Livable wage/ one working parent

[Hoosier_Daddy]

There’s an interesting idea called the “hedonic treadmill.” From the Wikipedia entry, “According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.” Fun!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill.

That was a good article and an interesting concept. I like the term and will use it often.

Now you know what the 20k was paying for.

Yup.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

If I remember the book correctly, we should aspire to become high net-worth individuals as opposed to high-earning individuals. One path to that is owning a small business. Another is spending frugally. Our last two cars were used cars with less than 30,000 miles on them. They have worked out great for us.

Don’t get me started on student loans. The government opened up a ready source of cash to the universities, and they ran with it, saddling an entire generation with humongous debt. My plan, if I was emperor, would be to roll tuition back to the year 2000 rate, and tie increases to the CPI (maybe plus one or two points). Any tuition increase higher than that would make the university ineligible for federally-guaranteed student loans. That would keep tuition in check and stop the madness of these liberal universities creating useless departments.

I would also require every university to send each student a brochure on career earnings prospects for their major when they are accepted into an upper-level college.

Student loans.

My wife is getting her MBA right now. We had the choice that she could go to a well known school and the company would pay for it. But the problem with that is that she had to wait 2 years to even go, then the program is 2 years then the commitment afterward is something like 4 years. So really our freedom is locked down for at least 8 years. Is that an indentured servant?

My wife found an executive MBA program at a quarter of the cost and is a 1 year program if you really cram in the classes. She is cramming. Strait A’s and will graduate in Dec. Now the loans for the MBA program are well worth the freedom to go where we wish and shop her skills around for the best situation and job.

You can go to school either cheaper or even have companies pay for it.

 

[byzancatholic]

HoosierDaddie,

Another plus for a decision that resulted in your couple’s “autonomy”: stewardship. Your spouse’s executive MBA becomes an asset to your life together, your youngster(s) and the tuition is likely tax deductible as an occupational “investment” expense.

The employer does not own you, ultimately. Everything we own and have use is on loan to us from God.

This is the only comment I am making to this thread and it’s about stewardship.

I believe we have stewardship as apostolic Christians: our assets and property should not own us - we have use of those material things (they are on loan to us while living). Our Gospel warns us about money, attachment to material items and being good servants of the Lord. Many spiritual beliefs advocate stewardship. The Hindu tradition spells out that a married couple’s resources have a spiritual stewardship as “householders”, very different from being ascetics.

Both of my naturalized citizen maternal grandparents worked during their ages 25 to 65; grandma worked second shift. Grandma was a gentle mother and grandmother. She worked from 3PM until 11PM. Grandma was a first rate homemaker. If Grandma could do this, any good apostolic Christian wife could do it. My grandparents saved Grandma’s wages and lived on Grandpa’s wages. Grandma always bought good “now and then”. Grandma always made time at night for her private prayers.

My two uncles and mother were college educated (mom also earned two master degrees). My grandparents invested in their children and grandchildren’s education; there were semesters when my grandparents assisted in my tuition payments.

It is all about stewardship and being mindful of our spiritual responsibility to living according to the Gospel’s teaching. Even in 2014…

 

[Kal2012]

I was wondering if you call could give me some ideas of what you consider to be a livable wage (salary) What are some of yours? Especially those of you who have one parent staying at home? Also how many kids to you support with your salary? I would like to get a rough idea of my salary requirements for my future. I am really thinking about going into teaching but the salary worries me.

The thing you need to realize is that teacher pay is based on the district. In my state, Michigan, teachers are paid in steps (two scales - depending on if you have a masters and how many years you’ve been teaching in the district). If you leave the district and move to another district you are started at the bottom of the pay scale. Also, we graduate a lot of would-be teachers, but openings are few and far between. Most of my friends from college who are teachers live out of state. Some of my slightly younger friends were trained as teachers, but are working in other fields.

Also, a livable wage depends on how much debt you have. Currently, my husband makes just over 100K, but we have a lot of debt that we are paying off for mostly for student loans + living expenses. We actually have money in savings these days, which is a huge step up from being broke all the time.

We have been diligent about paying off the credit cards and improving our credit scores - as we haven’t always been at this income level and got into a lot of trouble w/credit card debt.

It really depends on what your priorities are.

Also, a lot of companies are taking away the “perk” of paying for education/training these days to cut costs. My husband’s company merged with a larger company and they’ve told him that any conferences he goes to will be at his own expense. Last year, his boss had no issues with reimbursing him for travel/conference/training fees. It’s actually pretty rare to get training/education paid for these days. Most of the companies he’s worked for have been this way. When he was working on his B.A., I think the max reimbursement he got from his company at the time was $500/year and the degree was specifically was in his field. So, I wouldn’t count on having training money from an employer.