insurance. I do for both of my kids and it's not nearly that expensive.

Plus you make a good point on why people should avoid junk food and exercise better hygiene, and teach they're children to do so as well (I know that's not always the case, but I bet studies show it is a huge majority of the time).

A substantial fraction of the variation in dental caries is independent of behavioral risk factors.

2 kids, same diet, same hygiene regime; one flawless set of teeth, one mouth full of fillings. (In fact, the bad teeth get even more care than the good teeth).

Some people just have weak teeth.

Yes, that's what I was saying.

Dental insurance is a bad deal. It mostly involves paying in advance for dental work, at a premium. Note that routine dental work is not something that "insures" well; you can't buy cost-effective insurance for something everyone knows is going to happen.

If you have a pediatric dental bill that gets a little bit higher than that, it might be worthwhile flying the kid to Argentina to get the work done. The dentists here are, by and large, better than in the US, the culture in general is a lot more tolerant of kids, the prices are a lot lower, and you get to travel to Argentina. And some of the dentists speak English.

I think Costa Rica is a more popular dental tourism destination.

Yeah, kragen. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take a week off and fly my kid to Argentina for a filling.

All due respect to Argentina --- I've got team members from Argentina -- but come on.

You might already have some vacation time, it doesn't necessarily take a week, and it would be more worthwhile if you were talking about more than just a single filling.

I know of at least one working-class friend in the Manhattan area that has raised a family and sent a kid to college (with another one going soon) and he's making around $55,000 a year in a good year (being a plumber). People need to start being more realistic about what it takes to live a happy and good life. $110k is a good chunk of change no matter where you are in the world, there is no other way about it.

The lawyer mentioned was clearly a dope. The story said he accepted a loan for over $100K without knowing what the interest rate was or who he was borrowing from. Sure, they might have pressured him (like car dealerships do), but you'd have to be moron to get suckered that bad.

The interest rate was pretty good, only varying up to 9%. I'm not a fan of variable-rate loans but he seems to have come out on the good end of this one.

It's always relative. People seem to define "rich" as "someone with more money than me."

Yeah, but college didn't teach them about basic finance!!! Clearly its not their fault.

On a more serious note: It would be nice if some finance education was mandatory. Ex: there is no good reason for having any credit card debt and yet people still have tons. It shows that they don't know how to manage their income even if they have lots to go around.

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