The crux of this issue, why everyone has something to say about it: is because the word 'comfortably' seems open to interpretation. But it's defined in a way that makes sense here.

For the purposes of the referenced study https://smartasset.com/data-studies/salary-needed-live-comfortably-2024, they used the MIT Living Wage Calculator https://livingwage.mit.edu/ and extrapolated out total compensation needed to maintain the 50/30/20 rule, where 50% of your total income goes to necessities, 30% to entertainment and wants, and 20% to investments or debt payments.

So it's really not up for debate unless you'd like to argue against the figures presented in the MIT Living Wage calculator or the 50/30/20 'rule'.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Agree they list the rule - but like a mean vs median thing, are crazy cities like NYC or LA skewing the average?

We make about half the bottom-right picture, but I AM at about the 50/30/20 balance. Yes, worthless anecdote, but still makes $240k seem a tad high for a median.

I'll have to take a look at my spending and see where my splits really are. To the spreadsheet!

[–] tory 2 points 9 months ago

It does seem to feature estimates regarding the average rather than median, so you're right. Higher CoL areas would drive that way up.

Plus, upon further review, I realized the study only involved the top 100 most populated cities. That would for sure skew the number upward as well.

[–] alphanerd4 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

im like at least 3% sure the subtext is 503020 does not reflect the reality of if you can manage 100, closer to the actual median around 45k, then ==> follows some version of that is enough.,,.

[–] tory 1 points 9 months ago

It is worth mentioning that everything discussed so far was in terms of averages, not medians. The average salary is more like 58k.