gig em 02 said:
ChoppinDs40 said:
If both people work it's not hard at all for 2 professionals to be pulling in $300k plus in Texas's big cities. Locked in mortgage at prepandemic prices? That's a lot of discretionary spending available.
And when debt has been so cheap, why not use it? Obviously need to use it intelligently. My mortgage is 30yr at 2.5% - I'm not paying that down "sooner" to save on effective interest rate of 1.8%. But also put back ~65k/ year in 401k/HSA/other investments and have a decent emergency savings fund in cash.
Leverage away!
When people say things like this I know they grew up rich and haven't spent much time around the middle class. $300k combined household income is less than 10% of the population. According to the link I posted below $227,000 puts you in the 95th percentile in Dallas.
Parents with large retirement accounts that are sending money to their kids before they die is probably less than 5% of the population. I'm jealous of people that see the world this way because it means they've never even recognized the existence of 95% of the country.
Look at the actual statistics on savings and income. If all these people are so financially savvy why are 72 month car loans standard? It's not a bunch of millionaire next doors driving those raptors you see everywhere.
Disney world has been operating at full capacity. Who is voting for Biden if that many people are that financially well off?
https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/Texas/Dallas/Household-Income
Coming to defend my original post - thanks everyone for piling on the naysayers.
I grew up ANYTHING but rich and far from it. Both parents worked for the school district for 30+ years. Mother taught for 25 years in small town Texas. Father taught math and did a lot of construction work. Mother also died while I was in college from a long bout with cancer - so yeah, we were just RAKING IT IN HOMEY! Family of 5.
You're right though - most Americans are dumbasses and wouldn't know what working hard, keeping your head down, investing in the future, and making sacrifices was if it slapped them in the face.
As long as they "got 'dere cell phones" and netflix and WIC payments, they're set!
I absolutely loathed the kids in my small town growing up that had the newest Jordans, gold chains and yet got free lunches and lived in a trailer house. We bought discount rack clothes and I didn't board an airplane until I was 15 years old - camping vacations for us and dinner at grandparents 2-3 nights a week.
But back to my post... I don't have a huge friend group per se but every single one of them that went to A&M and got a degree and has a pulse is doing well... upper middle class and some are doing VERY well. I just turned 35 and have friends that are CFOs, senior sales positions, Partners at firms (legal, accounting, and engineering), own their own companies, SVPs of marketing, etc.
As YouBet said... if you got a decent degree from A&M (engineering, business, medical, etc.) and didn't completely piss everything away by marrying some crazy hoe, being lazy as hell at work, or trying to cut corners.... 13 years into your career you should be making $150k+ easily. Marry a girl who did something similar and voila, you're 300k+ and likely still moving at an upward trajectory.
I'm not trying to jinx it but if my wife and I continue to advance at any similar clip that we have thus far... we'll likely be in the 500-600k/annually position in 5 years.
This has come with sacrifices. My wife is 33 and still going to school (has her Masters already and we're going for her PhD) - we're seeing the return on investment paying cash for her Masters. My Masters from A&M has paid itself 10x fold. We work hard and raising a family can be tough but we see the value in raising our daughter to see that hard work can get you where you need to be - not chardonnay chelsey that lugs snot-nosed terrors around to t-ball practice every day in the leased blacked out suburban. To each their own but both our parents worked, and still work. Outside of the occasional $100 for birthdays or picking up the check at dinner, our wealth has been 100% accumulated by us.
End Rant.