I didn’t read her to mean she had 84k income. I think she just meant that 100k would be wealthy.
Part of the problem in the U.S. right now is that there are too many people who want to create a “class war” and call anyone who makes more money than them “rich fat cats.” Our President doesn’t help matters any, but rather, he encourages the class warfare.
We shouldn’t engage in class warfare. What seems like a lot to us may barely cover expenses for someone else.
We need to keep in mind that we don’t know anyone else’s financial situation and just how far their income goes.
E.g., in our city, we pay the 4th highest property taxes in the nation. Just to give you an idea–my daughter and son-in-law live in a house comparable to ours (newer) in a good neighborhood down near St. Louis–they pay around $800.00 a year property taxes. My husband and I, up in Northern Illinois–remember, same basic house as my daughter and SIL, decent neighborhood, etc.–but we pay $4000.00 (That’s four thousand) a year in property taxes. Takes a pretty big chunk out of our income. Eight hundred vs. four thousand–wowee wow wow.
Same for gas. We pay almost forty cents a gallon more than my daughter and her husband. It really mounts up to a sizeable chunk of cash, even with just driving around our city to work, church, etc.
And then there’s my other daughter who lives in Texas! They pretty much pay HER to live there! Money goes a long way in Texas.
So location in the U.S. can definitely make a difference. Even the climate can make life cheaper or dearer. Mass. is pretty cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Same for Northern Illinois.
A lot of people on this thread are encouraging the OP to “do it themselves.” Cook, can, clean, car repair, sewing, etc. I agree, if you can do this kind of stuff, it’s a definite cash saver. BUT…lots of us have absolutely no talent or ability or knowledge of how to do this kind of stuff! So we have to hire people. Those who are handy are aghast that others actually hire people to do certain things, but that’s the way it is. It makes no sense to try to do it yourself if you have no clue about what you’re doing and you just mess it all up and end up spending more money than if you had just hired it done to begin with.
My contribution to the suggestions for the OP–take a good hard look at all your “stuff,” and see if you can sell any of it to raise money. It’s fairly easy to sell nowadays if you go online. If you have a collection of something (Precious Moments, baseball cards, etc.), this might be a good “rainy day,” especially if you run into someone who is willing to pay top dollar. A lot of people keep their collection until it’s not valuable anymore. Be savvy. Don’t sell something that you cherish, but don’t keep anything that’s just taking up space.
Another suggestion is to do “odd jobs” to earn money. The man who mows our lawn started out just mowing a few neighbors’ lawns to earn a little extra cash. Then he got more and more business, and used some of the money to buy a bigger, better lawn mower. Now he mows 40 lawns a week, and has a huge mower and a trailer to haul it in. He paid for his sons’ college with his lawn mowing money. If there’s anything you can do that others can’t do, or don’t want do to, maybe you can sell “yourself.”
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