this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Housing Bubble 2: Return of the Ugly
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For those that keep asking what the definition of comfortable is, it's a 50/30/20 budget where 50% is spent on necessities, 30% is discretionary and 20% is saved.
What are they defining as necessities?
a 8000sq ft home and two luxury cars, and sending your kids to private school.
vast majority of people seem to think unless you're in the top 5-10% of wealth, you're 'struggling'. I make 50% of the income for a family of four, as a single person. I am not struggling, but popular consensus among my peers is that I am 'poor'. Since I only have a 900sqft condo, a a 30K car, two rescue pets, and vacation budget is only four figures. For me to be 'comfortable' I should be living in a space twice the size of my current one, that is luxury/new, driving a 50-60K car, and have pedigree designer animals that cost me five figures.
This especially apparent on the dating market where the consensus is that a single male should be making 250K at a minimum to be considered husband materia, that's 95th percentile.
I have to take your comment with a grain of salt since you're not defining what 50% equates to or where you live currently.
My wife and I (+2 children) are currently in Europe and we're looking to relocate back to the US (were American).
We calculated our combined income would total around 160k before taxes and after doing a bare minimum budget (basic 1000sq ft apt for rent in second ring suburb in Minnesota; one shared used car) we decided it just wasn't feasible. Between daycare and health premiums (which would total around 2,200/mo) there was no way. Could we afford it? Sure, but we would be two paychecks away from homelessness.