groundball
New member
@chris0699 I get the impression that how they define comfortable is skewing this lol. There’s comfortable and then there’s lavish comfortable.
$235k for family of 4 to live comfortably in top 100 biggest cities!
- Thread starter chris0699
- Start date
@groundball Comfort assumes first saving as one must for a comfortable retirement.
1visualfxguy
New member
@groundball Comfortable is saving enough to fund retirement at current lifestyle
@groundball Makes me wonder if media companies are many so hiring nepo/trustafarians thesedays that their perception of "comfortable" is indeed warped by their own wealth/parents' wealth 
wanderinghopelessly
New member
@groundball "Comfortable" to me for a family of 4 should include:
- retiring at 65 or earlier without a significant drop in quality of life.
- Paying for most of your kids' college (if they are taking out huge loans then you didn't make enough to be called comfortable)
- Two modest vacations a year and a bigger one every 3-4 years
- Living in a good home that is within a reasonable commute to work (less than 30 minutes each way)
- Being able to pay a baby sitter and go on a nice date night without worrying about the money, several times per year
- Not at risk of losing everything if one of the parents is diagnosed with a major illness (cancer, etc)
ubicaritas
New member
@wanderinghopelessly The city I live in is one of the 10 largest cities in the country, and our household income is $115k (4 people), and we meet all 5 of those criteria.
Yes, the $230k number is VERY far off.
Yes, the $230k number is VERY far off.
wanderinghopelessly
New member
@ubicaritas The math wouldn't add up in my city with 115k without something(s) being subsidized. Assume a monthly takehome of about 6.5k after retirement/college savings and taxes.
A house that fits the above criteria in my area would need approx 2.6k to 3k/mo mortgage minimum (not even talking about downpayment) unless you are ok with truly crap public schools or having the long commute. Another 600 for at least one car payment plus insurance for two cars, 1500 for at least 1 kid in daycare, 200 for gas/tolls, 300 for utilities/internet, 1000 for groceries plus eating out for 4 and we're already capped.
No money for student loans, the vacations, Billy's baseball camp, Lisa's gymnastics, your yearly health insurance deductible plus copay, routine home/car maintenance, clothes for 4, extra savings in case you get laid off and have to look for 6mo, etc etc.
That's in a city with moderate COL. For anywhere in California or NYC or Boston it really really wouldn't work.
A house that fits the above criteria in my area would need approx 2.6k to 3k/mo mortgage minimum (not even talking about downpayment) unless you are ok with truly crap public schools or having the long commute. Another 600 for at least one car payment plus insurance for two cars, 1500 for at least 1 kid in daycare, 200 for gas/tolls, 300 for utilities/internet, 1000 for groceries plus eating out for 4 and we're already capped.
No money for student loans, the vacations, Billy's baseball camp, Lisa's gymnastics, your yearly health insurance deductible plus copay, routine home/car maintenance, clothes for 4, extra savings in case you get laid off and have to look for 6mo, etc etc.
That's in a city with moderate COL. For anywhere in California or NYC or Boston it really really wouldn't work.
ubicaritas
New member
@wanderinghopelessly So I’ll try to take this line by line as best I can.
Yes this is about what my take home pay is.
This is where we get in a bit of trouble with our subjective definitions of the term “comfortable.” I didn’t realize you meant you needed to own a house to be comfortable. We are perfectly comfortable renting our luxury 2 bedroom apartment for $1750/month. Would a house be nice? Sure, but I consider that a luxury. We are perfectly comfortable where we are now. Anything above that for us would be a luxury.
We buy our cars in cash, but even if we didn’t, there’s no way in hell we’d get one with a monthly payment that high. One of our cars we purchased for like $4k total lol
We don’t pay for daycare, but let’s assume we did, I’ll give you $2500/month for daycare for 2 kids, which would be $30k. Even then, that doesn’t put us anywhere close to needing an extra $115k in income.
This sounds about right.
We spend $800 on groceries + eating out but close enough.
Again, this is where we run into trouble with the subjective term “comfortable.” Student loans aside, Baseball camp and gymnastics are expensive activities. I consider those luxuries, not expenses that are needed to be comfortable, in my opinion. And then you have vacations. What exactly are these vacations? Are these expensive all inclusive resorts in Mexico? Or are they the really fun yet relatively cheap vacations we take with our family where we rent out an Airbnb in Broken Bow, OK? Again, our family is perfectly comfortable taking one of those every year.
We already budget for this. Insurance premium is $8k/yr and our max out of pocket is $7k (most years we don’t hit that though).
We have built up about 12 months worth of savings (not including retirement accounts, we have far more than that saved up for retirement), so we handle that part just fine.
Well the interesting part of this article is that it wasn’t referring just to HCOL cities, but rather, it mentioned the largest 100 cities in the US, which covers many MCOL and LCOL cities. If we’re talking strictly the HCOL cities you mentioned above, sure that’s understandable. But as far as the other cities on that list, no $230k is FAR more than you need.
In case you were curious of our actual numbers, for our family of 4 our total expenses for the year are between $57k-$64k, depending on our medical expenses for the year, and that doesn’t include any savings.
Yes this is about what my take home pay is.
This is where we get in a bit of trouble with our subjective definitions of the term “comfortable.” I didn’t realize you meant you needed to own a house to be comfortable. We are perfectly comfortable renting our luxury 2 bedroom apartment for $1750/month. Would a house be nice? Sure, but I consider that a luxury. We are perfectly comfortable where we are now. Anything above that for us would be a luxury.
We buy our cars in cash, but even if we didn’t, there’s no way in hell we’d get one with a monthly payment that high. One of our cars we purchased for like $4k total lol
We don’t pay for daycare, but let’s assume we did, I’ll give you $2500/month for daycare for 2 kids, which would be $30k. Even then, that doesn’t put us anywhere close to needing an extra $115k in income.
This sounds about right.
We spend $800 on groceries + eating out but close enough.
Again, this is where we run into trouble with the subjective term “comfortable.” Student loans aside, Baseball camp and gymnastics are expensive activities. I consider those luxuries, not expenses that are needed to be comfortable, in my opinion. And then you have vacations. What exactly are these vacations? Are these expensive all inclusive resorts in Mexico? Or are they the really fun yet relatively cheap vacations we take with our family where we rent out an Airbnb in Broken Bow, OK? Again, our family is perfectly comfortable taking one of those every year.
We already budget for this. Insurance premium is $8k/yr and our max out of pocket is $7k (most years we don’t hit that though).
We have built up about 12 months worth of savings (not including retirement accounts, we have far more than that saved up for retirement), so we handle that part just fine.
Well the interesting part of this article is that it wasn’t referring just to HCOL cities, but rather, it mentioned the largest 100 cities in the US, which covers many MCOL and LCOL cities. If we’re talking strictly the HCOL cities you mentioned above, sure that’s understandable. But as far as the other cities on that list, no $230k is FAR more than you need.
In case you were curious of our actual numbers, for our family of 4 our total expenses for the year are between $57k-$64k, depending on our medical expenses for the year, and that doesn’t include any savings.
sitarasony
New member
@groundball Comfortable is being able to save money and afford what you need. If you have an unexpected emergency reason to spend money then $500-$2k isn’t going to hurt or stress you out too much. Basically you can buy what you need and want with more left over to save.
@chris0699 Yes, the same study was shared and discussed on this sub a week ago: Salary Needed to Live Comfortably – 2024 Study : r/MiddleClassFinance (reddit.com)
The general consensus was that most families can live comfortably on a lot less than twice the living wage from the MIT study. I suggested taking the MIT living wage and multiplying by around 1.3 to 1.5 would be a more reasonable approach to what it takes to be "comfortable" (or take the results of the SmartAsset study and multiply those by 65-75%) because MIT's study included a handful of items typically included in the "wants" category of the traditional 50/30/20 budget.
The general consensus was that most families can live comfortably on a lot less than twice the living wage from the MIT study. I suggested taking the MIT living wage and multiplying by around 1.3 to 1.5 would be a more reasonable approach to what it takes to be "comfortable" (or take the results of the SmartAsset study and multiply those by 65-75%) because MIT's study included a handful of items typically included in the "wants" category of the traditional 50/30/20 budget.
rachelisunique
New member
steve_yavli
New member
@rachelisunique I suppose people that want to save for retirement and send their kids to college?
@chris0699 That's horseshit
satemplet41
New member
@chris0699 Need $200k to live comfortable in San Antonio? I know people who do it on way less. Making $200k in SA you’d be living like kings
@satemplet41 But it's San Antonio...
@chris0699 This isn't the results of any study, it's really just clickbait.
SmartAsset simply took MITs cost of living calculator for each region and doubled it. The absurdly high numbers are just to drive traffic to their site. Sadly the clickbait works.
Read their methodology at the bottom of the link from OPs post. They use a whole paragraph to say, "We doubled the outcome of MITs study to come up with out bogus number"
Here's their "methodology" if you prefer not to go to the link:
“SmartAsset used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to gather the basic cost of living for an individual with no children and for two working adults with two children. Data includes cost of necessities including housing, food, transportation and income taxes. It was last updated to reflect the most recent data available on Feb. 14, 2024. Applying these costs to the 50/30/20 budget for 99 of the largest U.S. cities, MIT’s living wage is assumed to cover needs (i.e. 50% of one’s budget). From there the total wage was extrapolated for individuals and families to spend 30% of the total on wants and 20% on savings or debt payments.”
SmartAsset simply took MITs cost of living calculator for each region and doubled it. The absurdly high numbers are just to drive traffic to their site. Sadly the clickbait works.
Read their methodology at the bottom of the link from OPs post. They use a whole paragraph to say, "We doubled the outcome of MITs study to come up with out bogus number"
Here's their "methodology" if you prefer not to go to the link:
“SmartAsset used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to gather the basic cost of living for an individual with no children and for two working adults with two children. Data includes cost of necessities including housing, food, transportation and income taxes. It was last updated to reflect the most recent data available on Feb. 14, 2024. Applying these costs to the 50/30/20 budget for 99 of the largest U.S. cities, MIT’s living wage is assumed to cover needs (i.e. 50% of one’s budget). From there the total wage was extrapolated for individuals and families to spend 30% of the total on wants and 20% on savings or debt payments.”
@chris0699 This sub is just the same old stuff reposted. This same article has been posted here at least once already. We get it. Middle class is a fantasy. We’re all sad, struggling wage slaves destined to die destitute mid shift on the factory floor with 0 retirement savings.
@chris0699 $235k is definitely enough to budget for EVERYTHING or at least I hope! If you can't fully fund all your IRAs, HSAs, and college funds on that income outside of NYC you probably are just bad with money.
@chris0699 We’ve been doing 2 kids, soon to be three as a single income outside Cleveland for 11 years. 80k/yr. We built a home, own two older (but paid off cars) take vacations. This thing is wayyyyyy off.