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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

What I'm saying is that the metric of 'happiness' to determine whether a salary is enough or not is flawed. In most major cities, $75k is simple not enough to live well, save for major purchases, and put away enough money to retire. The reason that 'happiness' isn't good here is that most people don't understand how much they actually need to save for the short and long term, but rather look at their bills and extrapolate from there. In other words, it's happiness in the short term ("are my bills covered and am I able to go out to dinner occasionally?") at the expense of the long term big picture.

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A lot of people end up married, and when you put two $75,000 salaries together, it can make living and saving much easier. Unmarried people in big cities often have roommates, which makes it much easier to save and pay off debt. When I first moved to the DC area, I had three roommates and paid around $500 a month in rent and had no car.

Let's also not forget that around half the people in New York do not pay market rate for their rent. Talking about income and rent in NYC is more complicated than this thread would lead you to believe.

And if you live in a major city, you often have significantly lower transportation costs. Yes rent is high in urban areas, but transportation costs are very low. The two should be added together to compare cost of living between two areas.

> And if you live in a major city, you often have significantly lower transportation costs. Yes rent is high in urban areas, but transportation costs are very low.

Eh?

MTA: $104/month, unlimited

Muni: $74/month, "A" pass

CTA: $100/month, unlimited

You can buy a car for $150/month, and call it another $200 for gas/insurance, so $350 total.

The rent difference is way more than $350/month for an equal size/quality place.

Then consider all the other costs of urban living, like high sales tax:

SF: 8.5%, Auburn: 7.5%

NYC: 8.88%, Westchester: 7.38% (!)

You forgot $300/month for a parking spot for your car.

I highly doubt the average car payment is anywhere near $150 a month. That's really low for even a lease, let alone actually trying to own it outright. And you're completely forgetting maintenance and repairs (oil, tires, batteries, lights, environmental checks, repairs). Even a modest car is probably at least $500 a month with everything added together, and from what I've seen, a lot of people can't make do with a modest car.

And then if you lose your job, you have no defined transportation expenses. Lose your job and you still owe all of that money for your car payment, insurance and whatever else.

And again, many of us are married. Needing multiple cars, gas, parking for two people (or additional cars for kids stuck in the middle of nowhere) starts to ad up.

$500/mo for a modest car? Wow, people on here have a warped sense of finances. $500/mo is a lot of car. My brand new car with all the bells and whistles is $380/mo and I'm very happy with it.

Instead of a new car, I could've used my down payment to buy a used car instead.

To clarify, I'm not saying $500 for just the car, but $500 for the car payment, gas, insurance and savings for future maintenance.

I think $500, when you factor in all of that, is a fairly modest car.

My wife and I have a Honda Fit that is paid off (I would call this a pretty modest car), and when a car reaches a certain point in its life, you may'll have more maintenance to pay for.

Those are aggressive estimates. I bought an old car for $3500 (equivalent to $150/month for 2 years) and I pay about $80/month for gas/insurance.

Your numbers are off in essentially every area. Car payment is $200-$250 a month, insurance is $100 a month, gas is $50 a month, and call it an amortized $100 a month for repairs and other expenses. In total, an average car costs $500 a month. And never mind the cost for parking. In contrast, passes for public transportation cost somewhere from $50-$100, _but_ you can usually get them subsidized and/or pre-tax. In Boston, I'm able to get an unlimited pass through my employer for $35 pre-tax a month and my car costs me $500 post-tax a month. In major cities, cars are strictly a luxury. Note, I bought one a few months ago and couldn't be happier, but I'm under no illusions: it is a luxury.

If you are getting a T pass for $35 then your company is just paying for a portion of it; some companies give it to their employees for free, but that doesn't mean it's free.

That said, a T-pass is $70/month and most people can pay that pre-tax. Still considerably less than car ownership.

In SF and NYC:

Bike: $0 to maybe 25 per month in maintenance. You don't really need much else.

And yet this woefully imprecise factoid getsa resputtered every 3 mmonths like it's some major revelation, even though it is completely obvious that everyone who can count can figure out how much is the cost of a middle class lifestyle plus retirement plus college for kids.

You guys are making the US tax code out to be much simpler than it is. The more you save for retirement, the lower your taxable income is. We also have deductions for mortgage interest and student loan interest. Our system is also progressive, so a lot of people making less money have very little taxable income. Maybe you make $90,000 a year and can't fathom how someone could live off of and save off of $75,000 a year, but the difference in your take home pay is not $15,000.

Yup. IIRC a former roommate of mine has a plan on how to get every deduction under the sun to the maximum amount and it is actually possible to pay no taxes on like $100k, but it requires putting something like $40k towards savings each year.

Yes, and there are deductions for charity and this and that. And some of these deductions start to phase out with the more money you make.

The point is that you can't take two people's incomes and assume you know what their tax bills will be.

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