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Forum
-> Household Management
-> Finances
amother
Apricot
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 12:51 pm
DH & my NET incomes combined are about $95,000. Are we middle class or low income class? No idea if this is a normal range or not.
We work in chinuch & in our kids schools so are eligible for tuition discounts (still pay a nice amount though).
We just make it month to month. Neither of us are good at being frugal or budgeting. OTOH we don’t have high expectations -low key vacations usually just to visit family, rarely go to restaurants, rarely eat meat (aside for ground meat), don’t care for fancy clothes or brand names. We have a small house b”h & lease one car (thru work so it’s worth it). We do have a lot of cleaning help (high priority for us) & at challenging times will buy pizza or other frozen ready foods. We do sales as much as possible, shop in a few stores to get cheapest foods in each, end of season clothes sales etc. Just we are very not the calculated, technical types, both always hated math etc.
Also we live a ‘OOT’ if that makes a diff. No where near NY/NJ etc.
Trying to figure out if our salary is considered ‘poor’, or rather we are ‘poor at managing our money’.
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amother
Tan
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 12:53 pm
amother wrote: | DH & my NET incomes combined are about $95,000. Are we middle class or low income class? No idea if this is a normal range or not.
We work in chinuch & in our kids schools so are eligible for tuition discounts (still pay a nice amount though).
We just make it month to month. Neither of us are good at being frugal or budgeting. OTOH we don’t have high expectations -low key vacations usually just to visit family, rarely go to restaurants, rarely eat meat (aside for ground meat), don’t care for fancy clothes or brand names. We have a small house b”h & lease one car (thru work so it’s worth it). We do have a lot of cleaning help (high priority for us) & at challenging times will buy pizza or other frozen ready foods. We do sales as much as possible, shop in a few stores to get cheapest foods in each, end of season clothes sales etc. Just we are very not the calculated, technical types, both always hated math etc.
Also we live a ‘OOT’ if that makes a diff. No where near NY/NJ etc.
Trying to figure out if our salary is considered ‘poor’, or rather we are ‘poor at managing our money’. | [u]
The bottom line is that if you're "just making it month to month" with no extra savings, no ability to pay for a big unexpected expense, then you low income for your needs.
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pesek zman
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 12:55 pm
You say cleaning help is a high priority for you and that’s fine but it costs money. If savings were a high priority for you, perhaps consider cutting the cleaning help. No one can say if you’re poor but if disaster struck (termites! A new roof!) what would you do? Do you have a safety net for that?
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mha3484
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 12:58 pm
Its hard to say without knowing what you spend on your mortgage and tuition. Those two take up the most money for most people.
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amother
Apricot
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:16 pm
mha3484 wrote: | Its hard to say without knowing what you spend on your mortgage and tuition. Those two take up the most money for most people. |
$2200 a month for mortgage
$550 a month for tuition
Rounded up both numbers
Forgot to mention we have a pretty good health insurance included in DH’s salary.
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amother
Apricot
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:20 pm
amother wrote: | [u]
The bottom line is that if you're "just making it month to month" with no extra savings, no ability to pay for a big unexpected expense, then you low income for your needs. |
That I know. My question is are we not being careful enuf, or is this a very low salary?
Meaning if we worked very hard on budgeting & being more careful, could we do significantly better? Or not much?
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amother
Silver
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:29 pm
I think many people earn less than that thread. 300k to 500k is a very high income.
My husband and I both work full time and gross about 165k between the two of us and we built up to that for years.
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justmarried:)
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:35 pm
You have what you need and living with in your means so you should be happy about that. But you should try and save a little also.
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pesek zman
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:36 pm
amother wrote: | That I know. My question is are we not being careful enuf, or is this a very low salary?
Meaning if we worked very hard on budgeting & being more careful, could we do significantly better? Or not much? |
I think so. For example if you currently pay $500 a month on cleaning help, if you cut that out, you’d have 6k a year to put in savings. To me that’s a decent sum of a money.
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amother
Apricot
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:37 pm
justmarried:) wrote: | You have what you need and living with in your means so you should be happy about that. But you should try and save a little also. |
We do acquire small debts every so often, and then work very hard to pay back...
We seem to have a very hard time saving.
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amother
Powderblue
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:45 pm
For chinuch 95k sounds good especially out of town. But yes it’s on the lower end of the spectrum and you are “struggling” middle class
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amother
Cyan
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 1:54 pm
Quote: | For chinuch 95k sounds good especially out of town. |
That's a decent chinuch salary but on top of that your tuition is where you're coming out ahead.
If you weren't working in your kids school your tuition with that salary would probably be closer to $2000 a month. So you're essentially "making" another $1450 a month
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33055
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 2:17 pm
Whether you are low income or not depends on your income.
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amother
Slategray
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 2:30 pm
It depends on family size. Generally if you're still eligible for subsidized insurance then you'd be classified as low income and if you're above that bracket you would be struggling middle class.
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amother
Hotpink
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Fri, Mar 01 2019, 2:39 pm
You’re doing better than people who make much more with that tuition break plus insurance included. An easy area to cut down would be cleaning help. What is a lot?
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baby12x
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Sat, Mar 02 2019, 11:36 am
There are online calculators that will tell you if you're considered middle class or low income etc if you're really curious. But you should get doing your absolute best to be putting money in savings, no excuses.
Especially an emergency fund: https://adimesaved.com/emergency-funda-primer
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