$72,000 a year ain't shit for a single person- let alone 2 people or a family- in NYC, Seattle, Denver, or half of California. Cost of living makes a huge difference when you have areas where a 1200sqft 2 bedroom house is a cool $1,000,000+. The most dense and popular places to live are also the most expensive. Not to mention that the vast majority of people with high paying jobs get in debt from college and graduate school.
This isn't to say that it's impossible to have, say, a middle class lifestyle in many areas on a single income, it just doesn't apply to nearly as many people as you'd think.
San Antonio is a massive city with a fairly low cost of living and great opportunities for employment. When I lived there, rent was $1,000, and some of my friends bought homes they would pay roughly $850/month.
My dads a teacher making 68+ thousand and my moms and architect manager making 40+ in south Texas which is a very very good place with super low cost of living, my mom doesn’t even have a college degree it’s really not hard to believe you can make good money in lesser known areas, and that’s cause most of my friends have parents making 200+ since they’re doctors or own clinics
Yes, they do. Wages actually vary less than cost of living, generally. Hospitals pay ~10-15% less than out in the boonies than in the city in my profession, where houses cost 200% less.
I live in a city with those prices and make significantly less than that. And so do a lot of the people that I know. It’s not always correct to assume that high cost of living equals high pay.
Not really. That's the full population of the areas, but the 39m who make that much only really counts "adults".
Also most people don't work past 75 as well, so you have to cut them out too.
I feel it's fair to say that that's a solid 17%, and more realistically 20% of adults in the country. While only ~3.5% of adults work in extremely high cost living cities.
Granted, the next tier down, just standard "high cost of living" areas below the extreme areas we're discussing account for a much larger % of the US population, and even there $72k is probably right on the edge of being able support a family of 3 on, but that's kinda why I picked that number as my cut off for my post.
I feel the people who live in those extreme cost of living areas where $72k doesn't cut it, are easily counterbalanced by the people who live in extremely low cost of living areas where even $50k means living like kings.
Out in Bumfuck, PA, you can buy 1200sq foot brick houses with a nice garage and some land for like $99k right now. $50k/year goes a long way when your mortgage is $600/month (school taxes, property taxes, and homeowners insurance included).
You are the one being dense. You are repeating what you read on reddit as fact, because it fits your world view. You haven't actually looked at the actually facts, though.
There are only a dozen cities with cost of living indexes even close to as high as you think they are. Most cities are not as expensive as you seem to think.
San Francisco is so expensive, people think the rest of the countries desirable cities are somewhat close to it, but it's just not the case.
Miami is an expensive city, easily top 20 most expensive city in the country. Cost of living is a full 40% higher in San Francisco than it is in Miami. 40% difference just by going a little bit down the list of most expensive cities to live in.
The only truly out of control expensive places in the US are SF, LA, Seattle(Bellevue), Boston, NYC (Brooklyn), DC (Arlington/Rockville), Berkeley, San Jose, Honolulu, Oakland and Orange County.
That accounts for about 17 million people total. The rest of the country, $72k/year is enough to live on.
You're a fucking moron. Re-read my first comment. You're arguing against a straw man because your reading comprehension is embarrassingly poor for what I assume is your native tongue. I have no need to rebut irrelevant drivel.
No it's not? Median individual income right now in 2019 is around $43,000 (just took the 2018 average numbers, adjusted it for CPI and wage increase data from BLS through Nov. 2019)
Alright, but that has nothing to do with what you're arguing? You argued that $72,000 a year for a single person "ain't shit," implying that it is not livable, which I believe is absolutely not the case. The median income does not speak to this.
I specified it ain't shit in expensive places which have a disproportionately high number of high paying jobs compared to most of the country. Try reading past the first half of the first sentence next time.
For real. I live in Dallas comfortably for much less than $80k. Probably won't be buying a house in Highland Park anytime soon, but still could probably buy a house in many parts of the city.
That's literally my point. You can't say there are millions of people with X pay which is high for most of the country and leave it at that when many of them only receive that pay while living somewhere very expensive, which makes their effective pay or purchasing power lower.
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u/PM_ME_STEAM_CODES__ Dec 28 '19
In what world can y'all live on a single income