General Politics XII World • Page 403

Haha dang thank you, just took a lot of stress off my plate lol. Just peeked through my benefits and apparently I have a small pension, too.

 

i just got my first 401k a few months ago and i dont really make that much money to begin with so im gonna be working forever

 

lol

 

Having any kind of family money at all also changes your attitude about this. that friend worries way more than me partly because I have a decent amount family money that will end up helping.

 

Kids are definitely expensive, but we're getting to a point right now where they're less expensive for a couple years at least - they're all in public school vs. private daycare/preschool, they're not growing as fast so we're not replacing clothes and shoes constantly, and we're finding all of the activities we can through the public park system we can so those are much less expensive.

But even still, the extra cost of food and the things they need does add up quite quickly.

And yes, agreed on student loans. At the very least, with federal loans, the interest should be capped/non-existent and not allowed to be capitalized and that should be made retroactive.

 

speaking of being very wealthy and living comfortably, I went to a thrift store today looking to buy a winter jacket that is nicer than my $30 Amazon special from a few years ago and I found a really nice one but it was too tight on my shoulders and chest which was very disappointing but also not as bad as if it had been too tight on my stomach

 

My recommendation, before 40, if you don't have a financial planner already, find one to talk to. Some companies 401k programs have people you can talk to and they can walk through scenarios with you. Do all kinds of math with various situations and how it can plan out. Help you see what different things can do (buy a car, refinance home, buy new home, etc.) to your expected retirement. The guy I work with and meet with annually has it down to a %, where at the end of the meeting he'll say based on current trends, contributions, spending, etc., there's a X% chance if you retire at 65 you'll die before running out of money (and has the death at like 112 or something nuts). And it helps with planning and knowing if we're putting enough in, how to do it in a way that helps with taxes, and he was super helpful in helping plan when we moved and knowing how to stay in our budget with our future plans.

A lot of this stuff you can learn to, but I have found it really helpful to have someone I can talk to and ask questions to that does this kinda thing for a living. And especially with my mom getting up in age and her retiring last year and my worries about all of that it's ... at least calming on the anxiety around it for me.

 

is this the new macklemore song?

 

lmfao literal spit take

 

Also if you have any extra cash (many of us don't I get that) throw that in some index funds, ETF's, or mutual funds. I am going to cut in half what I spend on sports gambling every month and start taking the other half and putting it into those. Its's not a whole helluva of a lot monthly but figured that would be a better place to put it.

 

Very true. When my grandma passed a few years back I found out how much each of her three kids got (I may have gotten some of my save! personality traits from my grandfather). And I have worked with my mom on her finances leading to retirement because I'm the executor or whatever, so I have a pretty good idea what she had before that, and now. My mindset has always been to plan as though my family will leave me nothing, and try and live with that mindset, but like you I know in the back of my mind that's probably not true, and it feels like a safety net that I know many many people don't have. I don't know if I would have moved and taken on the new mortgage at the current rates without that in the back of my mind, because deep down I am so risk averse.

 

I should add that we are very lucky in that my wife's grandparents setup a trust for her when she was young that she could take out when she was 18 or leave in trust until she was 40 to use for only very limited things (school, medical expenses, buying a house, or starting a business) and she smartly chose to leave it in trust.

We were able to use that for the down payment on our first house (and avoid PMI) and then sold that house at a relatively high point in the market so made enough to afford the down payment on our second house, do the repairs and improvements we needed and wanted immediately, and put a little extra away (which we have more than spent with additional repairs and improvements).

Our current house has also appreciated significantly since we bought it 3 years ago. So from that perspective we are far from struggling, but it is hard to make our salaries stretch to cover all the things we would want them to cover on their own.

 

100k was always stuck in my head like everyone else our age, so when I finally got a job making that on my own a few years ago I was like...well this doesn't feel the same as it did back then.

kaitie got laid off after we made one (1) mortgage payment after buying our house in March lol. We also had our wedding last month and thankfully spent less than 5k for the entire thing. Before she was laid off we were clearing 200k, which was comfortable in Denver proper. With her unemployment it's closer to 160k and it's been tight.

My work does 8% matching 401(a) contributions so based on the calculator app on their website, it says I'm on track for retirement but who fucking knows at this point

 

all kidding aside, my adult life I have always worked at fairly well-paying jobs and have consistently done a lot of overtime. when I was younger and single, for me it really was just looking at where I was spending it on dumb things and tightening that up and being much smarter and more strategic about it.

kids blow all of it out of the fucking water tho

 

This has also been my experience with every milestone # or new raise I've ever got, you think if only ... and then after getting there are like, hmm, what about the next bump. I sometimes have to remind myself I used to dream and pray about "one day" being exactly where I am right now. That this was at one point the very dream and goal.

This sucks so much. I'm sorry. Literal nightmare fuel kind of thing. Before we moved that was a big red line for me was making sure our mortgage was something we could pay on one of our salaries if we had to. I hope she finds a new job and you can get back to that ... clears throat ... mile high life.

 

A little bit dependent on where you live. Using MA as an example, you need a take home of ~50,000 just for your mortgage payment alone. So like factoring car loans, daycare, student loans, utilities, groceries etc etc 100k can go pretty fast out here. Obviously no one making 100k or owning a house should be crying poverty, I’m just talking about a sense of “made it.”

 

yeah its wild how much things start to grow if you contribute regularly, even if its a small amount, and let the interest do the rest.

 

Yeah but have you considered my recommendation to not eat avocado toast, AND to not have a car loan, kid, or student loan?

Dual income 180-200k for a family (especially with a kid), I can get that, but I was reading that first tweet as though people thought they, individually, needed to be making 200k+ to feel financially successful. I still find that extremely high, I think I consider myself successful all in all, have a mortgage, bills, know the monthly costs of living ... and I do not make that. Like the idea of me individually bringing in 200k a year feels like so much extra compared to our budget I do not know what I would do with it. Not saying I don't want to try and find out! But I also hope people that are pulling in 150+ are doing good things with their money and not just out there feeling stressed that they're not financially successful or overbuying homes or something, I dunno. I wasn't making that in my 20s and 30s, thought I was doing alright. But I guess I've been constantly making (pretty decent in my head) money since I was like ... 18? ... I'm almost 42 now, so almost 24 years of saving ... the long game ... and not overspending young has paid off.

I am just still a little mindblown at the idea of people thinking they need to make that number, again if it's individually.

 

Yes, I have tried not having a car loan and I don’t like avocado toast.

I’m currently interviewing for roles where the salary gets up to like 170k and like holy fuck would that be a life changer. The 50k/annual mortgage we pay is currently paying for a 1,200 square foot ranch out in farmland so, for us to be anywhere north of the city where we want to be, I’m gonna need to land one of these jobs lol

 

What's that ... like ... $4,100 a month for a mortgage?

So, aiming for the 30% rule ... that's ... ~164k for a dual family income to be on the safe side.

That mentally tracks for me thinking a dual family income of 200k would be "financial successful;" to spend 30% on their 4k a month mortgage, buy other stuff, etc.

Also, a mortgage over 4k in Oregon would get you quite a bit more, and definitely don't look at like some of the Texas or Kansas houses that pop up on my Instagram that are like 6,000 square feet for like 380k.

 

I had to click to see too many what and wow what a reveal lol

 

Echo the 100K sentiment…if I were making 100K by myself I’d be psyched.

me and my wife are both teachers so I think combined last year we were in the ~130K range, we have one kid, a mortgage payment, one car payment, one student loan payment, and until this past June we had a childcare payment. I would say we live comfortably, but our biggest advantages have been 1. She graduated with zero in student loans because her parents paid for it, and because of this had like 20-25K in savings by her mid 20s, 2. My student loan payment is small because I only graduated with 21K in debt. So not having that student loan pitfall helps us a ton. Combine that with me being generally on top of finances, I.e. paying attention to mortgage rates so knowing when a good time to buy and refinance was, paying attention to home prices, etc, and it’s set us up pretty good. Our mortgage payment is low with a 2.875 interest rate, the one car payment we have, we bought at what i think was close to the bottom of the car market in spring 2020, so the car payment is only $170 a month or something like that for an 2017 Outback with all the bells/whistles/add ons, my student loan payment even before the SAVE plan was under $200 if I wanted to pay the minimum (I usually pay more), and we both have pensions so aren’t throwing income into a 401K (yet, that’s next this year)…so thanks to all that, I’d say we live “comfortably”. We definitely need to tighten the belt so to speak and cut back on some shit (like eating takeout) as we have baby #2 on the way and will pick up childcare payments again in a year. But generally we are comfortable, can pay for one week vacation at the beach every summer, etc.

All that to say that, if we were making 200K a year? Fuck. Definitely would buy similar size house in a nicer neighbor (and ours isn’t a bad neighborhood!)and happily pay the extra $1000 a month the mortgage would be, and still have plenty left over lol

 

read some of the comments to see what others said and if anyone echoed my wtf!

this comment stuck out though because i think about it a lot.

first year of college: 9/11
right after graduating college: housing crisis

 

this alone makes me hate you more than every lib post combined just for the record

 

And yeah I grew up having very little extras and under the idea that we could lose our place to live if my mom suddenly lost her job, we were quite literally paycheck to paycheck, especially once we got forced out of our rental house when I was 15. That existence as a kid definitely shaped my being generally on top of finances now. We definitely do frivolous spending but if we had 200K instead of the ~130K we have a year now, pretty sure like Jason said I’d prob be plowing a lot of that into a retirement account of some sort lol. Wouldn’t know what to do with the extra. Though I guess a lot of it could go towards trips/experiences/etc for the kids, things I didn’t get growing up like music lessons or summer camps or etc