- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
You must log in or # to comment.
A “six figure income” is such a stupidly relative term. What a useless fucking metric.
First of all, that could literally mean anything from $100,000 to $999,999 a year. Someone making nearly a million dollars a year is not “in survival mode”, even in the highest cost of living areas.
Second, it depends on where you live. If you live in the middle of BFE Arizona or Minnesota, having a ~$100k salary could mean you’re living like a king. Living in San Francisco or New York, you’re probably living in a shoebox apartment.
I’m barely one of these “six figure” people. I make $103k per year. However, I also am the sole income for my family of 5, which means I pay for everybody’s health and dental insurance premiums. These are over $1200 a month. I also live in a moderately high cost of housing city where the cheapest, bombed out, sub-900 sq ft house is going for 1/5th to a quarter of a million $ plus. My neighbor has a 973 sq ft home with non-working plumbing, a roof that has shingles coming off and leaks, single pane windows, and foundation issues. His house has an estimated value of $237k if it sold today.
After taxes, nearly half of my salary alone goes to just housing and healthcare and I do not live in a fucking McMansion. My house is around 1000 sq ft. And I still need to keep the lights on, pay for gas, pay the water bill, pay for groceries…Oh and don’t forget about student loan debt to get that income. Have fun paying that at $600-700 a month. If I was renting instead of having a mortgage, I could not afford to live here.
Now I’m not “in survival mode”, as this article would have you believe, but I’m also not exactly “thriving”. If I lost my job, my family would be unable to live beyond…something like 2-3 months. And with the job market cratering in the tech world (which is my career market) right now, it scares the shit out of me. Literally keeps me up at night with anxiety.
What I’m trying to say is that not even us “middle class” folks are doing super great. We’re currently teetering on the edge of a knife and, with continually rising costs, will likely fall into “upper-lower class” territory in the next decade.
scares the shit out of me
this is by design. by funneling all your moneys further and further up the food chain, they both ensure you’ll never take their place and keep you obedient and compliant. lest “something” happens, and you end up in an even worse situation
you and i don’t exist to “thrive.” we’re here to generate more wealth for our owners, and to be hoodwinked into thinking this is the way it’s supposed to be
You’ve nailed my family’s experience as well. I’m a sole earner, high COL area, student debt, groceries and other bills going up.
Verrrry close to my experience as well. I’m holding out hope that in maybe 5 years, when the last of my student debt is gone, we can start really climbing out of our hole, but electricity prices are skyrocketing (Ibpay about $500/mo now), and with the shutdown, our work ontract has not yet been renewed. We’ll be homeless in just a couple months if my income falls apart
Shit that sounds stressful. I hope your contact renews and things go according to plan, homie.
Unless a sentence like this uses the word “all” you should default to “some” as the implied qualifier. As in, not “all six future earners are in survival mode, but “some six figure earners are in survival mode.” Even that would have been shocking years ago, but nowadays, a family with a single earner bringing in 100,000 can very much be struggling to make ends meet in a high COL city.
I’m in Minnesota, twin cities, sounds like property is comparable. To pay less than $300k you’re probably getting something you couldn’t realistically fit a family of 5 or likely something that needs $100k of work to bring up to code anyway. You could get a dump for $150k and fix it up yourself, but most people are not going to do that. Not the most expensive city, but far from the cheapest.
Yeah the only reason I’m able to afford my house is because I got it 5 years ago for $200k. If I had to buy it today, I’d be fucked.
I wish I was making even $50k. I don’t really think leaders in this country care about the majority of Americans. They see what we make, they KNOW the majority of us are struggling, but they refuse to help anyone but themselves.
Six figures is a huge range. Could be $100k/yr or $900k lol. I doubt the latter are in survival mode unless they just can’t stop leasing jet skis or something.
Overall it would be reasonable article, were it not completely fucked up by a ragebait headline. They’re obviously not in ‘survival mode’, unless you count ‘survival mode’ as not being able to refresh your cars to the newest model every three years.
But, there is another way of reading the article, which is that someone on $100k is much closer to someone on $30k than they are to a billionaire. They’re still in the class of people who feed their families by working salaried jobs to generate wealth for others; hating on them is the difference between righteous class warfare versus simple-minded jealousy.
If they’re in survival mode then what the fuck are the other 80% of us in??
I live on benefits, about $1,200 a month, and have the good fortune to only be obligated to pay for internet, fuel, some services like VPN+Email+Anti-virus, and food. For most of the past decade I was able to squirrel away about $200 to $300 a month into an ABLE account, but the last few years that has become increasingly difficult. In fact, I don’t think that I saved any money at all for this year.
My game ‘plan’ was to just let my ABLE collect interest and use that for my annual computer after a new AMD socket has been released, buying the best endgame gear for the prior standard. I spend most of my time on my PC, so I figure a expensive computer would be my ‘big ticket’ item every decade. Never once I have had a vacation to see new things or do stuff beyond the house, because it felt incredibly wasteful for my situation. I would have to cut more of my food budget if I want to save up for the next PC in 2030. This assumes that things like buying new tires doesn’t come up, or medical issues.
I don’t feel good about the future. My circle of possibilities shrinks every year.
For what it’s worth, you don’t need to pay for antivirus. Everyone hates on Windows here (for good reason) but with Windows Defender and common sense you should be fine.
Six figure income? I don’t get that, maybe they have kids or something. They’re lucky, I’d dream to have a job that even paid 60k.
Here’s the thing about making more money, you tend to spend more money. If someone making $120k lived like they were only making $60k they wouldn’t be in “survival mode”.
This is more or less it.
When I made 45k and rented a room I had a lot of expendable income. I could put 6% in a 401k, pay insurance, and still go out and party on weekends.
Making 125 with a mortgage and 2 kids feels kinda rough some months. I wouldn’t call it a struggle. I have a lot of comforts and security. I just don’t have any expendable income.
I think what’s different for me now is, in the past, I could get by crashing on someone’s couch if things got bad. I’m low maintenance. Today, I HAVE to have that mortgage payment. If I don’t cover that Pre-K payment I’ve failed my family. It’s not a struggle per se, but it’s a different kind of stress.
Making $120k but living like they made $60k would mean they are living in survival mode.
Don’t forget that while middle class people have some tiny wiggle room before financial collapse, they are still very vulnerable compared to the millionaire, billionaire, and now trillionaire classes.
I spent years living with off making about 400€ monthly as a student with a part time job (most of it going to food and housing with family), and now that I have 800€ monthly I find myself immediately overextending with plans. New furniture, console, TV, actual PC instead of a budget laptop. If I didn’t live in a big city I’d consider saving up for a car.
It’s easy to forget almost anything besides a roof, homemade food and healthcare is a luxury. (Or, sadly, even the last one, if you want good healthcare, or live in America)
We already cracked. We’re all in the biggest ever bubble pop, we just don’t know it yet.
No, they’re not.
That’s correct. Everyone here making six figures will have some form of asset they could cash in if the chips came down. I sometimes feel underwater, but if I made painful cuts, I could survive. Real Americans are living day to day knowing if things get bad, they might have to sell more blood.
If they’re on survival mode, I’m on Hardcore Ironman mode.
Sorry if I don’t commiserate
So those under this figure are ‘Walking Dead’?
Survival mode?!?! What happened? They had to cancel Netflix or you just had to have the $90,000 Chevrolet Tahoe and a $90,000 Ford F-150.
Try living on 600$ a month!
Ahh, rich people problems. I don’t even know what to spend all my money on and I make £26k. I guess I could just save it and then pay off the mortgage early, then only work 1 day a week?
If you have mortgage, why not pay lump sum regularly instead of saving it first? This way cost of mortgage will come down. Unless you have a fixed rate?
I guess you dont have kids?
I make “six figures” and pay everything in my family. Mortgage, childs clothes, electricity, heating, groceries, everything is so friggin expensive compared to the simple times of 00’s when I lived off with $500/a month in uni, and had great time. The pay for my vacancy was even better in 2010. So my predecessors were making more 15 years ago and every fucking thing cost less. Society is fucked.
But I’m not going around shouting this off rooftops. Because I got the highest compensation when considering my uni friends, and I make do. My kids get new clothes every so often, we have money for food and one vacation yearly. Things are okay, but thats me. For many, things are beyod fucked, and I feel sorry for them.
