Do you live in luxury? If so, what are your luxuries?

[ToeInTheWater]

That’s true.

When we lived in suburban MD, it was a major perk of our neighborhood that there was a grocery store 5 minutes from our home and a metro station a 15 minute walk away.

And speaking of luxuries–being within walking distance of goods and services is something that used to be expected but is now seen as something exceptional and luxurious.

Exceptional, yes, but not sure if “luxurious” is the word. It’s not considered such in many large “walkable” cities. I also suspect the definition of “walking distance” is much different now than it was a hundred years ago.

And it’s also the case that in the good ol’ days of having all shops within walking distance, many shopkeepers in isolated towns would get away with selling their goods at outrageous prices and their customers had no choice but to pay up. Many were “company stores” that compounded the exploitation, as they were run by the same companies that ran the local mill or mine, and they paid their workers in “scrip” that could only be redeemed for goods at the “company store”.

The advent of the automobile as well as mail catalog shopping, Rural Free Delivery in the US, and other technological advances resulted in more consumer options, more competition, led to the demise of such “company stores”. Or at least, for the most part, Walmart was actually not so long ago cited for paying employees with Walmart gift certificate instead of cash.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I live in unimaginable luxury. I have a comfortable house; abundant, clean water; electricity; a stove, fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, a cell phone, a tablet, and a computer/TV; I eat a huge variety of foods from everywhere on the planet; when I am sick, I can go to a doctor or hospital and receive medicine for things that would have killed me in times past; I have several items of clothing and shoes…

What are you thinking? How could you possibly leave out peanut butter; the greatest luxury of all!

But “luxury” really is relative. I grew up in what was then a primitive part of the country. We didn’t have indoor plumbing. Our heat was a big fireplace. no electricity. We used coal-oil lamps and those white gasoline mankiller lamps. And we never thought ourselves deprived.

My folks did have a car, though. Some folks didn’t. I remember an old guy who would come about once/week in a mule-drawn wagon to get water from the creek below our house. He used a pail to fill up two 55 gallon drums. Then off he would go.

I do remember my mother telling me when she was growing up in the country, it took all day to go to Mass. The family would load up in a horse-drawn wagon while it was still dark and set off. In the winter, they took a lot of blankets to keep warm in the open winter air. They brought a full meal with them because it would be noon by the time Mass was over. People would take their food to the church basement and share stuff for lunch. Then back into the wagon and home.

So, yes, I would say most of us live in luxury compared to that. I live pretty frugally out of choice, but even so, there are lots of luxuries in my life compared to what people used to have. Peanut butter, of course, being one of them. I’m never without a jar of it. Never.

 

[Xantippe]

**It’s not forgoing kids so much as it is thinking they need all of this stuff. **

[snip]

People who send their kids to private school (although some of those are questions I have to say) are going to get dinged twice. I am staunchly against such policies as they are in effect paying for a service (public education) they aren’t even using. Of course, a lot of them still VOTE to do this, so it’s hard to feel sorry for them…

**As far as college goes, pretty soon that’s going to be too expensive for anyone to go to. **A lot of teenagers today are listening to the tales of woe of Millennials and are being more cautious. And the universities still want programs where the scholarship, management, and leadership are rancid and to send their football folks to bowl games at a loss.

Your post does a really nice job of breaking down costs and mentions the big one which is daycare, but we need to get to the bottom of the increased costs which in many cases is an expensive local government that people keep voting for over and over and over and they keep volunteering to give money to school and unis that in many cases de-catechize their kids and laugh in their sleeves while doing it.

But again, what “stuff” are we talking about that people are choosing over having children? Truth be told, I bet the “childfree” have way less stuff than a typical family. In fact, having a family means not being able to embrace fashionable minimalism (which is, in a way, yet another luxury).

Bear in mind that I’m a private school parent. A lot of people (including on CAF) think that sending children to private school is a luxury. But then you read Dreher’s post, and it doesn’t sound like such a wicked indulgence anymore. (My kids’ school doesn’t allow use of phones or electronic devices during the school day). But if you are paying for private school, that tends to put a cap on family size… It’s a puzzlement.

Somebody is going to say, “You can always homeschool!” But here are some issues with that:

–It depresses mom’s (or dad’s) earning ability for many more years than would be true if the kids were in school.
–Children may have special needs that are better met outside the home or may interfere with siblings getting an education
–It may be bad for mom’s mental and physical health to be continually with children
–It’s actually common for families to try homeschooling for a year or two or a few years and then send kids to school (I meet a lot of former homeschoolers), so one really cannot guarantee that one will be able to do K-12 at home from beginning to end.
–A lone mother educating a large family by herself isn’t actually how effective home education was done historically. For one thing, if she was prosperous, she wasn’t doing it alone and had help either with instruction and/or household work. For another, lone pioneer mothers were not teaching their children calculus, AP physics, and advanced French in their sod houses–the academic expectations were a lot more modest.

With regard to people not going to college, there’s a saying that goes, “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” What I mean is, the odds are that college will continue to be a good bet for people who are strong enough students that they can finish. Plus, 30% of college graduates finish with no debt. (The other 70% average about $37k.)

I have to note that private K-12 school costs are often more or less in step with public school costs–which suggests that the public school costs are not completely out of line. It may just reflect local labor costs.

There are a lot of reasons for college, K-12 and health care to be expensive. The labor-intensiveness is probably the biggest ingredient.

 

[Xantippe]

It’s not avoiding kids altogether. There’s an interesting synergy here where couples who don’t have kids don’t have the added expense, but most people are not having more than 2 kids, which really was is necessary to replace pop.

[snip]

It’s not forgoing kids so much as it is thinking they need all of this stuff.

People who send their kids to private school (although some of those are questions I have to say) are going to get dinged twice. I am staunchly against such policies as they are in effect paying for a service (public education) they aren’t even using. Of course, a lot of them still VOTE to do this, so it’s hard to feel sorry for them…

As far as college goes, pretty soon that’s going to be too expensive for anyone to go to. A lot of teenagers today are listening to the tales of woe of Millennials and are being more cautious. And the universities still want programs where the scholarship, management, and leadership are rancid and to send their football folks to bowl games at a loss.

Your post does a really nice job of breaking down costs and mentions the big one which is daycare, but we need to get to the bottom of the increased costs which in many cases is an expensive local government that people keep voting for over and over and over and they keep volunteering to give money to school and unis that in many cases de-catechize their kids and laugh in their sleeves while doing it.

Taking another tack, if there are so many economic obstacles and if the government does make life so difficult, is it fair to blame people for preferring smaller, later families? Does it make sense to say that they are being selfish if the obstacles to family formation that they are dealing with are so large?

 

[1990Domer]

Love this thread. Thank you OP for starting it!

I feel tremendously blessed. The crosses God gave us are nothing compared to main character in my son’s summer reading list: “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”

I often feel sad when I prepare income tax returns and hear people complaining that they live paycheck to paycheck on $175,000 salaries. It consumed me so much that I decided to stop preparing taxes.

God bless.

 

[Xantippe]

Love this thread. Thank you OP for starting it!

I feel tremendously blessed. The crosses God gave us are nothing compared to main character in my son’s summer reading list: “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”

I often feel sad when I prepare income tax returns and hear people complaining that they live paycheck to paycheck on $175,000 salaries. It consumed me so much that I decided to stop preparing taxes.

God bless.

Oh, wow.

 

[Rosebud77]

That sounds so very lovely.

Hoping and praying so and for the right place. Worked hard all my life and no regrets but this is needful now. I left hermitage over a decade ago as my work was needed to feed the hungry and clothe the naked for they are Jesus and now I am too old and sick for that outside work so will leave it aside for prayer and knttiing etc.

I was working 12 hour days 2 or 3 times a week until the end of last year as well as all the jamming and making.

No regrets but time to stop

 

[signit]

I often feel sad when I prepare income tax returns and hear people complaining that they live paycheck to paycheck on $175,000 salaries. It consumed me so much that I decided to stop preparing taxes.

This is a good point, and it reminds me of something my father used to say.

Dad used to point to people whose family incomes were more than ours, and say that they were no better off than we were because they chose to “live up” to that (his words). They’d buy things that Mom and Dad never had and would consider luxuries, and at the end of the month they’d still be paycheck to paycheck.

 

[ThePCWife]

Love this thread. Thank you OP for starting it!

I feel tremendously blessed. The crosses God gave us are nothing compared to main character in my son’s summer reading list: “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”

I often feel sad when I prepare income tax returns and hear people complaining that they live paycheck to paycheck on $175,000 salaries. It consumed me so much that I decided to stop preparing taxes.

God bless.

Don’t knock it until you get to that income or beyond. A lot of people at those incomes and up are making them with two smaller salaries, and even if they are in the rare air of doing that much or more on one salary, there’s usually a reason they’re living paycheck to paycheck and it isn’t “oh they’re just too selfish and idiotic to live on 40k and bank the rest!”

Chesterton’s fence and all that.

Even a lot of seemingly frivolous spending tends to come from massive amounts of stress and limited ability to access non-money ways of managing it (i.e., no time). Or it may look frivolous to you but serves a real need for those people.

It’s like 18 or 21 year olds who think 15 or even 20 dollars an hour is ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. (It’s totally not.)

That said, it’s possible to save money for college/retirement on relatively high incomes, but it’s no longer really possible to make that kind of money and live like you’re actually poor, which a lot of people bizarrely think would easily be the case.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That said, it’s possible to save money for college/retirement on relatively high incomes, but it’s no longer really possible to make that kind of money and live like you’re actually poor, which a lot of people bizarrely think would easily be the case.

Allow me to respectfully dissent just a little.

I do believe for many high-income people it’s impossible or nearly so, not to spend it. Clients, fellow employees and sometimes even employers expect one to display a certain standard of living. And in many cities, for example, the public schools are bad, so you almost have to send kids to private school. Some neighborhoods are bad, so you are almost forced to go live in a high priced suburb. Your kids aren’t going to get financial aid for college unless they score high enough on the SAT or ACT to get the college’s averages up.

But it’s not impossible to live like you’re poor even when your income is high. It depends on your circumstances, though. Most would consider me fairly high income, though not out there in the thin air, financially. My spending is basically at a lower middle class level for everything. But in this part of the country you can live like that and nobody cares. Private schools don’t abound. You can drive a ten-year-old pickup to work and nobody cares. Nobody has any particular expectation of your clothing, though I am expected to wear a tie and dress shirt. But those aren’t expensive. People around here, by and large, don’t know a cheap suit from an expensive one.

I don’t spend. I invest.

There is a local saying: "How do you tell a millionaire from a factory line worker? Answer: “The millionaire’s pickup is older, but the rifle hanging in the millionaire’s back window is better.”

Possibly that will change here someday. The current millionaire generation here grew up poor. But the economy of the area changed massively. Don’t know for sure how the well-off children of those people will turn out.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Allow me to respectfully dissent just a little.

I do believe for many high-income people it’s impossible or nearly so, not to spend it. Clients, fellow employees and sometimes even employers expect one to display a certain standard of living. And in many cities, for example, the public schools are bad, so you almost have to send kids to private school. Some neighborhoods are bad, so you are almost forced to go live in a high priced suburb. Your kids aren’t going to get financial aid for college unless they score high enough on the SAT or ACT to get the college’s averages up.

Also, in the case of high income professions that require a lot of schooling, student loan payments are a significant expense. Many high income professions also require some kind of dress code that aren’t required for entry level positions. Those that require a lot of off the clock “schmoozing” for success, also have costs for that - and not all of those expenses are easy to claim as tax deductions (and the deduction doesn’t actually cover the full expense).

And of course, a high income means you (or your kids) may not actually qualify for financial aid, anyway.

But it’s not impossible to live like you’re poor even when your income is high. It depends on your circumstances, though. Most would consider me fairly high income, though not out there in the thin air, financially. My spending is basically at a lower middle class level for everything. But in this part of the country you can live like that and nobody cares. Private schools don’t abound. You can drive a ten-year-old pickup to work and nobody cares. Nobody has any particular expectation of your clothing, though I am expected to wear a tie and dress shirt. But those aren’t expensive. People around here, by and large, don’t know a cheap suit from an expensive one.

There’s also a big difference between “living like you’re poor” and literally spending all of your high income paycheck every month and not saving any money at all, that is what “paycheck to paycheck” means. I wouldn’t say I live like I’m poor, yet I have managed to save about 30% of my income so far. However, I have no children, and I realize if I did that would certainly change things.

 

[Xantippe]

Don’t knock it until you get to that income or beyond. A lot of people at those incomes and up are making them with two smaller salaries, and even if they are in the rare air of doing that much or more on one salary, there’s usually a reason they’re living paycheck to paycheck and it isn’t “oh they’re just too selfish and idiotic to live on 40k and bank the rest!”

Chesterton’s fence and all that.

Even a lot of seemingly frivolous spending tends to come from massive amounts of stress and limited ability to access non-money ways of managing it (i.e., no time). Or it may look frivolous to you but serves a real need for those people.

It’s like 18 or 21 year olds who think 15 or even 20 dollars an hour is ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. (It’s totally not.)

That said, it’s possible to save money for college/retirement on relatively high incomes, but it’s no longer really possible to make that kind of money and live like you’re actually poor, which a lot of people bizarrely think would easily be the case.

I think people do make radical sacrifices at high income levels–but primarily in order to meet specific goals, like debt repayment or to save a house downpayment or to save for an adoption.

Having listened to a whole lot of Dave Ramsey, I think there’s a zone (often between about $120k-$170k) where a lot of people believe that they have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and that they can’t possibly screw it up. (I’ve done the same at a much lower level and other people do it with NFL salaries.) In that zone, people actually can do a lot of good stuff, but it calls for a lot of organization and planning–which is easier said and done if (as TPC mentioned) it’s a full-time two-career household with kids.

One of the differences between that income level and lower ones is that there’s finally money to put in all of the personal finance buckets that lower income people get told about but don’t really have the wherewithal to contribute substantially to. This is especially true of college savings. (Coincidentally, there tends not to be any financial aid available at that level–because the nice people who manage financial aid understand that people at that income level have surplus resources.)

At $175k a year, having paid taxes, paid for insurance, saved a 3-6 month emergency fund, contributed to retirement (Dave Ramsey says 15%), contributed to charity (tax deductible and you ought to anyway–DR would recommend 10%), contributed to college savings (10%?), and started savings for expected expenses (Christmas, family travel, car maintenance, next car, home maintenance, healthcare, daughter’s wedding, etc.) one might indeed look around and feel like one was living at the same level of consumption as a family with a household income of $100k. Obviously, the $175k household is much better off (all things being equal), but their consumption is not necessarily going to be noticeably larger than the $100k household–if they are doing things the “right” way.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Having listened to a whole lot of Dave Ramsey, I think there’s a zone (often between about $120k-$170k) where a lot of people believe that they have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and that they can’t possibly screw it up. (I’ve done the same at a much lower level and other people do it with NFL salaries.)

Speaking of the NFL, I’ve noticed that the pro athletes and other celebrities who really screw up their finances and wind up bankrupt, are those who came from “nothing” and have no experience managing money at all. Then, at a rather young age in the case of athletes, they suddenly get an insane amount of money dumped in their laps.

They also tend to have a lot of friends and other hangers-on who also “come from nothing”, naively assume their rich friend must have so much wealth he or she can’t possibly spend it all, and hence expect (or at times even demand) that they can just live off their friend’s largesse for the rest of their lives – at times even family members act this way. Suddenly they’re expected to support not just a spouse and a couple of kids, but literally dozens of people. Obviously many of these cases end badly.

One of the differences between that income level and lower ones is that there’s finally money to put in all of the personal finance buckets that lower income people get told about but don’t really have the wherewithal to contribute substantially to. This is especially true of college savings.

Indeed, for people who literally live paycheck to paycheck I think DR’s system is itself a luxury. I only got into saving for retirement recently (and I am now in my latter 30s), my parents never taught me since for most of their lives they indeed lived paycheck to paycheck.

Their retirement plan was a combination of Social Security and to “invest in our children who will help support us in our old age”, though they also got a “traditional” life insurance policy that also has an investment component as well, but they have had to dip into that many times, and they’ve told me there’s probably only enough cash value left to pay for their funerals. This is a strategy that might indeed have worked, say 50 years ago, but is pretty obsolete now.

 

[1990Domer]

Don’t knock it until you get to that income or beyond. A lot of people at those incomes and up are making them with two smaller salaries, and even if they are in the rare air of doing that much or more on one salary, there’s usually a reason they’re living paycheck to paycheck and it isn’t “oh they’re just too selfish and idiotic to live on 40k and bank the rest!”

Chesterton’s fence and all that.

Even a lot of seemingly frivolous spending tends to come from massive amounts of stress and limited ability to access non-money ways of managing it (i.e., no time). Or it may look frivolous to you but serves a real need for those people.

It’s like 18 or 21 year olds who think 15 or even 20 dollars an hour is ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. (It’s totally not.)

That said, it’s possible to save money for college/retirement on relatively high incomes, but it’s no longer really possible to make that kind of money and live like you’re actually poor, which a lot of people bizarrely think would easily be the case.

Ok, I am not knocking anything I haven’t tried. Yes…we are above that salary. But I also work with a financial planner and budget with these people. I see the shoebox of receipts they give me, and most are not for medical or therapy bills. Very little is donated to charity. Even when we were living on my salary of about $60K and putting DH through grad school, we saved and donated. We learned how to live on the one salary. Once we started a family, DH worked for more money and we still lived on my old salary. As my dad said, “You don’t miss what you don’t have.” Also, DH felt my staying home and able to care for DS, make sure bills were correct and timely paid, studied for my CFP and studied investment strategies allowed him to focus at work & get better raises/promotions.

I don’t judge my clients and they always know I am a phone call away.

 

[1990Domer]

I think people do make radical sacrifices at high income levels–but primarily in order to meet specific goals, like debt repayment or to save a house downpayment or to save for an adoption.

Having listened to a whole lot of Dave Ramsey, I think there’s a zone (often between about $120k-$170k) where a lot of people believe that they have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and that they can’t possibly screw it up. (I’ve done the same at a much lower level and other people do it with NFL salaries.) In that zone, people actually can do a lot of good stuff, but it calls for a lot of organization and planning–which is easier said and done if (as TPC mentioned) it’s a full-time two-career household with kids.

One of the differences between that income level and lower ones is that there’s finally money to put in all of the personal finance buckets that lower income people get told about but don’t really have the wherewithal to contribute substantially to. This is especially true of college savings. (Coincidentally, there tends not to be any financial aid available at that level–because the nice people who manage financial aid understand that people at that income level have surplus resources.)

At $175k a year, having paid taxes, paid for insurance, saved a 3-6 month emergency fund, contributed to retirement (Dave Ramsey says 15%), contributed to charity (tax deductible and you ought to anyway–DR would recommend 10%), contributed to college savings (10%?), and started savings for expected expenses (Christmas, family travel, car maintenance, next car, home maintenance, healthcare, daughter’s wedding, etc.) one might indeed look around and feel like one was living at the same level of consumption as a family with a household income of $100k. Obviously, the $175k household is much better off (all things being equal), but their consumption is not necessarily going to be noticeably larger than the $100k household–if they are doing things the “right” way.

Very few lower income earners take advantage of the federal retirement saving credits. I know people can do it. Thing is, do they want to? Lots and lots of sacrifice. But as my parents and grandparents did before me, we always paid the Lord first! And he’s always come through for us.

 

[Xantippe]

Indeed, for people who literally live paycheck to paycheck I think DR’s system is itself a luxury. I only got into saving for retirement recently (and I am now in my latter 30s), my parents never taught me since for most of their lives they indeed lived paycheck to paycheck.

Their retirement plan was a combination of Social Security and to “invest in our children who will help support us in our old age”, though they also got a “traditional” life insurance policy that also has an investment component as well, but they have had to dip into that many times, and they’ve told me there’s probably only enough cash value left to pay for their funerals. This is a strategy that might indeed have worked, say 50 years ago, but is pretty obsolete now.

The thing about DR’s Baby Steps is that it’s a step-by-step approach. So you don’t even try to do everything at once (which really paralyzed me early on–do this do that do this other thing!). The idea is to be making progress–to be reducing debt and increasing savings, even if the progress is slow.

daveramsey.com/baby-steps/

With a fixed rate mortgage, this happens pretty organically–year by year, the payments kill off the mortgage debt.

We’re doing step 4 and 5 (retirement and college) concurrently, which is somewhat cheating, because you’re not supposed to start the college until you’ve already
got 15% going into retirement and we’re not doing that yet. But we’ve got a kid in 10th grade and college is coming real soon…On the other hand, it would make a lot of sense for a lower income family who could expect financial aid to follow the plan and prioritize retirement, because if they saved heavily for college, they’d just get penalized at financial aid time.

I think a lot of people didn’t get much in the way of financial education from parents, or if it was, it was bad. It was only a few years ago that I learned that my grandparents had literally never had a mortgage. My grandpa came home from WWII with years of savings and he and my grandma were able to buy some family property. They lived in a little itty bitty house on the property and my grandpa (who worked in a sawmill) was able to build a nicer new house while living in the itty bitty house when their kids were school age and then were able to rent the itty bitty house out. Neither house ever had a mortgage. Knowing what I know now, that’s an amazing fact–but nobody bothered to tell me when I was a kid or young adult. Likewise, my grandparents never had a car payment. (And grandpa was a mill worker/rancher and grandma was a grocery store cashier.) My grandparents were and are such modest people that they didn’t brag about it and my parents were much less debt-averse when I was a kid and young adult, so that information about my grandparents’ good financial habits did not get communicated to me.

Sad to say, your parents’ savings strategy was probably obsolete 50 years ago, too–or certainly 30 years ago. It’s just so sad to think of them paying those ridiculous whole life insurance payments, having really pitiful actual insurance coverage, and then dipping into the account to borrow their own money because they didn’t have emergency savings, and then maybe getting to pay interest on the withdrawals…Ay yay yay.

 

[DarkLight]

Very few lower income earners take advantage of the federal retirement saving credits. I know people can do it. Thing is, do they want to? Lots and lots of sacrifice. But as my parents and grandparents did before me, we always paid the Lord first! And he’s always come through for us.

As a lower income earner, I was entirely unaware that there were federal retirement saving credits.

 

[Xantippe]

Very few lower income earners take advantage of the federal retirement saving credits.** I know people can do it. Thing is, do they want to? Lots and lots of sacrifice. **But as my parents and grandparents did before me, we always paid the Lord first! And he’s always come through for us.

Also, as Barbie is supposed to have said, “Math is hard.”

I bet you’ve noticed that a lot of people (even successful people) are mathphobes.

 

[ThePCWife]

Allow me to respectfully dissent just a little.

I do believe for many high-income people it’s impossible or nearly so, not to spend it. Clients, fellow employees and sometimes even employers expect one to display a certain standard of living. And in many cities, for example, the public schools are bad, so you almost have to send kids to private school. Some neighborhoods are bad, so you are almost forced to go live in a high priced suburb. Your kids aren’t going to get financial aid for college unless they score high enough on the SAT or ACT to get the college’s averages up.

But it’s not impossible to live like you’re poor even when your income is high. It depends on your circumstances, though. Most would consider me fairly high income, though not out there in the thin air, financially. My spending is basically at a lower middle class level for everything. But in this part of the country you can live like that and nobody cares. Private schools don’t abound. You can drive a ten-year-old pickup to work and nobody cares. Nobody has any particular expectation of your clothing, though I am expected to wear a tie and dress shirt. But those aren’t expensive. People around here, by and large, don’t know a cheap suit from an expensive one.

I don’t spend. I invest.

There is a local saying: "How do you tell a millionaire from a factory line worker? Answer: “The millionaire’s pickup is older, but the rifle hanging in the millionaire’s back window is better.”

Possibly that will change here someday. The current millionaire generation here grew up poor. But the economy of the area changed massively. Don’t know for sure how the well-off children of those people will turn out.

We’ve spent a truly shocking amount trying to follow the frequently Boomer plan of ten year old cars (paying what the car cost in cash for repairs) and you need more than one tie and dress shirt in normal American society. We did all the recommended stuff, in the modern era it’s actually insanely expensive and we would done better buying the suburban house that looks like all the others and going on a few vacations to break up the monotony. We’d have a lot more money in the bank compared to our attempts to follow the frugal plans.

A lot of my positions come from bitter experience trying to “follow the frugal plan” and it just blowing right up in our faces. Following the supposedly frivolous plans of tract home in an expensive zip code and frequent visits to exotic locales would have been better for our financial and physical health.

 

[ThePCWife]

Ok, I am not knocking anything I haven’t tried. Yes…we are above that salary. But I also work with a financial planner and budget with these people. I see the shoebox of receipts they give me, and most are not for medical or therapy bills. Very little is donated to charity. Even when we were living on my salary of about $60K and putting DH through grad school, we saved and donated. We learned how to live on the one salary. Once we started a family, DH worked for more money and we still lived on my old salary. As my dad said, “You don’t miss what you don’t have.” Also, DH felt my staying home and able to care for DS, make sure bills were correct and timely paid, studied for my CFP and studied investment strategies allowed him to focus at work & get better raises/promotions.

I don’t judge my clients and they always know I am a phone call away.

Medical or therapy bills aren’t the only valid expense people can have that leaves them living paycheck to paycheck. When we had three nannies working shifts (two regular plus a backup), none of their paychecks would have shown up as a medical deduction, though the reason was primarily medical. That certainly had us living check to check for many months.