Please give me $250,000.00 a year and let me try to make ends meet!!!!   I would have so much money I wouldn't know what to do with it all.  OK, yes I would, but I wouldn't have one bit of trouble making it last from pay check to paycheck.  Try supporting a family of 4 on $50.000.00 a year or less.  Now you have some real life issues!

My wife and I make just at $120,000 per year.  We save $1,000 each every month into our retirement.  We try to save another $10,000 each year for the future.  We take between 4 and 6 weeks of vacation each year. We donate to our church and other charities.  We own (paying a mortgage) a home and two cars.  Our children are now grown and married, but we occasionally help them with a few dollars.  In our day,(making much less than  now) we provided for their education.  We do this by living within our means and fostering expectations that are within Christian boundaries.  We live carefully and have no debt.  We only incur debt for our home and our cars, anything else is paid for by cash.  In the last two years we remodeled our kitchen and installed high impact storm windows on the house, all paid for with cash.  We maintain between 10 and 20 thousand dollars in liquid savings, everything else goes to long term investment and is not touched.  Our home is adequate for a family of 4, about 1800 square feet in a nice family neighborhood.  Our cars are a 2000 and a 2006, neither cost more than $22.000.  They are both well built and cost little to maintain.  It is possible, I would say easy, to live and prosper on much less than $250,000.  I do not begrudge people who have risen to that level, obviously they have worked hard to get there and deserve adequate compensation.  I do resent it when they live so far beyond their means and then complain that it is not enough.  It is more than enough for anyone's needs.  Wants are a whole different discussion.

So dumb.  Do they think people who don't make $250,000 a year don't have student loans, childcare, housing, utility, and other bills?  Costs are lower in lower cost of living areas, but incomes are also substantially lower.  It's all relatively proportional.  Sounds like someone is trying to justify not living within their means.  My household makes $60k a year and we are on track with retirement savings, have a 1-year emergency fund, a paid off house and no debt.  2 kids.  How?  Because we save and plan ahead.  Terrible article.

Wait a minute.... $5,000 a year on house cleaning (that's $417 a month), $4,000 on child "activities", maxing out TWO retirement plans, saving for college.....How would someone making 1/6th of the $250K (the US average) be able to do this?  Adding in sales tax, property tax, (but not Payroll taxes - 7.65% for a couple making $100K, 3.89% for the $250K couple)???  Try telling us how a $50K (each) couple would fair under the same rules.

 

The article is sooo slanted it's laughable.  A $750,000 home is frugal?  No wonder they don't have any money left....an "average" person wouldn't be able to do 1/6th of this.

 

Give me a freggin break.

 

As for the "redistribution", that's a load of Republican right-wing BS.  Republicans just want to "redistribute" it to different folks.  Working hard is a fine trait but it doesn't mean someone making $50K doesn't work just as hard.

Wow...I wonder how I am making it with a family of four....I max out our retirement and we still have a house and make 175000 less than them.   This is a screwed up article.  I am thankful for what I make.  Seriously who write this this and what magical kingdom do they live in?!

I'm really trying to feel sorry for the "poor" upper classers who can't pay enough into their retirement while paying for their kids' college and driving expensive cars and living in mansions.  The tears just won't come.  If I had $250K a year but the complimentary $30K property taxes, I'd still have $130K more than I have now.  Boo freakin hoo, I can't go to Jamacia this week, or Hawaii next week.  I'm too poor.  My kid will have to go to a state college.  >sob< They have to play games on a 52 inch plasma instead of a 152 inch 3D HD TV. >sniffle< I'll just go cry myself to sleep in my winter home in Aspen.  How out of touch are the people that write articles like this?  I pay less than $5000 a year into retirement because my kids need to eat.  Am I now supposed to feel that these people need tax breaks more than the rest of us? 

Yes everything is relative.  Yes, it depends where you live cost of living may or maybe higher in your chosen place to live.  That being said.  If you make $250,000.00 a year that means you make $20,833.33 a month!  That's $20,833.33 a month, yes, before taxes.  That means in 2 months you make more than most people make in a full year.  That's $41,000.00 + in just 2 months.  That usually takes some (if not most) people make in one full year. 

 

I don't begrudge anyone making a lot of money.  If you dedicated yourself, worked hard, and received the necessary education to get you in the position to make $250K a year you should be applauded, but don't insult my sense of integrity and say your not well to do.  Just my humble opinion.

So . . . the not-really-rich are trying to get sympathy from the other 90% of us who are making do with 1/6 of what they are making?  I'm sorry--does someone have a bad case of Marie Antoinette syndrome?

 

Most of the "being in the red" that this family would experience comes from trying to keep up with the individuals in the next class up--that is, this "poverty" is self-imposed.  In this case, it really wouldn't matter how much a person was making--one can never keep up with the next class up.  I am sure that someone who is one slot below Bill Gates feels as if s/he is not-really-rich.

 

Try comparing these individuals to one class below--pick a smaller home that will cost less to have a maid to clean.  Get a slightly less nice car.  Go out to slightly less pleasant restaurants.  One will have money to spare.

 

I would accept that this family is not "rich"--but $250K is not the threshold for "rich"--it is the threshold for "affluent."  That is, people who have enough money to cover their expenses and still live a very comfortable life--though they do still have to work and cannot spend money as if it grows on trees.

 

If people who make 6 times the average income cannot cover their expenses--that is, if each of them, individually, can't live on what a whole household usually lives on with two more incomes to spare--exactly how are the rest of us supposed to be able to survive?

 

It amuses me that people claim that the "poor" are "poor" because they "spend"--but when we look at these individuals, you try to justify several extremely ridiculous expenses (the children's "activities" are taking up more money than many people make in terms of take-home income).  Yes, if these people are "not rich"--it is because they are spending their money rather than budgeting well.  The criticism of the "poor" works in this case--so, yes.  This is self-imposed poverty.

 

This is not the same thing as "not being rich."  They are still affluent and can afford the extra tiny bit of taxation.  Seriously--get a life.  More importantly--get a real life.

The writer of this piece needs to get real.  I live on 1/10 of 250K . My 3 kids went to college too.  True I can not afford Health insurance. I also do not know anyone making that kind of money.  If you are making 250K a year and struggling financially you are a greedy, shallow, jerk. 

This is absurd - with that much income, they should have been able to put money down on a car, and not have $633/mo payments. The article assumes they're BOTH eating out for lunch every single day! They also apparently have a cleaning service for $417/mo, and spend $224/mo on entertainment. The article assumes they're maxing out their out-of-pocket medical expenses EVERY YEAR and spending $340/mo on DENTAL costs. Their heating/electric bill is $440/mo, which seems really high for places like FL, TX, CA, even VA - ?! 

Anyone who is smart enough to get a job paying that much money should be smart enough to figure out that if you're in the red, you cut out the luxury expenses like a cleaning service, take your lunch to work more often, sell your car & get something even slightly less luxury (even a new Ford vs. a new Lexus!) and try just a little harder to cut your energy bills.  The author should also know it's obvious most people aren't spending that much on medical & dental expenses - "average" does not mean "median" because a few high-expense anomalous households with cancer skew the average severely to the high end.  Even more obvious: if you make $250k, you're probably towards the end of your career, at your highest earning power, probably in your 50s. So you probably don't have a toddler running around the house needing daycare.

And WHY does the wife only have an undergraduate degree if her husband has a master's? I thought this was supposed to be the "ideal," "average" family? Doesn't the author know that women now earn 60% of all master's degrees and 50.4% of doctoral degrees? This would push the wife's income higher, but may also push the student loan debt higher - however the increased income probably would offset this in most cases.