How much money do you make?

amother

Seagreen

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 2:17 am

I earn 30k working just under full time . my husband is looking for work. he has a tiny part time job earning 10k. needless to say we dont have enough to get through 3 weeks a month let alone 4. I could add more hrs to my work but want my husband to find work so am holding on and waiting. we bought bh yrs ago so mortgage isnt terrible (1500 per mth) and we have 5 kids bih. yes tuition breaks and yt help....plus some regular food packages every now and then. we wouldnt manage without.

amother

Rose

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 5:48 am

120k combined. $3300 mortgage. 25k per year for tuition. (4 kids with a break). We are barely making it through the month. Some months we are in a negative like YT months and summer. I am seriously considering taking in two boarders for next year so we could have a tiny bit of breathing space. Definitely no vacations. I buy clothes from walmart, target etc..We live in brooklyn.

amother

Mint

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 6:20 am

amother wrote:

just under 200,000 shekel. ( I guess that is about 60K$?)

This is enough to live comfortably, BH.
4 kids, school age. duplex apartment, 1 car.
vacation in Israel once a year.

wow. where area do you live in? do c ? . you pay mortgage or rent? We BH make around that but are very careful (also have car, pay rent)

amother

Orange

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 7:54 am

My husband is making $215k including his bonus. I'm making around 40k for 20 hours a week. Yet with tuitions for 6 kids, mtg, health related expenses etc., we're still tight. We've outgrown our tiny house, have no savings, and struggle when unexpected expenses come up. I've considered working more hours because I could likely double my salary, but I'm barely coping as is. My experience has also been that higher gross doesn't necessarily mean a higher net. For example, I would need a babysitter after school. We're in the NY area. For those of you working for a number of years and making less than I am, are you able to look for jobs that are more lucrative? I just wonder sometimes if some people with more passive personalities could be making more money. A woman posted in another thread that she's making $32k working full-time with an accounting degree. That sounds like slave-labor to me. For reference point, I do not have my degree.

ROFL

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 8:24 am

If you have private insurance there is a thing called copay assist Google your medication names with copay assist and you will find coupons to reduce you copay for your meds. I save several hundred dollars by doing this.

amother wrote:

4 kids, 2 in daycare, 2 in elementary school. We own our very small house (no family help) in Lakewood. We get a tuition discount, so that is managable. Our biggest expense is medications that are not covered by our insurance that cost us many hundereds of dollars a month. We have some cleaning help and treat ourselves (going out for pizza, occational day trips).

I make 120k.

DH is in school; his starting salary post graduation will be around 100k with good room for growth.

We are making it work, but things are very tight. It will be a relief to have two incomes when DH finishes school, but I know that expences only go up...

amother

Khaki

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 8:27 am

ROFL wrote:

Thanks for the tip! I'll pass it on to my husband...

amother

Babypink

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 9:49 am

amother wrote:

Wow! What do you do?
I'm looking for a part time job (20-24 hours a week) and am looking at 20-25 k a year. What do you do without a degree that makes so much money?

amother

Lilac

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 10:52 am

Now I REALLY don’t know how we are managing... We live in Brooklyn with 2 kids and make under 30,000 a year. Hubby is looking for a job, but it’s hard because he had a yeshiva education and only speaks Yiddish. He is trying to learn now, but we really need more money now. We usually fall into debt, and then pay it all off by tax return. Believe me, it’s killing me but what more can I do? I am already working to capacity plus am in college F/T.

Last edited by amother on Tue, Dec 04 2018, 1:48 am; edited 1 time in total

amother

Orange

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 12:31 pm

amother wrote:

Wow! What do you do?
I'm looking for a part time job (20-24 hours a week) and am looking at 20-25 k a year. What do you do without a degree that makes so much money?

What I'm doing doesn't really make a difference because I've made this (and more as well) in all of my positions for quite some time. I've found that developing a can-do attitude and leaving my ego at the door has made me invaluable to my employers. Nothing is beneath me, but when thrown something outside of my skill set, I've tried my hardest to figure out how to get it done.

amother

Jade

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 2:37 pm

We make $145k combined, DH $105k, me $40k, young with no kids yet, in Manhattan. My husband was laid off and unemployed while I was in school for 18 months and we really struggled. After a tremendous amount of hishtadlus on his part BH Hashem answered our tefilos and sent him a great job. We rent an apartment, have $70k in savings, and some money in matched 401ks. We spend a couple thousand on vacation each year and have 6 hours of cleaning help per month, with a budget of $120 to eat out (in the city for 2 people I thought that was pretty good).

amother

Fuchsia

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 2:49 pm

amother wrote:

Another fuschia? Can you pay full tuition? Are you in any debt? (Student, mortgage, cars) do you have cleaning help? Are you able to afford a pesach hotel? Do you have at least 200k in savings?

Yes. We pay full tuition. We have student loans, one of our cars is financed, in the process of buying a house so will have a mortgage soon. We also have credit card debt and loans we took out to start businesses. We have about 15 hours of cleaning help a week. More before pesach. I guess technically we can go to a pesach hotel if we really wanted to. We do not have $200 in savings, and will have a lot less as we are using almost everything we have for a down payment.

amother

Amethyst

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 3:01 pm

amother wrote:

I was more interested what pulled on you path of going from the schooling you have to the job you chose .

This will probably out me to those who know me IRL, but whatever.

I never knew that I'd love to teach, it was never a dream of mine, but once my kids started school I began appreciating the value of a good teacher.

I subbed for someone as a favor, kind of on a lark - I was off of work that day anyway, and discovered that I loved teaching Torah subjects.

A few months later, I was offered a very part time teaching position that I decided to do sort of as a hobby on the side, just because I enjoyed it. Sort of like a Sunday school/kiruv kind of thing. I felt like I was 18 and back in seminary - there's nothing like tapping into the idealistic side of one's self.

Eventually, the principal of that school program asked me if I'd consider doing it full-time. I was really scared to take the leap, but realized it was something I really, really wanted to do. In many ways, I am more naturally suited to this career, because I am passionately idealistic and love kids. I didn't realize how much of myself I'd been suppressing.

With my husband's full support, I jumped into education completely, and I'm so happy I did.

The end.

(For now...till my future sons-in-law want full support, my kids want down payments etc. :-/)

Hope you'll sleep better now. :-)

amother

Tangerine

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 3:25 pm

Op here. Wow. This thread really flew off. Interesting how so many feel that they don't have enough no matter if they are making 40k or 140k. Kind of what I was afraid of. We are going to be doubling our income this month as my husband starts a new job. Something we have been looking forward to. But I have this nagging worry that it still won't feel like enough and all our hard work is for nothing.
We have everything we need and then some. Why do we get so stuck up on the stuff we don't have. I need to figure out how to start LIVING for what we DO have. Because this is not a life.

amother

Cerise

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 3:47 pm

amother wrote:

All your hard work is not for nothing.

40K vs 140K those people live in different cities. And as I recall noone say they 'didn't have enough' what they did say was they weren't super comfortable. Those are different things.

What your husband earning more money should mean that you increase your savings (and tzdakah of course) since "you have everything that you need and then some" under your current financial arrangements.

Stuff doesn't equal happiness. Savings equals some degree of security. Think wisely.

amother

Cerise

Fri, Apr 27 2018, 3:51 pm

amother wrote:

My sleep isn't at issue. I do like a good story about how a person came to do what they love. Thanks for sharing it with me.