[samy23]

Lately I have had to cut back my work hours for personal health reasons, and it's making me question things.<br><br>
Im wondering what amount of money you think you would have to be making -say yearly, so that you wouldn't be struggling financially at all?<br><br>
Do you think even extremely rich people still have money worries? Because as your income increases, so do your outgoing expenses. So I'm thinking even those people have money related worries.<br><br>
Sigh. I wish we didn't need money at all.

 

[tangent]

Good question. About 3-4 yrs ago I went through this exercise and came up with a number of ~33% pay increase. If I had an extra amount of that much, I would not be struggling anymore. Now, years later, I am making that much extra (partly through 2nd and even 3rd jobs) and indeed not struggling financially and am even putting money into savings. It has been more difficult than I expected to not ramp up my spending along with the earnings. I think that's the key, as you point out, to not live without your means, period. I couldn't find much else to cut back on several years ago, and was lucky enough to find an extra source of income that I could do from home at night, weekends and summers off.

 

[CityChic]

This is a super tough question.<br><br>
In the city/state I live in my cost of living is significantly increasing yearly due to taxes, etc. So each year I need to be making more to keep up with those changes and it is more than a 2-3% raise can cover.<br><br>
It would help if we were 100% debt free. DH and I are both committed to working full time until we have reached that goal. It is tough for me as I believe that one of us should be home with DS but it is worth it in the long run (only 2 more years!)

 

[Belleweather]

When DH and I were thinking about jobs getting out of college, we assumed that we'd each get jobs making about $30K, and we'd be falling over ourselves with money. I'm not sure if that would have worked or not (and we weren't counting on daycare for our unexpected and adored second babe), but that was what made sense to us.<br><br>
I got a job making almost $50K and we thought that DH could stay home and we'd be JUST FINE. And we were -- as long as nothing unexpected happened that wasn't priced into our model. Of course, it did. And we're not as comfortable as we wanted to be.<br><br>
We're now moving into a new phase where I'll be making 20% more than I was, and DH will be in the job market. This is more money than we'd ever dreamed about when we graduated 2 years ago. We've finally got enough information to price in things like "OMG, what if the car dies?!" and we know that we have needs we didn't realise we had two years ago, like life insurance and an occasional trip or meal out. I'm reasonably sure we have a good model and I can say that we are NOT going to be struggling now. But I'm kind of embarassed to say what our take home income would be. We're debt free other than student loans and very frugal, but it kind of embarasses me that we need so much cash coming in to be financially comfortable to the point that we don't need to worry about money.

 

[hellyaellen]

right now we make about 15,000 yealy not counting child support and gov't benefits<br><br>
i feel like if i just made say 20-30,000 id' be fine at 50,000 or more i'd feel rich. but i do believ i would remain frugal. i just don't feel like i need a bunch of "stuff" we'd probably vacation more often etc but we wouldn't be keeping up with the joneses or anything

 

[AndrewsMother]

My DH was unemployed for almost a year. I was a SAHM who turned to work part time to help out. I now work full time so that we can catch up so life is a struggle at the current time. In order to save, and not have to want for anything basic we or he needs to make $75k a year. That figure is even low, because the unexpected is never invited. I will probably not be able to relax financiall until our incomeis well over six figures.<br><br>
I have lived the making lemonade out of lemons life for two years, and it is far overrated.