Posted on 03/07/2024 7:22:36 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
(NEXSTAR) — Even if your paycheck is slightly larger this year, you may find yourself on a tight budget, with housing, groceries, and more still sporting high price tags. A recent survey shows most Americans can hardly afford a $1,000 emergency.
Unsurprisingly, where you live can have an impact on the wiggle room — or lack of it — in your budget.
Personal finance site SmartAsset recently reviewed data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator, which estimates the living wage needed to support various family sizes across the country based on expenditure data for food, childcare, insurance, housing, transportation, and more. That data was then applied to a common budgeting method known as the 50/30/20 rule — 50% of your budget should cover your needs, 30% goes toward “wants,” and 20% for debt, saving, or investing — to find the pre-tax salary need to live comfortably in 99 of the nation’s largest cities.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I don’t care how much money I had, I wouldn’t set foot in big democrat cities much less live there.
Wow, that’s pretty comfortable.
And you better have a good plan for your retirement when you are too old to work, First Step and the most crucial is to become DEBT FREE, yes that means paying off your mortgage. And do it as quickly as you can, regardless of how you have to live to achieve it. Once you do that, and if you can manage to not borrow money, you can retire pretty damned comfortably on $120K a year
The odds are if you’re in a city it will be controlled by the dims and thus living comfortably is impossible at least for we the sane.
The trick would be to get a SF job and the corresponding salary, the “work remotely” from say, Wamsutter, Wyoming where you can plop down a double-wide and life off your freezer if you’re a decent shot. Just tell your boss that you’ve got long covid or some crap and remember to wear pants when doing your Zoom meetings and you’re good.
Well some of the information is definitely misleading and some is inaccurate. 2 person households in Queens, Kings, and Richmond County NY (Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island) are listed in the calculator at $78k to $84k. Staten Island is listed as more expensive than Brooklyn, which is wrong. Also I would think most households would be hard pressed to get by at that income since housing alone would probably be north of $600k and most likely closer to $1 mil.
Case in point: my Mom and Dad grew up in South Boston (aka: "Southie) in the 1920s and 1930s. Back then it was the Irish Ghetto...poor Irish,many recent arrivals...struggling to get by. Then it became working class. But in the last 10 years or so it's become yuppified...where rents of $2,000 a month are considered a bargain and $2 million condos are a dime a dozen.
So true, If I could take my NY earnings somewhere else I could live like a prince. Problem I’ve seen in the past is when someone transfers at close to their current earnings, they eventually get cut and are lucky to find a job at 1/2 what they were making if they can find one at all.
Yep, especially if they’re earning decent money in a white collar job and someone in China and India is willing to do “the same job” for a fraction of the salary. Gotta make the quarter, ya know, keep those bonuses and stock options coming!
The insanity, heartache, stress, toil, chaos, and lower life expectancy for just a couple dollars an hour more than a rural job and rural living never ceases to a amaze me.
Is that couple dollars more actually worth the soul killing torture?
The way to make this work is to live in the high cost/high income area until you are ready to retire, then move to a much lower cost of living area.
Even if you still have a mortgage, when you sell, your equity will buy a paid-off house in a low cost area, and a pension plus SS will go a lot further. Roll your 401(k) over into an IRA and handle everything over the internet.
Life is good.
That’s the strategy I’ve been working on and I am close to the endpoint.
Been facing that danger for most of the last 3 decades but somehow still surviving... I will say I’ve had a lot more jobs in my career than I expected when I started.
That means people can live on half their estimate. And why not be comfortable with that?
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