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Comment by volkk | Hacker News Reader

5.5K on their living (mortgage + property tax) eats all of their income. not surprised. 800$ a month car payment. 2100$ a month on food...i feel like if they at the very least tried to be somewhat frugal, they can probably save a ton.

this is sort of the epitome of when people tell you that there are different kinds of rich people. the secret rich who do very frugal things and have a ton of money, and drive civics. and then the poor rich who drive volvos, have giant houses and spend every penny.

if one of them lost their job, theyd be completely screwed. this sort of mentality eats at you knowing you cant quickly jump ship if your job sucks, and then ultimately it starts making you depressed knowing youre just...stuck. and then it can start eating at your personal life. i speak from experience (i.e my parents)

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$500 on clothes a month... $120,000 on clothes over the next 20 years :thinking:

Hey, but they chose "coach instead of Gucci", so they are doing what they can to be frugal.

wow i didn't even notice the 500 on clothes a month. holy crap

Happens when you have kids. Especially when they are < 5 yrs or > 13

There's no way this is true. I had 2 kids and between yard sales, Old Navy and WalMart there's no way you could spend $500 a month unless you're buying high end, designer clothes and new Air Jordan's every month.

In urban areas, where you can have a decent social network with a minimum amount of effort and everybody's trying to get rid of their kids' old baby stuff because they have no space in their home?

My toddler is set until he's 3, and we didn't pay a cent for clothes; he's in 100% hand-me-downs. Had so much that my wife started a "clothing library" to lend out the stuff he wouldn't need for another 1-2 years. We just gave a bunch of his newborn stuff to another couple that's having their second shortly; they gave him a bunch of their first's when she outgrew them.

I've raised three kids to adulthood. Kids absolutely should not be blamed for such incredible poor impulse control and budgeting.

This, so much of their budget is discretionary for the lifestyle they want to have vs the lifestyle that would let them save.

Atleast they’re contributing to 401k.

I don't have kids but live on the peninsula. My wife cooks everyday and we mostly shops at Sprouts. Our monthly food budget is $400 and I would say I eat better than I would at my companies on campus food. If I has kids I would up that to $800 (though kids would probably eat less than I do per plate). So $2100 seems like a lot of eating out.

Weekly, as noted on that spreadsheet.

Just reviewed our family food budget for two adults and two children in the Bay Area.

Over the last six months we have never spent that much on food, and have months where we have spent less than half of that.

So I think you missed the point of the article, this is a very modest "middle class" kind of budget. Yes you could save a little more here and there, but the point is to have even a modest lifestyle in San Francisco you would need to be making 300k a year. Even if you cut back on a few of the discretionary categories ( food, car, 401k, ... ) and lived like a miser you are going to have 20k of disposable income a year. Like you said that still means you need to have two incomes, and two really well paying incomes.

I think the point the author is getting across is that due to the exteremly high fixed costs of living almost anywhere in the country ( but specifically in big coastal cities ), its impossible to have that kind of "middle class" lifestyle that was the majority of the population in these places a few decades ago.

A Volvo XC90 is not "modest middle class." It's a luxury vehicle. And a car payment that high is insane.

300k is usually considered to be upper middle class, if not upper class. The threshold for being in the top 1% of earners is 420k (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/what-you-have-to-earn-to-be-...).

You can’t have absolute salary numbers be attached to a lifestyle since 300k/year is like Royalty in Virginia but just “comfortable” in SF or NYC.

> 300k is usually considered to be upper middle class, if not upper class. The threshold for being in the top 1% of earners is 420k

If being an “earner” is a major source of your income, you aren't in the upper class (haut bourgeoisie) in a capitalist society.

If being an “earner” is the major source of your income, you aren't in the middle class (petit bourgeoisie) either, just a (potentially highly paid) member of the proletariat—a wage laborer—even if you might happen to be from the proletarian intelligentsia rather than a manual laborer.

Your right, so go ahead and get a more modest car, save 600 a month, or 7200 a year, That will buy you exactly two weeks of living expenses per year you could save. Do the same with food and save another 1300 a month and you can get up to six week of expenses saved per year. Then if you manage to do that for five years straight you will have the six month cushion that you should have in savings, and this is on a salary that would put you in the top five percent of all earners in the country.

Think about that this is the best case scenario for people making more then 95% of all other Americans, and we are having a discussion if they should be able to drive a Volvo, or eat more then beans and rice. The point your missing is that to even have that discussion you need to be in the top 5th percentile. How are the other 95% of people making ends meet?

i understand the point -- that SF is ludicrously expensive. however that point is muddled when you see the budget breakdown. show me a reasonable budget where youre not spending 6K a year on CLOTHES and then i'll be better suited to argue the original point of the article

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