What is your household's yearly income? - Page 3

[rightkindofme]

Between my husband's very good job and the various investment income stuff we have we make ~ $150,000 every year with me not working. The really sad thing is that for where we live we are still not particularly rich. We just refinanced our house to a 15 year loan and we have no debt other than our house. We live in a somewhat smallish house (less than 1,000 sq ft) in a lower middle class neighborhood but we travel a lot. We eat exceptionally well. Compared to our friends we 'sacrifice' to have me stay home but I don't exactly feel like we are suffering. We did have to do work up front to pay off my school loans and his previously incurred debt before we had kids because we wouldn't have been able to manage well given the amount of debt we had. But! We did it and now we have fairly cushy lives.

[That Is Nice]

question about all the investment talk

I'm really surprised that so many of you mentioned investments and investment income.

DH and I have always made a pretty good income. But, other than retirement, we simply have never had investments because we've never had the extra money for investments.

We've had savings, nice savings according to Dave Ramsey formula, and no debt, but that's as good a scenario as we've been able to come up with (and that was pre-kids, two incomes).

I'm just really curious about investments and whether the money is inherited or gifted to begin with?

I struggle to save for my child's (meager) college savings so to have extra money to invest and then live off of while being a stay-at-home mom is just not an obvious path that I can see for us.

[txbikegrrl]

Originally Posted by That Is Nice

I'm really surprised that so many of you mentioned investments and investment income.

DH and I have always made a pretty good income. But, other than retirement, we simply have never had investments because we've never had the extra money for investments.

We've had savings, nice savings according to Dave Ramsey formula, and no debt, but that's as good a scenario as we've been able to come up with (and that was pre-kids, two incomes).

I'm just really curious about investments and whether the money is inherited or gifted to begin with?

I struggle to save for my child's (meager) college savings so to have extra money to invest and then live off of while being a stay-at-home mom is just not an obvious path that I can see for us.

I was thinking the same thing TIN! DH and I met in grad school so are still paying off student loans. Our combined income looks very good on paper but because we made literally almost nothing throughout our 20s we did rack up some CC debt along with student loans. Once we started working we paid off the CC debt within a few years. But we are almost 40 with no retirement savings and only have a house because our families gifted us the downpayment. We have a few hundred shares of a few different stocks. Only $4K for DS in a college fund but we contributed $5K when he was born so that didn't work out well either. We don't have another $5K or even $3K which is the minimum for another 529 for DD very sad.

I definitely don't recommend going to grad school for a PhD in the social sciences. DH does IT now and though he is making much more than me we are really behind because of all those years in school not contributing to retirement not investing, etc.

[rightkindofme]

Well, some of our investment stuff is inherited. My husband's family uhhh used to own a town. That was a few generations back and it has been disbursed quite a bit through the branches but he inherited some investments. If he quit his job he would have enough money to live for maybe three years if we subsisted on rice and beans so it's not a lot of money but it is a little bit of extra because all of the investments pay dividends. We very consciously and deliberately invest money though. My husband didn't do anything beyond the basic 401k stuff until we got married 3.5 years ago. I'm the saver. I am absolutely set on him being able to retire early.

[That Is Nice]

Originally Posted by rightkindofme

Well, some of our investment stuff is inherited. My husband's family uhhh used to own a town. That was a few generations back and it has been disbursed quite a bit through the branches but he inherited some investments. If he quit his job he would have enough money to live for maybe three years if we subsisted on rice and beans so it's not a lot of money but it is a little bit of extra because all of the investments pay dividends. We very consciously and deliberately invest money though. My husband didn't do anything beyond the basic 401k stuff until we got married 3.5 years ago. I'm the saver. I am absolutely set on him being able to retire early.

Yes, but money makes money. It's easier to make money starting with some money.

Many times I read families with SAHPs (it so often seems) are going in debt, living with some sort of public assistance to subsidize their income, or they had help with a down payment for a house or inherited some money.

That's just how it often seems.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I will never inherit anything, which is fine, but because my parents/family had/has nothing, I've supported them over the years, spending thousands and thousands on groceries, gas, housing, medical expenses, you name it on my parents and my siblings. It has taken a huge toll on our finances.

Plus, I put myself through college, and I've been paying that off for many years (almost done).

So, I'm approaching 40 and I've made a lot of money, but I don't feel like I have much to show for it.

[Juvysen]

I was gifted with a joint TD Ameritrade account that my grandfather had plopped a couple grand into and then grew it somewhat from there. Unfortunately, there's not much left in it anymore because it's mostly in stocks that tanked, now.

Beyond that, we have dh's 401k that his company matches to 6%, so we do that. He put his 401k money into chinese mutual funds and it's been WAY up, which is cool, but of course that could change at any time...

[WindyCityMom]

We had 22k taxable income on our taxes, if I recall correctly. I worked about 6 months out of the year, part time, and my husband worked full time (some part time) for the rest of the year.

We are both about to turn 20, and have two daughters.

[Bug-a-Boo's Mama]

DH makes good money. But we still struggle. Once DS was born and I became a SAHM, we didn't plan as well as we really should have. We have always gone through periods where we have tons of money and then none at all. With better planning, we would have been much happier. But we didn't stop spending.

We are now on the road upwards, but still have periods of less or more extra money.

[rightkindofme]

Originally Posted by That Is Nice

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I will never inherit anything, which is fine, but because my parents/family had/has nothing, I've supported them over the years, spending thousands and thousands on groceries, gas, housing, medical expenses, you name it on my parents and my siblings. It has taken a huge toll on our finances.

Plus, I put myself through college, and I've been paying that off for many years (almost done).

So, I'm approaching 40 and I've made a lot of money, but I don't feel like I have much to show for it.

I think this attitude is the difference between a collectivist and an individualistic mindset. I grew up in poverty. Like, stealing food to eat poverty. I was homeless periodically as a child. My family is better off than they were when I was a kid, but not by much. No one has been homeless in 20 years. But they would all cheerfully take as much money from me as I am willing to give them. I get calls regularly. They won't be happy until I am living in poverty with them again. I put myself through school and have paid it off already--and that was a BA, teaching credential, and MA. I paid that off by myself without help from my husband. If I support my family now there will be no one to help me when I am old. I am not going to put myself in that position. I refuse to accept their attitude that I am responsible for them--I'm not. I am only responsible for myself and my children while they are children. I want to have a better life and if I accept the yoke other people try to put on me I never will. No thanks.

[mbhf]

Originally Posted by rightkindofme

I think this attitude is the difference between a collectivist and an individualistic mindset. I grew up in poverty. Like, stealing food to eat poverty. I was homeless periodically as a child. My family is better off than they were when I was a kid, but not by much. No one has been homeless in 20 years. But they would all cheerfully take as much money from me as I am willing to give them. I get calls regularly. They won't be happy until I am living in poverty with them again. I put myself through school and have paid it off already--and that was a BA, teaching credential, and MA. I paid that off by myself without help from my husband. If I support my family now there will be no one to help me when I am old. I am not going to put myself in that position. I refuse to accept their attitude that I am responsible for them--I'm not. I am only responsible for myself and my children while they are children. I want to have a better life and if I accept the yoke other people try to put on me I never will. No thanks.

[That Is Nice]

Originally Posted by rightkindofme

I think this attitude is the difference between a collectivist and an individualistic mindset. I grew up in poverty. Like, stealing food to eat poverty. I was homeless periodically as a child. My family is better off than they were when I was a kid, but not by much. No one has been homeless in 20 years. But they would all cheerfully take as much money from me as I am willing to give them. I get calls regularly. They won't be happy until I am living in poverty with them again. I put myself through school and have paid it off already--and that was a BA, teaching credential, and MA. I paid that off by myself without help from my husband. If I support my family now there will be no one to help me when I am old. I am not going to put myself in that position. I refuse to accept their attitude that I am responsible for them--I'm not. I am only responsible for myself and my children while they are children. I want to have a better life and if I accept the yoke other people try to put on me I never will. No thanks.

Your childhood sounds so much like mine. We were always hungry. And cold. I remember a couple of times we ate garbage that we found in the park. I was so hungry it didn't ocur to me not to eat it. Some kids and their parents saw us and made fun of me for months afterwards and it just made me want to cry, even now 30 something years later.

But your family sounds like they at least made it through. I have a homeless parent who lives hand to mouth on the streets. That certainly colors my world. I can't turn my back as much as I've tried to set boundaries for spending because then I feel terrible about myself.

My siblings were all younger than me, and I had trouble looking at hungry kids without school supplies and shoes/socks when I was finally out of college. Also, my grandparents told me my entire childhood that I was responsible and I did need to help financially (probably so they wouldn't have the burden to themselves since they knew my mother was never going to be responsible).

I don't know...it's so hard to not help people you know are in need. Now, as I've gotten older and everyone has become adults, it's been easier to stop and say no, particularly when some of them have crossed the line, done illegal things to me, or taken advantage of me in ways that cross boundaries I never imagined anyone could cross. Those people are out of my life forever.

But my homeless parent has my empathy and therefore a permanent piece of my pocketbook. I don't know any way around it. I don't want anyone dying on my watch, I guess, is what it comes down to.

[That Is Nice]

Originally Posted by mbhf

Without getting too off topic for too long, I have to ask, do you have a homeless parent?

It's one thing to draw the line about not handing out money if a relative has the most basic needs of food and shelter met, even if they are crummy and sub-par.

It's a choice we make where and when to draw the line, but I could never applaud drawing a line about spending and focusing on my own life when my parent is on the street sleeping by a heating duct and hasn't eaten in a week. I'm at that level most of the time and my dollars given are the only ones given, other than a few people who put some money in their cup. Many homeless don't feel safe at homeless shelters and their mental illness/addictions make them not trust the very limited services that are available, and they are extremely limited. I know.

If your money-seeking relatives have the very basics of shelter and food, count yourselves lucky. That's certainly not the case for everyone. And do draw a line at that point to focus on your own life is very, very difficult.

[ShwarmaQueen]

Yes we struggle, mainly because of debt, but we dont have to take assistance.

[~cassie~]

Originally Posted by That Is Nice

I'm really surprised that so many of you mentioned investments and investment income.

DH and I have always made a pretty good income. But, other than retirement, we simply have never had investments because we've never had the extra money for investments.

We've had savings, nice savings according to Dave Ramsey formula, and no debt, but that's as good a scenario as we've been able to come up with (and that was pre-kids, two incomes).

I'm just really curious about investments and whether the money is inherited or gifted to begin with?

I struggle to save for my child's (meager) college savings so to have extra money to invest and then live off of while being a stay-at-home mom is just not an obvious path that I can see for us.

We don't have investments/investment income, however I did inherit money-somewhere to the tune of 60,000$. We live in a small mobile home that I bought when I was in college(with that money), paid my car off with the money, and then paid for my 4 yr college degree without working. The rest went to Gymboree although there wasn't much left after everything was paid off. We are struggling, not sure how we would make it if we had a car and house payment. My sister just have me 200$ today so I could get some gas and pay for some groceries, and that is with us having assistance as well. We were doing very well--had out debt paid down a lot, had only 1500 left to be done with it and then our state cut dh's pay down 800$ a mth and it has hurt us a lot. Hell I was going to give plasma today so we could have some extra money!

[rightkindofme]

Originally Posted by That Is Nice

But your family sounds like they at least made it through. I have a homeless parent who lives hand to mouth on the streets. That certainly colors my world. I can't turn my back as much as I've tried to set boundaries for spending because then I feel terrible about myself.

But my homeless parent has my empathy and therefore a permanent piece of my pocketbook. I don't know any way around it. I don't want anyone dying on my watch, I guess, is what it comes down to.

My family has not been homeless in the last 20 years because of a series of suckers. My mother may well be homeless sometime in the next year or two because of her financial priorities. It is rather looking like the roof on her trailer is going to collapse and I can promise you that she will call me. I will tell her no.

I have a slightly different perspective on the guilt for a parent 'dying on my watch' seeing as both my brother and my father committed suicide and left notes blaming me. I am completely estranged from my father's family because they all hold me accountable. My mother has since told me that if I cut off contact between her and my daughter that she will kill herself. Quite frankly anyone who will try that kind of blackmail *has* to be cut off in my opinion. So yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if my mother dies blaming me for all her problems.

Guess what? It's not my watch. It's not my responsibility. Our parents are not our responsibility. They are adults. I have helped my family to a limited extent over the years but they will cheerfully me over until I have nothing--just like them. Uhm... yeah. No guilt here. (Ok, a little guilt. But I stomp on it really really hard because I know I am making the healthy decision.)

Have you read up on codependency? It might be a good thing for you to look into. It was very helpful for me. I also really strongly identify with the behavioral issues of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic despite the fact that I never lived with an alcoholic. (My father was an alcoholic and drug addict but he was not really in my life.) These patterns of caretaking are harmful to us. We don't have to continue to engage in them.

That said: I am paying for my niece to go to college. It's not a loan and she didn't ask. She is smart, driven, and extremely talented but she may slip back into the mire if she doesn't get a boost out. I consider that an investment worth making because she isn't a black hole. With the rest of my family it would be throwing good money after bad and I'm just not willing to do that anymore. It is taking money away from my children to do so and the bastards just aren't worth it.

[triana1326]

DH brings in about 14.50/hr, which averages out around 20-22k a year. He works so hard! I try each day to let him know that I truly appreciate how much he does for us. We bought a house last year, very cheap, esp. for the size and wonderful condition it was in. My handicapped mom lives with us now because of a series of bad real estate deals she made trying to make to earn some extra money. We recently decided that we couldn't afford for me to stay at home unless we got some support from the state. See, I was working full time and we were doing well on paying off debts (cars are paid off, his student loans are paid off, etc.). Then my mom, who was taking care of DD while we worked, fell and broke four bones, putting her in long term rehab for four months. We managed to find friends to watch Sara for 2 months, while DH and I juggled our work schedules. I had a lot of burnout from my job and we decided that I would take a bit of a break. The day I gave my resignation, we found out I was pregnant. Because of her prior handicap and now because of the years long recovery from her fall, Mom could not watch both D and a new baby. We knew that even if we could afford daycare that we wouldn't be able to do the things we wanted to do for DD and the new baby, like CD, no vax, EBF, etc. So we chose for me to stay home. But with some recent money struggles due to increasing our support to my mom, we have had to make some serious decisions - like pay mortgage over paying off a credit card. So we got WIC and foodstamps, MaineCare (a type of universal healthcare), and heating assistance. This was so hard to do, as I have always felt that these programs were there for people "who really needed it", not for us. But after running the numbers every way we could, we concluded that we were "those people who needed it". So...I guess long story short, if we had been smarter when we were just a couple, then we would have had some savings fall back. Hopefully, we'll be able to get off public assistance someday, but with the way social work is being cut so much, it doesn't look like Dh is going to be getting a raise any time soon...

[ancoda]

My husband just left a job where he was making just over 45k a year, but in the Portland, Oregon area that was not supporting us. His company had been on a salary freeze for 3 years, this year would have been the fourth year he would not have gotten a raise. We moved to Idaho and he is going back to college full time (he was part time in Portland).
I have no real marketable skills so the best I could do is work a minimum wage job. I am pretty sure that would not even cover daycare. I am in the process of looking at some online colleges to go back to school so that I would be a SAHM and a student.

Even as bad off as we are at times we still have his family hitting us up for money, because we have more then them. We are willing at times to give an extra $20 here and there because we feel that family does take care of each other when they can, but when they show up asking for a hundred or so and have no intention of paying it back the answer has to be no and they are never happy about that. We have also had them crash at our house claiming it is just for a week or two and at least twice it was for over 6 months. This we have also had to put a stop to, so that we do not go into debt at their expense.

We are not on any government assistance at this time, but I have been looking into getting on WIC.

[Paigekitten]

We are in Portland, OR and are super excited to hit $20,000 for the first time in our lives. We are 23 and 24. DH's mom helped us buy a house last year, before that I WAH as an apartment manager. I love being home with my girls, and we have decided that even if it means losing the house, one of us will always be a SAHP. We made that decision during 3 months of unemployment last fall. DH was applying for anything at any wage and couldn't get any work, so it was a pretty intense choice at the time. We got food stamps and wic during that bout of unemployment and still use food stamps. Our food benefit went UP when DH got a job....how does that make sense! I am not thrilled, but this means we can eat some organic food, and get some treats for the kids too. I have a subsidy for private insurance for the kids and me that has been an absolute godsend.

I guess you could say we are lucky. Lucky that we have our house, lucky for DH new job, lucky to have health insurance. There is also a factor of sweat, blood, and determination in this too. We've paid down all the credit cards, and are working on my school loans. We are trying to get DH's school loans deferred for a while longer to pay off the car and get and some kind of emergency fund built. We scour craigslist and freecycle for free things that we need, we live without a lot of things most people don't think twice about having.

If I am not in tears because we screwed up and overdrafted something, then it is kind of a game...finding things free or dirt cheap, looking for more ways to cut down costs. Though sometimes I feel like staying home is three jobs; the kids, the house/yard, and the things we do to save money.

[Sharlla]

Well last year DH only worked half year so we made 40K. On my single income I was making 29-32K (not too shabby for $9 an hour) but since they got rid of overtime it will be a lot less than that. So I just got a second job. Not that we can't afford to live off the income but I prefer to have lots of wiggle room. Most of my hours unless I'm filling in shifts are sleep over nights so I'm home all day and so is DH since he's the SAHD,

[slylives]

My husband earns a lot of money. We just paid a six-figure tax bill and we live in the Twin Cities. I don't consider this to be a particularly high COL (I moved here from London) but compared to the rest of the Midwest I think it is. We also live in the city, so we property-wise we get a lot less house for our money. We only have law school loans for debt – as soon as my husband started earning good money we paid everything else off, and our mortgage should be gone by the end of next year.

That said, I am not really a SAHM. I have been a law student since my daughter was born so I study FT, work PT and am home with my daughter. But the SAHM/WOHM tension is something I am currently struggling with. (Ironically my husband graduated in the bottom third of a crappy law school and makes a fortune while I left a top-tier law school in the top 5% (yesterday!) and I don’t have a job lined up.

Because the job market is so bad, I am considering my options in case I don’t find anything. Although financially we are fine with me not working, I don’t really like to be financially dependent upon anyone (even my husband). I was raised in a very working class household, and money was always tight. In fact my mother confessed recently that they nearly had their home repossessed when I was about 13. The prospect of ever being back in such a precarious situation is horrifying to me.

I am absolutely in awe of families who manage to get by on some of the figures that people here have been quoting. Kudos to you.