What is it like to live with a salary of about $100,000 a year?
I’ve lived right around the poverty line for many years and now make $135kThe short answer: while I’m very grateful to finally be making more than $20k, it’s continually surprising how $135k doesn’t spend nearly as far as you’d expect it would - your paystubs will make you very angry and you’ll realize why the wealthy complain about “wealth redistribution”.What’s very crazy, is when we made $60k/yr we had very close to the same cash budget each month. This is because taxes, tax credits, etc even the playing field.My monthly pay is $11,250, taxes takes out $4,000 of that leaving $7,250.Speaking of taxes, say goodbye to tax returns…you only ever pay at the end of the year. You scrap for every deductible you can find, since deductibles are only a small percentage of your income at this point. I quickly realized that I never paid taxes when I made $20-$50k, I actually got $$ for free at the end of the tax year. So I put aside $1,000/mo for taxes as I often won’t get the deductibles I hope to get.I self-fund my own insurance because at my tax bracket, Obamacare would be $1,600+ each month for my family. We can self-fund for around $1,000/moSave for retirement, which has to be a lot, since I don’t plan on making $20k when I retire. (I am very grateful to be able to do this, though)All in all, here’s what my monthly budget looks like at $0 debt:$1,300 modest apt for my family to live in$200 car payment - 1 car$1,000 healthcare$1,000 taxes$1,200 retirement$400 utilities$1,000 food for family of 5 (at best we can get this down to $600 - kids eat like animals) also worth nothing that many friends who live in nicer homes than us get $900 in food stamps every month. Likely why I need to pay $5k+/mo in taxes$100 phones for family$400 fuel and car insurance & maintenance$200 misc expenses$200 spending money for my wife and I$100 babysitting$100 out to eat and moviesAs you can see, at $135k, I get about $100 each month to do whatever I want with.About 50% each month goes to government and government services.So all y’all who think that free college, free healthcare, etc from the govt sounds great…it’s only great until you get ahead, then you’ll be paying for it for everyone else for the rest of your life and find that “ahead” isn’t as ahead as you’d hoped.