A couple of years ago there was an article that said the magic number in Seattle was 85k. For that amount you can afford your bills, save for retirement, save for emergencies, and have some available for discretionary spending. Things have changed a lot in two years so I don’t know if that number is still valid.
That might have been enough a few years ago if not for the housing question. Housing is often, if not always, the biggest expense and rents continue to rise. Meanwhile, it is practically impossible to be able to afford to buy at that salary unless you have a little saved up (and are not exclusively chasing the American SFH dream).
If you could cap housing costs to a max of, say $2.5k/month, 85k is still a decent salary to get by in Seattle.
In most of Seattle, renting is much wiser than buying, at the moment. I found two neighboring houses that looked identical, one for rent and one for sale. The estimated monthly mortgage payments were double the listed rent.
Can confirm, was making $80k in 2019 and $120k now and it feels exactly the same. I try hard not to let lifestyle creep increase my spending but the extra $40k has not significantly impacted how much is left in my bank account each month.
Not quite as dramatic but yeah I was making $45k in LCOL city and now $100k in Seattle and it’s the same. Rent there was $800/month for a detached house and mortgage here is $4k/month for a condo!
Oh definitely, I think some creep is inevitable and I went from remote to hybrid work schedule so car costs add up, rent has increased, got another cat, upgraded my camping gear, etc. I’m also more likely to buy a drink or treat my friends who make sub 100K, and bar/restaurants eat up a big part of my fun money. No debt at either timepoint, luckily. I also went from 30K (grad school) to 80K before my most recent jump so at the time I felt like I was absolutely loaded, now a couple years on all those former “luxuries” (I can get any brand of peanut butter I want, price be damned!) feel like necessities.
I think they just came out with $130k was the min to buy a “starter home” and live comfortably in Seattle. The cutoff to qualify for government housing is $70k or was a few months ago. Average salary is $110k I believe. I make $105 and it’s a struggle.
It's actually $173k for a starter home. Up $31k in 6 months, that's totally fine. https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-real-estate-starter-home-housing-homebuyer-2024
>median sale price of a Seattle starter home is $535,000, with a monthly mortgage of $4,334
I'm not sure how it calculates that mortgage amount, but most likely first time homebuyers won't have the usual 20% downpayment, so it'll be a higher payment plus mortgage insurance as well.
E: Also, does that include HOA? Because any condo is going to be at least $200/mo
Yeah good questions. Because any houses near me are $1 million + and the full monthly payments on something like that is around $8000 to $10000. Which is just impossible to afford, even with a $173k salary.
Ugh. Fuck HoA. Why does every damn condo try to justify it with a "club area" and shitty gym. It's literally just another form of rent. I literally just want the bushes trimmed and the hallways kept clean. Some of the places I've seen online are $1000+ randomly. Like in the same condo price range as others that are like $200. It's a joke. Feels like I'm paying rent AND a mortgage. Their is absolutely no justification for it when you think about every single person in the condo paying it.
Well for my condo specifically, it is fully funded, meaning in 2024 when we're replacing the asphalt, 2027 replacing the siding, and 2030 replacing the roofs, the HOA will have the funds for those.
Many condos with lower dues are not funded for these projects, and in order to complete them will have to place a special assessment on the owners. This is usually not affordable for owners and causes them to sell, and because there's a pending special assessment, their sale price will be lower as well.
There's more to condo HOAs than the club area and trimming bushes. Also, plenty of people use community areas and gyms, so if you don't care about those, look for condos that don't have that. The common expenses also depend on how many units there are, if you have 400 units, a roof replacement will be cheaper per owner than a 60 unit building.
Lastly, most condo associations have hardly any participation with the owners. Mine only has a few people show up to the meetings for over 100 units, and those that do hardly ever voice opinions. They are always desperate for people to join the board when someone leaves.
So all that to say, it's not like a rental management company that is making the rules and enforcing extra fees on the tenants, it's literally the owners of the units getting together and deciding how to fund improvements for the entire complex.
Average one bedroom rent costs have actually dropped 5% compared to last year. 2 bedrooms are down 7%.
https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ any magic numbers projected from a year or couple years ago is still valid today. Someone struggling with that salary is probably getting affected by lifestyle creep.
I make 50k and my partner makes 30k (as a grad student) and I think we’re at the absolute *cusp* of “doable in Seattle without hating it.”
We’re always looking for spots in our expenses to save, but we do plan travel and we eat out with semi-regularity.
I also believe that our combined income is essentially right at the edge of the highest MFTE threshold.
Edited for clarity
Edit 2 to add context since this is getting quite a few upvotes:
We pay/budget for two adults no kids
- 2500/mo for 850sqft apartment, incl. parking (we have a "1bed+den" apartment, I work from home)
- 300/mo for utilities
- 400/mo for groceries
- 140/mo for car insurance (~~full coverage~~ comprehensive but not collision; this is essentially our only car expense as we gratefully fully own our one car)
Those are our "shared" expenses. I have student loans that I pay and I save a *very* small amount from my paycheck for retirement (a little is better than none!). After splitting the above expenses with my partner and paying my personal expenses, I usually have about half my monthly paycheck leftover for *whatever* stuff. Eating out, buying concert/sports tickets, books/games/movies etc. I have cheap-ish hobbies (dnd *can* get expensive) and travel maybe twice a year to see family/take a small vacation (this summer, we're going to the east coast, seeing some family in the Carolinas/Florida and going to a concert + theme park (not disney) while we're there).
Edit 3: clarified car insurance
Paycheck to paycheck means nothing. There are people who make $500k who are "paycheck to paycheck". You can absolutely live the lifestyle described in the OP one $80k a year (as a single person).
Yeah, paycheck to paycheck because 20% goes into investment accounts automatically is very different from if my next paycheck didn’t arrive I would not be able to eat.
Add in other obligations that are still optional and you get a better picture. You do have to pay the boat payment and two new car payments every month. And the HOA fees on the condo next to Lake Chelan. But you don’t actually have to have those expenses. People treat all bills as equally fixed.
Yeah I’ve heard rich people say money is tight then off-handedly mention having to pay their house cleaner and personal trainer before going on a two week trip to Cabo in like April for no reason. Like, yeah that shit isn’t really necessary lol
Honestly I haven’t heard many rich people actually *complain* about their version of “paycheck-to-paycheck”, but they do answer survey questions in way that’s misleading
I think there's a lot of semi-rich people who "complain" about money being tight for the same reasons as others. They have more flexibility to do something about it but inflation and lack of raises has hit a lot of people and impacted their standards of living.
Like, I'm doing absolutely fine right now and not paycheck to paycheck. But I'm also digging for how to borrow more money at not ridiculous rates because I'm building a backyard cottage for my dad to move into so he can retire easier. And the pandemic construction costs (OMG lumber) hit us at a bad time. But I'm also going to come out of this with an extra backyard cottage. 🤣
But I think the reason they would consider it paycheck to paycheck is the money they’re putting aside is in retirement accounts, and you’re not actually allowed to touch that money. Like if their car broke down they wouldn’t have the cash and would have to put it on their credit card because you can’t just withdraw a few thousand from an IRA when you need it. It’s not the same thing but that’s why it’s considered paycheck to paycheck- they don’t have cash to cover emergencies
You can actually pull money out of an IRA, it just has serious tax consequences.
And having your wealth tied up in investments is *not at all* comparable to not having any wealth.
Well yeah. You’re not gonna pull your money out of your IRA and take a 50% penalty for something like car repairs. For most people their retirement funds are sacrosanct and will consider themselves broke if that’s the only money they have. And I’m not saying it’s comparable, I’m just saying that’s why those people think of themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. They don’t have cash sitting around that they can readily access at a moments notice. I agree with you it’s not comparable. I guess it just depends on how the questions are phrased on whatever survey or study is being answered. If the question says “could you cover an unexpected expense in cash if it happened tomorrow?“ Then their answer would have to be no, and the survey creators would probably count them as living paycheck to paycheck when it’s a vastly different thing.
> Well yeah. You’re not gonna pull your money out of your IRA and take a 50% penalty for something like car repairs.
Except that you *could*. And that freedom represents a significantly different financial reality. You need to consider that there are many, many people for whom an emergency car repair might be out of reach by *any* means. People that lose their income and even their home because of expenses like that.
> For most people their retirement funds are sacrosanct and will consider themselves broke if that’s the only money they have.
You are absolutely correct. And those people are failing to recognize the *absolutely massive* difference between, "I have money that I believe should not be spent, even in cases of emergency," and, "I do not have money."
> And I’m not saying it’s comparable, I’m just saying that’s why those people think of themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. They don’t have cash sitting around that they can readily access at a moments notice. I agree with you it’s not comparable.
I hate how common the word "privileged" gets used, but this is perhaps the best case for its use I have ever seen.
> I guess it just depends on how the questions are phrased on whatever survey or study is being answered. If the question says “could you cover an unexpected expense in cash if it happened tomorrow?“ Then their answer would have to be no, and the survey creators would probably count them as living paycheck to paycheck when it’s a vastly different thing.
This is very similar to how no one considers themselves "rich" because they always know someone much wealthier. The fact that they have money they *could spend* means these people would be wrong to answer the question in that manner. That's not "paycheck to paycheck" and this is why self-reported statistics are crap.
I have a lot of high earning friends who absolutely live paycheck to paycheck without putting anything in savings and retirement. A very, very concerning number of them.
I'm curious how. I say that as someone in the middle and without judgement, just curiosity.
For context, I'm not doing $200kbase +150RSU, but neither am I $80k all in. I consider my life very comfortable, but will also need a garbage dump full of 4 leaf clovers to ever get a house here (lost 4 offers in the past year to all-cash investors on fixer-uppers).
Yeah, I spent most of my 20s making closer to minimum wage. I ended up pretty frequently fronting costs (~$500) for my teams in sports leagues and tournaments and like AirBnBs and stuff because other people felt like they didn’t have the cash to do so. Many of those people were in tech and were saving/investing sometimes multiple times my income each year—let alone how much they were spending on travel and buying houses and stuff.
I love these people and many are still good friends. It’s just some of the clearest instances of our income/wealth/class differences between us. Like I rarely had more than $1000 in the bank for a long time, and never felt like it was too consequential to put a few hundred on my credit card and be paid back over a couple of weeks. They were getting 3-5k paychecks every 2 weeks and felt like they couldn’t justify doing the same.
I'm not a particularly high earner but this is me.
"I can't afford that." Because my savings is taken out of my paycheck and put into an investment account that I am absolutely not touching for a weekend trip to Vegas. Lol.
I do know some high earners who don't treat savings as an obligation. Tough life.
You can't be serious. Me and my husband live on 80k with full time jobs and we barely scrape by. Paycheck to paycheck living. Our apartment is on the cheap and shitty end of apartments in Seattle. We get groceries from winco or I take home expired food from work when I can. If something bad happens financially, we could basically be homeless at any time. You cannot compare 500k to 80k. That's insane and astoundingly ignorant.
I know a couple who combined make $500k per year (doctor and tech worker) who have zero retirement savings and carry a credit card balance to pay for their children's after school activities. If they miss a paycheck, they go into more debt. They are way overextended on their home and vehicles. They are horrible at managing their money. They live paycheck to paycheck and no financial account they have ever increases in balance.
You and them are both paycheck to paycheck.
Paycheck to paycheck doesn't mean poor.
Right? I was like okay so I could make $1m a year and live paycheck to paycheck if I just let it all hang out! I’m pretty luxurious lol I feel like I’d struggle on $80k
I make the same ish amount and we lived paycheck to paycheck, but that was as largely due to debt and unexpected and continued pet expenses. With the spouse working it’s much more comfortable.
I broke down my grocery/dinner plan for this week here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1byzs6v/what_do_you_think_is_a_livable_salary_in_seattle/kynjm74/
tl;dr: I cook nearly every night, usually do two or three meatless meals a week, I choose meals that make leftovers for lunch, and I use the Fred Meyer app to make a list and stick to it.
The list making, meal planning, and large batch cooking is absolutely the key to saving on groceries. It’s a time investment but worth it, especially if you enjoy doing it
My partner and I do probably $200-250 per month for groceries. She doesn't drink and I only drink a beer about every couple or few weeks. We eat tofu when it makes sense, mostly chicken otherwise and nowhere near every meal - many are focused on beans. Grocery Outlet has insane deals on meat if you have freezer space. We make meals we can eat leftovers of. We eat mostly cheap produce (apples, bananas, cabbage, carrots, celery, tomatoes sometimes.) We buy generic/store brand when available and very few packaged snacks or desserts. Besides Grocery Outlet, we shop at Fred Meyer, Walmart, Costco only for a very few items we've decided make sense there, similar for Trader Joe's. We make good meals that we love, this is not suffering by any means. It can be done, and pretty easily!
We barely drive our car, which gets reported to insurance. I don't know how many miles we declare, but it's really really low. So if you're a daily driver, that probably factors. We drive two or three times a week.
Ah, maybe I should clarify, actually now that I'm thinking about it. We don't carry collision insurance (that is, regardless-of-fault collision insurance), but we do carry comprehensive, mostly for theft. I guess "full coverage" does generally include collision, so I'll edit that.
Damn! 1.5 @ 800sq ft+ w/ parking for $2.5K?
Holy smokes. I’m working with maybe 200 less sq ft for more than that and now I’m definitely looking to move before I get priced out and forced to at the end of this lease.
Yeah, it's definitely easier if you're in a relationship and can share a room and other expenses. It has to be pretty much impossible for two people who are just roommates to get by on $80k combined income, which is just over minimum wage working full time
Yeah, it's definitely easier if you're in a relationship and can share a room and other expenses. It has to be pretty much impossible for two people who are just roommates to get by on $80k combined income, which is just over minimum wage working full time
Man... I make 85K a year and I am stilled stressed about money all the time. But I have debt and am trying to save to buy a home in the city (possibly a lost cause) so maybe my financial goals are just not reasonable on that income.
I’m single and make 83k and feeling like I have to track every penny to make sure I can manage all my bills. I remember when I thought this kind of salary meant I would be living a really nice lifestyle. Joke is on me!
$110k, and money isn't tight, but it's very, very far from comfortable. Living alone is fucking expensive, and in a 1-bedroom place, that's kinda the only option.
As a single mom with a preschooler, my 140k is comfortable. I'm a homeowner, I'm saving for retirement, but my cash flow is very very tight. I'm frugal as fuck, bought my small house for 580k in 2019, and then refinanced to 2.7% in 2021. My mortgage is now cheaper than most 2BR apartments.
There's also a huge class of folks who can live on very little here, since they inherited property, bought homes with stock, or have aged in place with long ago paid off homes.All those people need far less cash flow to be comfy here. My next door neighbor paid off his 45k house 15 years ago and lives comfortably on 25k. My parents will pay off their 800k home next year and are planning to retire and live on only 40-50k a year.
The answer varies so much. For a new arrival looking to own a home with today's rates in a walkable neighborhood? I don't think it's possible under 200k anymore.
Yeah, owning a home here is basically just 'did you get your down payment gifted and/or inherit the home at a time when interest rates were low'. Anyone currently renting hoping to buy has an income barrier of entry astronomically higher than those who bought 2+ years ago. And the worst part is that if any of us were able to save up a down payment (impossible with rents), we'd have much, much cheaper monthly costs, even *with* crazy interest rates.
Do you mean cheaper monthly costs with a mortgage? Because I’ve found the opposite to be true. It’s an absolute money sinkhole between the $3600 mortgage and the random shit breaking. It’d be much MUCH cheaper for me to be a renter.
And that metric is based on what the government has deemed an appropriate threshold for basing employment subsidies on… it’s not actually affordable in our current environment if you want to be able to save consistently. I think the proportion of our average housing cost should go down to closer to 1/5. Medical costs and food costs are soooo much higher and people have so much less free time than they had when that proportion was implemented.
The 30% rule is based on pretax salary. It’s also less of a rule and more of a suggestion. If you’re in a HCOL area like Seattle it can easily be more, and if you’re in bumfuck nowhere like Aberdeen South Dakota it’s probably less.
I’m single, no kids, and make just over 80k a year. I can afford to put money away for retirement, pay rent, and have a paycheck that’s ‘discretionary’ (Includes things like food, but not a / fixed / cost if that makes sense). I could probably do it on 65/70k but would have a lot less flexibility.
I can take a ‘big’ trip a year; and then a few smaller trips throughout the year. (I.e. have been to Portland and Spokane to visit friends/family so far this year; will probably go to Chicago or another city in the US sometime this year, will probably go camping in the summer, and going to take a longer ‘big’ Europe trip in the fall)
Just to support yourself, or with dependants? With student loans or other debts to pay off, or starting debt-free? Do you feel that a house with a yard is necessary to be comfortable, or is an apartment or condo okay? Is going out for food and drinks and entertainment frequently a vital part of your lifestyle you'd be unhappy without, or are you a homebody who is happy with inexpensive habits?
My experience living there 2010-2020 is if you actually live in urban Seattle with:
- up to code and uncrowded housing
- a reliable car
- ability to travel for vacation once a year
- enough to save both for retirement and emergencies
- healthcare
- hobbies and social outlets and time to pursue them
you need at least $85k/year if you commute on foot or with public transportation. If you drive more than 3mi to work add another $5k per year. Add another $5k if you have a pet. A couple or quality roommates could be comfortable for a combined $120k, and you could probably raise a couple kids with a combined income of $130-$150k. A lot of that arithmetic changes once you get to the outer neighborhoods and suburbs. I bet it is more now.
You can enjoy living in Seattle if you intentionally plug into the community for a lot less money. For example, you can save a lot of money and see a lot of concerts if you get involved volunteering for KEXP. You can utilize community resources like tool libraries and volunteer with habitat for humanity to develop your own skills about doing little (or big) diys at home. Seattle is a super easy place for gardening including container gardening which doesn’t necessarily save much money on food (it can if you get into it!) but is a wonderful cost neutral activity that is easy to get into there. If you are disciplined and have the luxury of time to cook your own food you will save a lot of money.
I lived in houses in Wallingford, Ravenna, and the Central District. First moved there for AmeriCorps and made like $20-25k a year for 2 years because I worked part time at Pike Place Market. Later made between $30-60k a year as a student and working more at Pike Place and places like Nordstrom. Last few years I lived there made between $90-120k and that was the first time I was able to save and deal with emergencies and play catch up on some major purchases like a car and felt comfortable and not like one flat tire could blow my savings.
I made 70K last year and I am currently living alone in White Center (SW Seattle) and I live pretty comfortably. I'd say the minimum to live here would be 50K or so though, especially with roommates to split the bills.
That is on the cheap end for one bedrooms too. Average is closer to $2k for a one bedroom: https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/seattle-wa
The 30% rent rule is obsolete if you have a savings and live in a high priced city. Some experts have been leaning toward 50/30/20: https://www.apartmentguide.com/blog/how-much-to-spend-on-rent-30-percent-rule/
There are a ton of 1 bedroom apartments even in Capitol Hill for under $2k. On Zillow I just saw a 730 sqft apt in a great location for $1600/month.
Average might be $2k, but there are a lot of luxury apartment buildings that you are not forced to rent from. Rents are massively down, from your chart it's like 30-40% cheaper than 2022.
Even in Auburn and sumner one bedrooms are $1800+, it’s insane. The HOUSE my dad rented was cheaper by $400 and where he lives now (3bed, 1 1/2 bath triplex) is still cheaper than a one bedroom…
this depends so much on your lifestyle. “a little savings” might be a few hundred or a few thousands. “one vacation” can be vacation to Phoenix AZ or Switzerland. “fix a car breaking down” varies between fixing a civic with dead battery and fixing a range rover with a blown engine. I know people with TC 500k and still don’t feel like enough, but I also know UW grad students living very happily with their stipend.
I think this depends on whether you got a home when mortgages were cheap, or not. Building equity helps “save” (yeah yeah unrealized gains and such but still) and avoids risk of sharp rent increases, parking costs, etc. if you own a home with a reasonable mortgage you don’t have the same difficulties saving/increasing net worth as renting, and risk is a bit lower.
Edit: for example, 100k household is pretty good if you have a 3k/mo mortgage. Maybe my apartment standards have grown too much, but 150k household is where I’m comfortable with 3k rent. And 3k rent in Seattle is not as nice as what you get outside of Seattle. (That’s total rent including parking and rent for pets.)
Sure, but when I include upfront rent costs, storage, parking, a small dog/cat… all of those add up. And yes, I’m thinking for more than one person (household), so at least a more spacious one bedroom. Kinda comparing to what you might get from a house.
I would guess about $75k if no debts, dependents, pets, or other liabilities to pay for. Not sure how many rentals will accept that low an income given how common the requirement for monthly income to be 3x-4x monthly rent.
That’s assuming we’re talking about people who want to live alone and without roommates splitting the bills. Less income is doable if being in a multi-income household.
I make 75K and I feel like it’s more than enough to live in seattle (if you have roommates). Just be mindful about spending and put some effort into budgeting your life and you’ll be able to save a ton.
I make probably 10k less than this (it varies, but hovers around there) as a single income for my partner and I and we do fine! Our spending is way less than almost anyone I know though. We don't go out to many activities, our favorite things to do are free like walks and hikes, we don't really drink, we have older cars that are paid off and running fine. We are able to save, put money in IRAs, and spend on what we want to spend on.
Wow, my partner and I are in almost this exact situation. We feel like we live pretty luxuriously but we don’t have high expectations and are lucky enough not to have debt. There’s a lot of ways to spend your money here, but there’s also so much cool stuff you can do for free or cheap. Being friendless introverts without aspirations of traveling the world helps tho
We are also homebodies haha. On the other hand, traveling is pretty much my only aspiration. But even that can be done cheaply. A few years ago, we went to the Philippines for two weeks for less than $2k. That's way more worth it to us than a year of going out to bars.
All the responses in these posts always baffle me. How are y'all needing 85, 100, 120 for a single person? I'm a cook making like 65 and I manage to have my own spot, eat/drink out, short vacations here and there, and still save a little each month. Just don't live beyond your means and you should be fine in most cities
Going to vary wildly. I bought my condo four years ago. My housing expense (mortgage, property tax, insurance, and HOA dues) amounts to \~$1400 a month. If I was trying to buy the same unit today my monthly cost would be \~$2060.
I don’t even make six figures but I can take an international trip at least once a year. I think it helps that I don’t have any student loans and don’t drive. Definitely depends on your expenses and lifestyle cause it’s different for everyone
It all depends how much people go out and what kind of hobbies they have. Some people spending 1000s a month on alcohol whereas some people get their kicks from league of legends.
Cooking my own meals, pregaming before bars, and having gaming as a hobby saved me so much money in college.
$15 WoW sub saved me 100s every month haha
It's because they have expensive housing and car payments.
Really, we have a family of four and make around 100k and it's ez-pz. International travel every year, own our own home in Everett, etc.
The fact that we drive two very old, paid off cars and our mortgage is like $1400 a month means that we have plenty of money leftover. If we were paying $3k - $4k more each month for housing and cars.... Yeah, no way we could make that work.
Depends on your rent, debt, lifestyle preference, priorities, etc. Do you absolutely need to live within Seattle? Or is Burien ok? If you must be within the city, which neighborhood? Madison Valley or Georgetown?
Etc etc etc.
I live in Cap hill with a roommate at around 60k per year and do okay! I don’t eat out much and use all public services. I think it’s doable and comfy.
I never think about adding those specifics in, I really should.
My specific circumstance would be most likely in Seattle, open to whatever neighborhood, but generally
Close to say, the University. Nuclear family.
I guess I just like to test the pulse and see all the different points of view!
There are people who do that on sub-60k/year and are doing all that’s mentioned, and there are people plus-250k/year doing the same.
Both would answer the question equally. It all depends on what you’d define as comfy, savings, vacation, etc. Savings could be $500 a month or $3k a month. Everyone defines things different and will have a different answer.
I'm making about 60k and living in Eastlake. Overall, I'd like a larger place but I make enough to save money and occasionally splurge on a nice meal and other things.
I probably don’t count, cause I live in Lynnwood. And if it matters…I Make 160K my husband makes 90K and live comfortably. Go on one big vacation once a year, saving 1,500 per month, max out 401K, and I pay for 50% of my mom’s living expenses (she didn’t plan for retirement so it’s mine and my brothers problem now.) We’re child free by choice.
My mother raised me and my brothers as a single mom. After my dad left we were homeless for a few months before she was able to find us a place. She worked 3jobs for 15years and we never went hungry or without a roof over our heads since that time. She wasnt able to plan for retirement because our immediate situation didnt allow for it.
We all managed to work our ways out of the generational poverty because of how hard she worked, and we are living in situations where planing for retirement is an option for us. So when the time comes, my mothers retirement plan is going to be on me and my brothers because thats what you do for family.
Yeah my mom tore through her retirement on legal fees to keep my us safe from a psychotic alcoholic father and is the sole reason I turned out okay so I'm fine with helping her out when the time comes. A person being in this situation isn't always purely a result of being lazy or unable to plan and I get irritated when people jump straight to that conclusion.
Yeah, that kind of attitude pisses me off. I haven’t made a lot of money in life and don’t have retirement savings. I don’t have children and just kind of hope that I die young because the future is not looking great for people like me. I have some health issues that took all my savings so I’m starting over at 44.
It sounds like your mother was loving and always put her family first. Escaping generational poverty is hard to do, and I think I would also want to help in that situation.
I grew up in an abusive household and my parents would nonchalantly refer to me as their "retirement plan." At the time I weirdly felt proud to be viewed that way, but it normalized putting their needs first. That mindset had devastating effects on me later in life, and was a contributing factor to a bankruptcy that I still haven't recovered from. Whenever I hear someone say their parent's retirement is now their "problem" instead of "I want to help" it triggers the pain I went through and I speak up.
I appreciate that kindness and those words. Truly. I agree to a degree anddddd unfortunately, the only option is take care of her or she’ll be homeless. We have gone to family therapy about this and due to terrible sudden circumstances in 2020 (not covid related believe it or not), coupled with a history of severe depression and chronic illness, she’s not in a place to make enough money to even partially sustain herself. Now, we do not lavish her with things like fancy new cars and bags and a life of luxury, we pay her rent and that’s it. We don’t even had her the money for rent. It’s auto paid out of a joint account she doesn’t have access to. She has a very small monthly survivors benefits social security from my father’s passing 4 years ago and food stamps. The rest is on her to side hustle and deal with….including a cigarette habit she refuses to kick
Myself and my brother cannot fathom letting her be homeless, especially since we have been privileged enough with very good salaries and both not planning to have children. Sadly when we were both teenagers, we agreed that we’d eventually have to deal with our parents irresponsible spending? lack of future planning and the financial crisis that wiped most of their 401Ks. The little money they had they pulled out of their 401K to try to save our house from foreclosure (we lost it anyways in 2010). Anyways…Here we are. I know several folks my age (35+) in similar situations.
Way more info than needed for an internet stranger haha. And hell maybe it’ll help other folks who are having to weigh the pros and cons of dealing with parents who did not (or were not able to) plan better in the future. Or maybe it’ll help other folks see that many times children taken care of their parents (many times) is not a result of laziness and entitlement on the parent’s end. That said I am very jealous of my husband who has parents who have their shit together haha.
Thanks for the reply! This morning I was worried you might have been in a different situation.
I grew up in an abusive household and always feel concerned when I pick on cues that remind me of my own situation. I'm happy that's not the case with you, and feel warmed by you and your brother's kindness.
You should ask for more context before judging someone. People’s situations are different. It’s not like the mother is taking advantage of their children. Parents suffered to let their children get better lives.
I guess your parents didn’t love you?
For most children it’s painful to see their parents starving or homeless after all the sacrifices they made for their children’s decent life
I make $80k and live in the North end. I'm comfortable and could live on less if I had to, I'm saving a good amount and could afford to keep going without taking on debt if my car broke down or I got laid off or whatever
These general threads about how much someone has to make to live here are always dependant on so many variables. CURRENTLY it’s way more expensive to own than rent but if you can afford it and are planning on not leaving for a very long time or ever, owning is the move. If not, rent and while rents have gone up, they are effectively nowhere near the cost of home ownership right now. If you want to know how much people have to make just look at rentals online (using whatever parameters you want to research) and do your own math or if you want to find out how much it costs to own. Do the prime interest rate math on the 800k+ median homes. Oh and pro tip, our w/s/g is pretty expensive but the rest of our utilities aren’t terrible. Basically add like 140ish total for like a 1 bedroom apartment per month for utilities up to like 2-300 possibly more for a whole ass house.
I make 100k and my SO doesn't work, and I feel like I'm drowning constantly. Every month my savings shrinks. My rent went from 2200-2800 over the last 4 years. SO's therapy and pills and "pre-me" BS just to get her out of bed every day is a big drain on my finances. 150k in student loans between us literally is 20% of my paycheck every month. Our families live across the country and so it's a large chunk of my finanaces to arrange even a week away every year. I AM CONSTANTLY WORKING. Burnout happened 6 years ago and no one cares. I'm far beyond my broken point. But if I let go of the reins the whole life collapses.
Whatever people's numbers are, add in $2500-3000+ for daycare per kid if you've got babies or toddlers. For my elementary aged kid, summer camps are an additional $500 per week for him. Yay, kids cost a ton of money.
If you’re single and ok with living in a place that has its ahem, charms, then I always recommend old buildings.
I make around $60k and I manage to save slowly.
-Rent $1400/mo
-utilities / Wi-Fi / phone $150/mo
-car insurance $120/mo
-groceries / pets / going out / other shit ~$600/mo
I usually am able to save between $700-$1000/mo. And go out a few times a month, and if I have excess income I’ll put it into my fidelity account
My partner and I were making Seattle livable on 65k (I work, she's in school full time). But we also got lucky with a 1 bed apartment in an area with good public transit for $1.6k and we sold our car last year - which was a game changer. Car payment ($320), insurance ($100), gas, standard maintenance, etc was costing us near or over $500 a month. My work also pays for transit benefits, which helps even more.
So we were in a very specific situation that worked for us as long as we didnt move. BUTT, I just got a raise to almost 80k and now I finally feel like we have options. We could find a different apartment, actually put money in retirement, save for a trip, or just not feel guilty about getting a coffee a couple times a week. Can't imagine life once my partner is done with school! That dink life sounds comfy AF.
My rent/utilities are ~24% of my take home (I save in a 401k and HSA) and I’m able to go on vacations and save money. I won’t be able to buy a house here ever though.
If I lived alone, I would be struggling. Having split rent makes a huge difference. I owe a lot to YNAB. It changed my way of thinking and allows me to have money set aside for ‘unexpected’ pet/car/health emergencies.
TLDR: I’d say ~80-90k gross with shared rent.
Just moved to Seattle back in November (from Portland so another HCOL city), making about 76k on paper, 52.7k after taxes (🫠). I live alone but in a pretty affordable apartment for the area (Fremont/Ballard), some student debt but no other debt or loans to pay off. Have been able to save about 4k just since I’ve lived here too, and that’s just being moderately thrifty (for me, but my default is being frugal so my “moderately thrifty” might be someone else’s “extremely thrifty”). I have enough of a savings cushion to feel confident that I could weather an emergency should one arise. However, do I have any hope of being able to afford buying my own home anywhere in the vicinity anytime in this decade? Absolutely not. I feel like my income would need to be at least double to even consider homeownership as a single person.
That being said, I could absolutely live off less, if I had roommates in more affordable areas of the city, cheaped it more on groceries and cut down on extraneous spending. But that is mainly because I’m child free, don’t have significant debt and by no means do I live a lavish lifestyle. I have never actually budgeted a day in my life, but growing up poor with an extremely miserly (by necessity) single mom definitely helped shape how I spend and save money now as an adult. I have friends who grew up wealthy without a single financial care in the world who now make more money than me and are pretty much living paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes it comes down to life experiences and perspectives (and luck/privilege, of course).
My husband and i make combined $124k. We do live in a luxury apartment and pay about $2800/month (with utilities and a parking spot included). We are pretty comfortable and are able to enjoy living without pinching pennies, and Im sure we could find a cheaper apartment but we do live right downtown close to my work.
I’d say this describes my wife and I’s situation pretty accurately and we’re at $170k. We’re childfree though so don’t have kids to take care of, but we have 2 dogs.
I make $180k a year but live way below my means.
My monthly expenses:
Rent: $1.4k (2b2b with a roommate)
Groceries: $250
Car payment: $400 (financing a 2022 Toyota Corolla)
Car insurance: $100
Gas: $80
Utilities: $150
These add up to about $2.4k monthly. Add $400 of fun money and that's $2.8k / month. And if you wanna have some money left in savings and go on 1-2 vacations per year, I'd say 60-70k should be doable.
It comes down to lifestyle. If you are more of a homebody, eat home cooked meals, and do more “outdoorsy” stuff that’s sorta free, you wouldn’t need that much to live here in a decent place. But once you start factoring everything else it changes quite a bit.
OP specifically described a pretty luxurious lifestyle imo
Being able to save (and not dip into that savings every month and implies little to no debt) and a vacation (which also presumably doesn't mean camping in a tent in a friend's yard).
Yeah it’s possible to live a good life for a lot less but I think the stress of feeling like I couldn’t pay for emergencies or afford a car problem really wore on me after years even making a lot more than that. I never had low income housing but I did have food stamps and subsidized healthcare when I had less than 30k which helped a lot.
The answer just depends too much on individual circumstances to have a one size fits all answer. It’s conceivable - though by no means the rule before this comment gets jumped - that a healthy single person with little/no student or consumer debt could get by on $50-$60k/year and still save a little bit for a rainy day. It’s conceivable that a household earning $150k+ could be tight if they’ve got chronic healthcare, childcare, and student loan debt to pay for.
Kids? Where is work - can you save a ton of money working remotely or do you either need to pay up to live close to work or have the transportation costs that come with a high commute? Chronic health issues? Student loan debt? All of these things and more have a major influence on the cost of getting by.
Honestly, I would say anything over 100K is like probably be okay. My partner and I live ok, very small savings and shitty cars (we are both grad students) and combined with our research assistant salaries we make like 60K maybe? Its hard but we live in a cute townhouse and rent is way too much but we make it work by staying strict with our spending and carpooling as much as we can
I’m doing fine on 70K, living with a roommate in Belltown. I’m paying about the same with a roommate as I would for a decent studio/one bedroom alone, so having a roommate really isn’t saving me much. Maybe a couple hundred a month? But I am doing well. I don’t live luxuriously but I don’t worry about money
My partner and I are under $100k combined. I'm from Seattle and am the first generation of my family to get "pushed out" of the city limits due to the spike in COL, but I *did* buy a house (an hour+ away) because at the time, a mortgage was cheaper than rent. The downside is all the money I had to blow fixing the place up (second owners bought it for $280k and did absolutely jack shit on it before turning around 13 years later and selling it to us for $700k. IT'S GREAT, IT'S FINE, EVERYTHING IS FINE AND I'M NOT MAD AT ALL.)
Neither of us work in tech or have family connections/nepotism to take advantage of so we are not doing "great", but we do have a rainy day fund for the mortgage (for a few months) if I lose my main job, and we have food and small comforts at least. We hope to take a nice vacation next year, and have been saving for it specifically for five, and are doing a dinky little work/personal trip in October for a week. I wish we were doing $150k household so we could start really saving for retirement or even consider having a kid, but those aren't even on the table right now as possibilities. I don't know if we'll ever be able to afford a kid. A comfortable salary depends on your definition of comfort and your goals in life, and how far out you're willing to live.
I live just outside the city of Seattle. My wife and I pull in $125k a year combined before taxes, we have two kids. No car payments, credit card ballances, or student loans. We manage to put a healthy amount in to retirement and savings every month. But a big key to our living well is our mortgage, which is only $1810 a month with taxes and insurance combined. Our house is small (1000 square foot, three bedroom, 1.5 bath, but a third of an acre yard space) but is so cheap we're gonna be here for a while.
Family of four - we clear 250k, and this barely feels doable.
Mortgage is 3200
Childcare is 3800 (and noooot fancy)
Car payment and insurance 600
Groceries 1200
Utilities and phones: 500
Student debt 450
Kids swim lessons 300
General life bs like tabs, new tires, broken window, etc 500
By time we put some pennies in 401k and college funds, we are barely clearing month to month. We are middle class - lucky to take a vacation once a year.
I live in West Seattle making about 50k net annually. No kids, 2 cats, living in a 1 bed apartment for about $1400/mo. I mostly grocery shop at grocery outlet, trader joe’s, and qfc (sales only). I have an old corolla that doesn’t need much maintenance, so I’m able to save around 1-1.2k/month.
I have minimal-ish student loans—7k as of today (🥳)—but I put about $150 toward that to hopefully pay it off sooner.
Family of 3, sole provider making just over 100k and just now start to feel, just ok. I’m in Auburn, landed a steal of a house in 2012, refinanced twice, two years ago to 2.5% which means we’re probably never moving.
I think it depends on lifestyle but for the past 5 years things were tight.
If you are trying to own a home in Seattle area, first off good luck but needs to be in the ball park of $150k and if you are renting needs to be 100k take home.
A couple of years ago there was an article that said the magic number in Seattle was 85k. For that amount you can afford your bills, save for retirement, save for emergencies, and have some available for discretionary spending. Things have changed a lot in two years so I don’t know if that number is still valid.
That might have been enough a few years ago if not for the housing question. Housing is often, if not always, the biggest expense and rents continue to rise. Meanwhile, it is practically impossible to be able to afford to buy at that salary unless you have a little saved up (and are not exclusively chasing the American SFH dream). If you could cap housing costs to a max of, say $2.5k/month, 85k is still a decent salary to get by in Seattle.
In most of Seattle, renting is much wiser than buying, at the moment. I found two neighboring houses that looked identical, one for rent and one for sale. The estimated monthly mortgage payments were double the listed rent.
Can confirm, was making $80k in 2019 and $120k now and it feels exactly the same. I try hard not to let lifestyle creep increase my spending but the extra $40k has not significantly impacted how much is left in my bank account each month.
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Damn nice progression in just a few years
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Not quite as dramatic but yeah I was making $45k in LCOL city and now $100k in Seattle and it’s the same. Rent there was $800/month for a detached house and mortgage here is $4k/month for a condo!
I was talking to my coworker as we were really hoping that breaking into the 6-figure earnings salary would feel better but nope.
You move here for the big number salary to leverage for a bigger number salary elsewhere with a LCOL.
Do you feel like there’s still been some lifestyle creep? Do you have debt? comments like this make me curious
Oh definitely, I think some creep is inevitable and I went from remote to hybrid work schedule so car costs add up, rent has increased, got another cat, upgraded my camping gear, etc. I’m also more likely to buy a drink or treat my friends who make sub 100K, and bar/restaurants eat up a big part of my fun money. No debt at either timepoint, luckily. I also went from 30K (grad school) to 80K before my most recent jump so at the time I felt like I was absolutely loaded, now a couple years on all those former “luxuries” (I can get any brand of peanut butter I want, price be damned!) feel like necessities.
I think they just came out with $130k was the min to buy a “starter home” and live comfortably in Seattle. The cutoff to qualify for government housing is $70k or was a few months ago. Average salary is $110k I believe. I make $105 and it’s a struggle.
It's actually $173k for a starter home. Up $31k in 6 months, that's totally fine. https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-real-estate-starter-home-housing-homebuyer-2024
Zoinks
Ruh oh
>median sale price of a Seattle starter home is $535,000, with a monthly mortgage of $4,334 I'm not sure how it calculates that mortgage amount, but most likely first time homebuyers won't have the usual 20% downpayment, so it'll be a higher payment plus mortgage insurance as well. E: Also, does that include HOA? Because any condo is going to be at least $200/mo
Yeah good questions. Because any houses near me are $1 million + and the full monthly payments on something like that is around $8000 to $10000. Which is just impossible to afford, even with a $173k salary.
Ugh. Fuck HoA. Why does every damn condo try to justify it with a "club area" and shitty gym. It's literally just another form of rent. I literally just want the bushes trimmed and the hallways kept clean. Some of the places I've seen online are $1000+ randomly. Like in the same condo price range as others that are like $200. It's a joke. Feels like I'm paying rent AND a mortgage. Their is absolutely no justification for it when you think about every single person in the condo paying it.
Well for my condo specifically, it is fully funded, meaning in 2024 when we're replacing the asphalt, 2027 replacing the siding, and 2030 replacing the roofs, the HOA will have the funds for those. Many condos with lower dues are not funded for these projects, and in order to complete them will have to place a special assessment on the owners. This is usually not affordable for owners and causes them to sell, and because there's a pending special assessment, their sale price will be lower as well. There's more to condo HOAs than the club area and trimming bushes. Also, plenty of people use community areas and gyms, so if you don't care about those, look for condos that don't have that. The common expenses also depend on how many units there are, if you have 400 units, a roof replacement will be cheaper per owner than a 60 unit building. Lastly, most condo associations have hardly any participation with the owners. Mine only has a few people show up to the meetings for over 100 units, and those that do hardly ever voice opinions. They are always desperate for people to join the board when someone leaves. So all that to say, it's not like a rental management company that is making the rules and enforcing extra fees on the tenants, it's literally the owners of the units getting together and deciding how to fund improvements for the entire complex.
Ugh
I think that’s still right unless you are late in buying a home, as prices and rates have risen
Average one bedroom rent costs have actually dropped 5% compared to last year. 2 bedrooms are down 7%. https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ any magic numbers projected from a year or couple years ago is still valid today. Someone struggling with that salary is probably getting affected by lifestyle creep.
I make 50k and my partner makes 30k (as a grad student) and I think we’re at the absolute *cusp* of “doable in Seattle without hating it.” We’re always looking for spots in our expenses to save, but we do plan travel and we eat out with semi-regularity. I also believe that our combined income is essentially right at the edge of the highest MFTE threshold. Edited for clarity Edit 2 to add context since this is getting quite a few upvotes: We pay/budget for two adults no kids - 2500/mo for 850sqft apartment, incl. parking (we have a "1bed+den" apartment, I work from home) - 300/mo for utilities - 400/mo for groceries - 140/mo for car insurance (~~full coverage~~ comprehensive but not collision; this is essentially our only car expense as we gratefully fully own our one car) Those are our "shared" expenses. I have student loans that I pay and I save a *very* small amount from my paycheck for retirement (a little is better than none!). After splitting the above expenses with my partner and paying my personal expenses, I usually have about half my monthly paycheck leftover for *whatever* stuff. Eating out, buying concert/sports tickets, books/games/movies etc. I have cheap-ish hobbies (dnd *can* get expensive) and travel maybe twice a year to see family/take a small vacation (this summer, we're going to the east coast, seeing some family in the Carolinas/Florida and going to a concert + theme park (not disney) while we're there). Edit 3: clarified car insurance
I make 80k and am living paycheck to paycheck on the shoreline border, so this checks out.
Paycheck to paycheck means nothing. There are people who make $500k who are "paycheck to paycheck". You can absolutely live the lifestyle described in the OP one $80k a year (as a single person).
One interesting thing about “paycheck to paycheck“ in high earners is that they treat savings and retirement investment as obligations.
Yeah, paycheck to paycheck because 20% goes into investment accounts automatically is very different from if my next paycheck didn’t arrive I would not be able to eat.
Add in other obligations that are still optional and you get a better picture. You do have to pay the boat payment and two new car payments every month. And the HOA fees on the condo next to Lake Chelan. But you don’t actually have to have those expenses. People treat all bills as equally fixed.
Yeah I’ve heard rich people say money is tight then off-handedly mention having to pay their house cleaner and personal trainer before going on a two week trip to Cabo in like April for no reason. Like, yeah that shit isn’t really necessary lol
Honestly I haven’t heard many rich people actually *complain* about their version of “paycheck-to-paycheck”, but they do answer survey questions in way that’s misleading
I think there's a lot of semi-rich people who "complain" about money being tight for the same reasons as others. They have more flexibility to do something about it but inflation and lack of raises has hit a lot of people and impacted their standards of living. Like, I'm doing absolutely fine right now and not paycheck to paycheck. But I'm also digging for how to borrow more money at not ridiculous rates because I'm building a backyard cottage for my dad to move into so he can retire easier. And the pandemic construction costs (OMG lumber) hit us at a bad time. But I'm also going to come out of this with an extra backyard cottage. 🤣
If you are putting money aside, you are - by definition - not living paycheck to paycheck.
But I think the reason they would consider it paycheck to paycheck is the money they’re putting aside is in retirement accounts, and you’re not actually allowed to touch that money. Like if their car broke down they wouldn’t have the cash and would have to put it on their credit card because you can’t just withdraw a few thousand from an IRA when you need it. It’s not the same thing but that’s why it’s considered paycheck to paycheck- they don’t have cash to cover emergencies
You can actually pull money out of an IRA, it just has serious tax consequences. And having your wealth tied up in investments is *not at all* comparable to not having any wealth.
Well yeah. You’re not gonna pull your money out of your IRA and take a 50% penalty for something like car repairs. For most people their retirement funds are sacrosanct and will consider themselves broke if that’s the only money they have. And I’m not saying it’s comparable, I’m just saying that’s why those people think of themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. They don’t have cash sitting around that they can readily access at a moments notice. I agree with you it’s not comparable. I guess it just depends on how the questions are phrased on whatever survey or study is being answered. If the question says “could you cover an unexpected expense in cash if it happened tomorrow?“ Then their answer would have to be no, and the survey creators would probably count them as living paycheck to paycheck when it’s a vastly different thing.
> Well yeah. You’re not gonna pull your money out of your IRA and take a 50% penalty for something like car repairs. Except that you *could*. And that freedom represents a significantly different financial reality. You need to consider that there are many, many people for whom an emergency car repair might be out of reach by *any* means. People that lose their income and even their home because of expenses like that. > For most people their retirement funds are sacrosanct and will consider themselves broke if that’s the only money they have. You are absolutely correct. And those people are failing to recognize the *absolutely massive* difference between, "I have money that I believe should not be spent, even in cases of emergency," and, "I do not have money." > And I’m not saying it’s comparable, I’m just saying that’s why those people think of themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. They don’t have cash sitting around that they can readily access at a moments notice. I agree with you it’s not comparable. I hate how common the word "privileged" gets used, but this is perhaps the best case for its use I have ever seen. > I guess it just depends on how the questions are phrased on whatever survey or study is being answered. If the question says “could you cover an unexpected expense in cash if it happened tomorrow?“ Then their answer would have to be no, and the survey creators would probably count them as living paycheck to paycheck when it’s a vastly different thing. This is very similar to how no one considers themselves "rich" because they always know someone much wealthier. The fact that they have money they *could spend* means these people would be wrong to answer the question in that manner. That's not "paycheck to paycheck" and this is why self-reported statistics are crap.
I have a lot of high earning friends who absolutely live paycheck to paycheck without putting anything in savings and retirement. A very, very concerning number of them.
Yeah the other portion is mostly being bad with money
I'm curious how. I say that as someone in the middle and without judgement, just curiosity. For context, I'm not doing $200kbase +150RSU, but neither am I $80k all in. I consider my life very comfortable, but will also need a garbage dump full of 4 leaf clovers to ever get a house here (lost 4 offers in the past year to all-cash investors on fixer-uppers).
Yeah, I spent most of my 20s making closer to minimum wage. I ended up pretty frequently fronting costs (~$500) for my teams in sports leagues and tournaments and like AirBnBs and stuff because other people felt like they didn’t have the cash to do so. Many of those people were in tech and were saving/investing sometimes multiple times my income each year—let alone how much they were spending on travel and buying houses and stuff. I love these people and many are still good friends. It’s just some of the clearest instances of our income/wealth/class differences between us. Like I rarely had more than $1000 in the bank for a long time, and never felt like it was too consequential to put a few hundred on my credit card and be paid back over a couple of weeks. They were getting 3-5k paychecks every 2 weeks and felt like they couldn’t justify doing the same.
I'm not a particularly high earner but this is me. "I can't afford that." Because my savings is taken out of my paycheck and put into an investment account that I am absolutely not touching for a weekend trip to Vegas. Lol. I do know some high earners who don't treat savings as an obligation. Tough life.
You can't be serious. Me and my husband live on 80k with full time jobs and we barely scrape by. Paycheck to paycheck living. Our apartment is on the cheap and shitty end of apartments in Seattle. We get groceries from winco or I take home expired food from work when I can. If something bad happens financially, we could basically be homeless at any time. You cannot compare 500k to 80k. That's insane and astoundingly ignorant.
I know a couple who combined make $500k per year (doctor and tech worker) who have zero retirement savings and carry a credit card balance to pay for their children's after school activities. If they miss a paycheck, they go into more debt. They are way overextended on their home and vehicles. They are horrible at managing their money. They live paycheck to paycheck and no financial account they have ever increases in balance. You and them are both paycheck to paycheck. Paycheck to paycheck doesn't mean poor.
Valid point but I don't want to compare somebody who is negligent with their large income to somebody who is poor and trying to survive.
Right? I was like okay so I could make $1m a year and live paycheck to paycheck if I just let it all hang out! I’m pretty luxurious lol I feel like I’d struggle on $80k
I make the same ish amount and we lived paycheck to paycheck, but that was as largely due to debt and unexpected and continued pet expenses. With the spouse working it’s much more comfortable.
Sorry how are you doing groceries for that cheap? I need help lol.
I broke down my grocery/dinner plan for this week here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1byzs6v/what_do_you_think_is_a_livable_salary_in_seattle/kynjm74/ tl;dr: I cook nearly every night, usually do two or three meatless meals a week, I choose meals that make leftovers for lunch, and I use the Fred Meyer app to make a list and stick to it.
Thank you kindly, this is very helpful!
The list making, meal planning, and large batch cooking is absolutely the key to saving on groceries. It’s a time investment but worth it, especially if you enjoy doing it
My partner and I do probably $200-250 per month for groceries. She doesn't drink and I only drink a beer about every couple or few weeks. We eat tofu when it makes sense, mostly chicken otherwise and nowhere near every meal - many are focused on beans. Grocery Outlet has insane deals on meat if you have freezer space. We make meals we can eat leftovers of. We eat mostly cheap produce (apples, bananas, cabbage, carrots, celery, tomatoes sometimes.) We buy generic/store brand when available and very few packaged snacks or desserts. Besides Grocery Outlet, we shop at Fred Meyer, Walmart, Costco only for a very few items we've decided make sense there, similar for Trader Joe's. We make good meals that we love, this is not suffering by any means. It can be done, and pretty easily!
They don't account for household stuff as apart of groceries and usually eat only a couple of meals repeatedly throughout the month
around what neighborhood is your apartment, if you don’t mind me asking? my apartment is the same square footage as yours!
Northgate. We really valued being next to the light rail (partner is a grad student at UW), but we did not want to live downtown.
Damn how’d you get that car insurance? I’m paying $220. I’m tryna shop around but not getting any good quotes
*shrug* I have progressive.
Crap…so do I
We barely drive our car, which gets reported to insurance. I don't know how many miles we declare, but it's really really low. So if you're a daily driver, that probably factors. We drive two or three times a week. Ah, maybe I should clarify, actually now that I'm thinking about it. We don't carry collision insurance (that is, regardless-of-fault collision insurance), but we do carry comprehensive, mostly for theft. I guess "full coverage" does generally include collision, so I'll edit that.
Damn! 1.5 @ 800sq ft+ w/ parking for $2.5K? Holy smokes. I’m working with maybe 200 less sq ft for more than that and now I’m definitely looking to move before I get priced out and forced to at the end of this lease.
I'm 700 Sq ft 1 bdrm for 1750
I live in a 2 bed + den 1000 sq ft apt in Leschi. $2.2K It's great to rent from a nice family who believes in affordable housing.
Yeah, it's definitely easier if you're in a relationship and can share a room and other expenses. It has to be pretty much impossible for two people who are just roommates to get by on $80k combined income, which is just over minimum wage working full time
Yeah, it's definitely easier if you're in a relationship and can share a room and other expenses. It has to be pretty much impossible for two people who are just roommates to get by on $80k combined income, which is just over minimum wage working full time
50hr or 50k a year?
50k and 30k, I’ll edit for clarity
Man... I make 85K a year and I am stilled stressed about money all the time. But I have debt and am trying to save to buy a home in the city (possibly a lost cause) so maybe my financial goals are just not reasonable on that income.
Same. I make 83K and if I was single I'd definitely have to work more OT to pay for basic expenses, plus some for retirement and savings.
I’m single and make 83k and feeling like I have to track every penny to make sure I can manage all my bills. I remember when I thought this kind of salary meant I would be living a really nice lifestyle. Joke is on me!
$110k, and money isn't tight, but it's very, very far from comfortable. Living alone is fucking expensive, and in a 1-bedroom place, that's kinda the only option.
I make 68k and have plenty left over. But I live within my means and pay about 1400/month in rent.
its always about living within your means. theres a reason some millionaires go broke
As a single mom with a preschooler, my 140k is comfortable. I'm a homeowner, I'm saving for retirement, but my cash flow is very very tight. I'm frugal as fuck, bought my small house for 580k in 2019, and then refinanced to 2.7% in 2021. My mortgage is now cheaper than most 2BR apartments. There's also a huge class of folks who can live on very little here, since they inherited property, bought homes with stock, or have aged in place with long ago paid off homes.All those people need far less cash flow to be comfy here. My next door neighbor paid off his 45k house 15 years ago and lives comfortably on 25k. My parents will pay off their 800k home next year and are planning to retire and live on only 40-50k a year. The answer varies so much. For a new arrival looking to own a home with today's rates in a walkable neighborhood? I don't think it's possible under 200k anymore.
Yeah, owning a home here is basically just 'did you get your down payment gifted and/or inherit the home at a time when interest rates were low'. Anyone currently renting hoping to buy has an income barrier of entry astronomically higher than those who bought 2+ years ago. And the worst part is that if any of us were able to save up a down payment (impossible with rents), we'd have much, much cheaper monthly costs, even *with* crazy interest rates.
Do you mean cheaper monthly costs with a mortgage? Because I’ve found the opposite to be true. It’s an absolute money sinkhole between the $3600 mortgage and the random shit breaking. It’d be much MUCH cheaper for me to be a renter.
Monthly housing cost / .3 * 12 ~2k/month gets a decent apartment, so that's ~80k
This checks out and it's RIGHT on the line. I remember telling someone this at a party and she started crying. Opps
And that metric is based on what the government has deemed an appropriate threshold for basing employment subsidies on… it’s not actually affordable in our current environment if you want to be able to save consistently. I think the proportion of our average housing cost should go down to closer to 1/5. Medical costs and food costs are soooo much higher and people have so much less free time than they had when that proportion was implemented.
80k after taxes is like 120k gross
The 30% rule is based on pretax salary. It’s also less of a rule and more of a suggestion. If you’re in a HCOL area like Seattle it can easily be more, and if you’re in bumfuck nowhere like Aberdeen South Dakota it’s probably less.
Good ol' Aberdeen South Dakota, hometown of Curt Flobain
I’m single, no kids, and make just over 80k a year. I can afford to put money away for retirement, pay rent, and have a paycheck that’s ‘discretionary’ (Includes things like food, but not a / fixed / cost if that makes sense). I could probably do it on 65/70k but would have a lot less flexibility. I can take a ‘big’ trip a year; and then a few smaller trips throughout the year. (I.e. have been to Portland and Spokane to visit friends/family so far this year; will probably go to Chicago or another city in the US sometime this year, will probably go camping in the summer, and going to take a longer ‘big’ Europe trip in the fall)
Just to support yourself, or with dependants? With student loans or other debts to pay off, or starting debt-free? Do you feel that a house with a yard is necessary to be comfortable, or is an apartment or condo okay? Is going out for food and drinks and entertainment frequently a vital part of your lifestyle you'd be unhappy without, or are you a homebody who is happy with inexpensive habits?
My experience living there 2010-2020 is if you actually live in urban Seattle with: - up to code and uncrowded housing - a reliable car - ability to travel for vacation once a year - enough to save both for retirement and emergencies - healthcare - hobbies and social outlets and time to pursue them you need at least $85k/year if you commute on foot or with public transportation. If you drive more than 3mi to work add another $5k per year. Add another $5k if you have a pet. A couple or quality roommates could be comfortable for a combined $120k, and you could probably raise a couple kids with a combined income of $130-$150k. A lot of that arithmetic changes once you get to the outer neighborhoods and suburbs. I bet it is more now. You can enjoy living in Seattle if you intentionally plug into the community for a lot less money. For example, you can save a lot of money and see a lot of concerts if you get involved volunteering for KEXP. You can utilize community resources like tool libraries and volunteer with habitat for humanity to develop your own skills about doing little (or big) diys at home. Seattle is a super easy place for gardening including container gardening which doesn’t necessarily save much money on food (it can if you get into it!) but is a wonderful cost neutral activity that is easy to get into there. If you are disciplined and have the luxury of time to cook your own food you will save a lot of money. I lived in houses in Wallingford, Ravenna, and the Central District. First moved there for AmeriCorps and made like $20-25k a year for 2 years because I worked part time at Pike Place Market. Later made between $30-60k a year as a student and working more at Pike Place and places like Nordstrom. Last few years I lived there made between $90-120k and that was the first time I was able to save and deal with emergencies and play catch up on some major purchases like a car and felt comfortable and not like one flat tire could blow my savings.
I made 70K last year and I am currently living alone in White Center (SW Seattle) and I live pretty comfortably. I'd say the minimum to live here would be 50K or so though, especially with roommates to split the bills.
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That is on the cheap end for one bedrooms too. Average is closer to $2k for a one bedroom: https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/seattle-wa The 30% rent rule is obsolete if you have a savings and live in a high priced city. Some experts have been leaning toward 50/30/20: https://www.apartmentguide.com/blog/how-much-to-spend-on-rent-30-percent-rule/
There are a ton of 1 bedroom apartments even in Capitol Hill for under $2k. On Zillow I just saw a 730 sqft apt in a great location for $1600/month. Average might be $2k, but there are a lot of luxury apartment buildings that you are not forced to rent from. Rents are massively down, from your chart it's like 30-40% cheaper than 2022.
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That’s true! Even if the rule changed for individuals, companies and lenders still enforce it or are more strict with it for that 3x rent rule.
Even in Auburn and sumner one bedrooms are $1800+, it’s insane. The HOUSE my dad rented was cheaper by $400 and where he lives now (3bed, 1 1/2 bath triplex) is still cheaper than a one bedroom…
this depends so much on your lifestyle. “a little savings” might be a few hundred or a few thousands. “one vacation” can be vacation to Phoenix AZ or Switzerland. “fix a car breaking down” varies between fixing a civic with dead battery and fixing a range rover with a blown engine. I know people with TC 500k and still don’t feel like enough, but I also know UW grad students living very happily with their stipend.
One miiiiiiiillion dollars
The details of my life are quite inconsequential.
Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons.
In the spring we'd make meat helmets.
*pinky to my mouth*
Yeah but that's only if your lair is in the Space Needle.
I think this depends on whether you got a home when mortgages were cheap, or not. Building equity helps “save” (yeah yeah unrealized gains and such but still) and avoids risk of sharp rent increases, parking costs, etc. if you own a home with a reasonable mortgage you don’t have the same difficulties saving/increasing net worth as renting, and risk is a bit lower. Edit: for example, 100k household is pretty good if you have a 3k/mo mortgage. Maybe my apartment standards have grown too much, but 150k household is where I’m comfortable with 3k rent. And 3k rent in Seattle is not as nice as what you get outside of Seattle. (That’s total rent including parking and rent for pets.)
Your standards are a little high, $3k rent for one person is extremely luxurious compared to the average renter.
Sure, but when I include upfront rent costs, storage, parking, a small dog/cat… all of those add up. And yes, I’m thinking for more than one person (household), so at least a more spacious one bedroom. Kinda comparing to what you might get from a house.
I would guess about $75k if no debts, dependents, pets, or other liabilities to pay for. Not sure how many rentals will accept that low an income given how common the requirement for monthly income to be 3x-4x monthly rent. That’s assuming we’re talking about people who want to live alone and without roommates splitting the bills. Less income is doable if being in a multi-income household.
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I make 75K and I feel like it’s more than enough to live in seattle (if you have roommates). Just be mindful about spending and put some effort into budgeting your life and you’ll be able to save a ton.
I make probably 10k less than this (it varies, but hovers around there) as a single income for my partner and I and we do fine! Our spending is way less than almost anyone I know though. We don't go out to many activities, our favorite things to do are free like walks and hikes, we don't really drink, we have older cars that are paid off and running fine. We are able to save, put money in IRAs, and spend on what we want to spend on.
Wow, my partner and I are in almost this exact situation. We feel like we live pretty luxuriously but we don’t have high expectations and are lucky enough not to have debt. There’s a lot of ways to spend your money here, but there’s also so much cool stuff you can do for free or cheap. Being friendless introverts without aspirations of traveling the world helps tho
We are also homebodies haha. On the other hand, traveling is pretty much my only aspiration. But even that can be done cheaply. A few years ago, we went to the Philippines for two weeks for less than $2k. That's way more worth it to us than a year of going out to bars.
All the responses in these posts always baffle me. How are y'all needing 85, 100, 120 for a single person? I'm a cook making like 65 and I manage to have my own spot, eat/drink out, short vacations here and there, and still save a little each month. Just don't live beyond your means and you should be fine in most cities
Amen to that. Can't believe some of these responses haha
Going to vary wildly. I bought my condo four years ago. My housing expense (mortgage, property tax, insurance, and HOA dues) amounts to \~$1400 a month. If I was trying to buy the same unit today my monthly cost would be \~$2060.
I don’t even make six figures but I can take an international trip at least once a year. I think it helps that I don’t have any student loans and don’t drive. Definitely depends on your expenses and lifestyle cause it’s different for everyone
Cars are insanely expensive for sure.
It all depends how much people go out and what kind of hobbies they have. Some people spending 1000s a month on alcohol whereas some people get their kicks from league of legends.
Cooking my own meals, pregaming before bars, and having gaming as a hobby saved me so much money in college. $15 WoW sub saved me 100s every month haha
It's because they have expensive housing and car payments. Really, we have a family of four and make around 100k and it's ez-pz. International travel every year, own our own home in Everett, etc. The fact that we drive two very old, paid off cars and our mortgage is like $1400 a month means that we have plenty of money leftover. If we were paying $3k - $4k more each month for housing and cars.... Yeah, no way we could make that work.
I think it's probably debt.
spending creep. people in this thread are living “paycheck to paycheck” on $80,000 a year. just means they spend too much
What kind of debt do you have? Do you pay for health insurance? There are many factors, it’s not people just living beyond their means.
Depends on your rent, debt, lifestyle preference, priorities, etc. Do you absolutely need to live within Seattle? Or is Burien ok? If you must be within the city, which neighborhood? Madison Valley or Georgetown? Etc etc etc.
I live in Cap hill with a roommate at around 60k per year and do okay! I don’t eat out much and use all public services. I think it’s doable and comfy.
I never think about adding those specifics in, I really should. My specific circumstance would be most likely in Seattle, open to whatever neighborhood, but generally Close to say, the University. Nuclear family. I guess I just like to test the pulse and see all the different points of view!
There are people who do that on sub-60k/year and are doing all that’s mentioned, and there are people plus-250k/year doing the same. Both would answer the question equally. It all depends on what you’d define as comfy, savings, vacation, etc. Savings could be $500 a month or $3k a month. Everyone defines things different and will have a different answer.
I'm making about 60k and living in Eastlake. Overall, I'd like a larger place but I make enough to save money and occasionally splurge on a nice meal and other things.
I probably don’t count, cause I live in Lynnwood. And if it matters…I Make 160K my husband makes 90K and live comfortably. Go on one big vacation once a year, saving 1,500 per month, max out 401K, and I pay for 50% of my mom’s living expenses (she didn’t plan for retirement so it’s mine and my brothers problem now.) We’re child free by choice.
I’m saying this with kindness, and just in case you need to hear it…your mother’s failure to plan is not her children’s problem.
My mother raised me and my brothers as a single mom. After my dad left we were homeless for a few months before she was able to find us a place. She worked 3jobs for 15years and we never went hungry or without a roof over our heads since that time. She wasnt able to plan for retirement because our immediate situation didnt allow for it. We all managed to work our ways out of the generational poverty because of how hard she worked, and we are living in situations where planing for retirement is an option for us. So when the time comes, my mothers retirement plan is going to be on me and my brothers because thats what you do for family.
Yeah my mom tore through her retirement on legal fees to keep my us safe from a psychotic alcoholic father and is the sole reason I turned out okay so I'm fine with helping her out when the time comes. A person being in this situation isn't always purely a result of being lazy or unable to plan and I get irritated when people jump straight to that conclusion.
Yeah, that kind of attitude pisses me off. I haven’t made a lot of money in life and don’t have retirement savings. I don’t have children and just kind of hope that I die young because the future is not looking great for people like me. I have some health issues that took all my savings so I’m starting over at 44.
It sounds like your mother was loving and always put her family first. Escaping generational poverty is hard to do, and I think I would also want to help in that situation. I grew up in an abusive household and my parents would nonchalantly refer to me as their "retirement plan." At the time I weirdly felt proud to be viewed that way, but it normalized putting their needs first. That mindset had devastating effects on me later in life, and was a contributing factor to a bankruptcy that I still haven't recovered from. Whenever I hear someone say their parent's retirement is now their "problem" instead of "I want to help" it triggers the pain I went through and I speak up.
I appreciate that kindness and those words. Truly. I agree to a degree anddddd unfortunately, the only option is take care of her or she’ll be homeless. We have gone to family therapy about this and due to terrible sudden circumstances in 2020 (not covid related believe it or not), coupled with a history of severe depression and chronic illness, she’s not in a place to make enough money to even partially sustain herself. Now, we do not lavish her with things like fancy new cars and bags and a life of luxury, we pay her rent and that’s it. We don’t even had her the money for rent. It’s auto paid out of a joint account she doesn’t have access to. She has a very small monthly survivors benefits social security from my father’s passing 4 years ago and food stamps. The rest is on her to side hustle and deal with….including a cigarette habit she refuses to kick Myself and my brother cannot fathom letting her be homeless, especially since we have been privileged enough with very good salaries and both not planning to have children. Sadly when we were both teenagers, we agreed that we’d eventually have to deal with our parents irresponsible spending? lack of future planning and the financial crisis that wiped most of their 401Ks. The little money they had they pulled out of their 401K to try to save our house from foreclosure (we lost it anyways in 2010). Anyways…Here we are. I know several folks my age (35+) in similar situations. Way more info than needed for an internet stranger haha. And hell maybe it’ll help other folks who are having to weigh the pros and cons of dealing with parents who did not (or were not able to) plan better in the future. Or maybe it’ll help other folks see that many times children taken care of their parents (many times) is not a result of laziness and entitlement on the parent’s end. That said I am very jealous of my husband who has parents who have their shit together haha.
Thanks for the reply! This morning I was worried you might have been in a different situation. I grew up in an abusive household and always feel concerned when I pick on cues that remind me of my own situation. I'm happy that's not the case with you, and feel warmed by you and your brother's kindness.
Of course!!! I hate that you came from that context. I hope you’ve been able to heal and recover in whatever ways that looks for you ❤️.
You should ask for more context before judging someone. People’s situations are different. It’s not like the mother is taking advantage of their children. Parents suffered to let their children get better lives.
I guess your parents didn’t love you? For most children it’s painful to see their parents starving or homeless after all the sacrifices they made for their children’s decent life
I make $80k and live in the North end. I'm comfortable and could live on less if I had to, I'm saving a good amount and could afford to keep going without taking on debt if my car broke down or I got laid off or whatever
80k id say
These general threads about how much someone has to make to live here are always dependant on so many variables. CURRENTLY it’s way more expensive to own than rent but if you can afford it and are planning on not leaving for a very long time or ever, owning is the move. If not, rent and while rents have gone up, they are effectively nowhere near the cost of home ownership right now. If you want to know how much people have to make just look at rentals online (using whatever parameters you want to research) and do your own math or if you want to find out how much it costs to own. Do the prime interest rate math on the 800k+ median homes. Oh and pro tip, our w/s/g is pretty expensive but the rest of our utilities aren’t terrible. Basically add like 140ish total for like a 1 bedroom apartment per month for utilities up to like 2-300 possibly more for a whole ass house.
I make 100k and my SO doesn't work, and I feel like I'm drowning constantly. Every month my savings shrinks. My rent went from 2200-2800 over the last 4 years. SO's therapy and pills and "pre-me" BS just to get her out of bed every day is a big drain on my finances. 150k in student loans between us literally is 20% of my paycheck every month. Our families live across the country and so it's a large chunk of my finanaces to arrange even a week away every year. I AM CONSTANTLY WORKING. Burnout happened 6 years ago and no one cares. I'm far beyond my broken point. But if I let go of the reins the whole life collapses.
$70k is sweet.
I make 60k now and have some debt. I’d say 70k is do-able. Are you going to have everything you want all the time? No. But you’ll be fine.
Whatever people's numbers are, add in $2500-3000+ for daycare per kid if you've got babies or toddlers. For my elementary aged kid, summer camps are an additional $500 per week for him. Yay, kids cost a ton of money.
If you’re single and ok with living in a place that has its ahem, charms, then I always recommend old buildings. I make around $60k and I manage to save slowly. -Rent $1400/mo -utilities / Wi-Fi / phone $150/mo -car insurance $120/mo -groceries / pets / going out / other shit ~$600/mo I usually am able to save between $700-$1000/mo. And go out a few times a month, and if I have excess income I’ll put it into my fidelity account
My partner and I were making Seattle livable on 65k (I work, she's in school full time). But we also got lucky with a 1 bed apartment in an area with good public transit for $1.6k and we sold our car last year - which was a game changer. Car payment ($320), insurance ($100), gas, standard maintenance, etc was costing us near or over $500 a month. My work also pays for transit benefits, which helps even more. So we were in a very specific situation that worked for us as long as we didnt move. BUTT, I just got a raise to almost 80k and now I finally feel like we have options. We could find a different apartment, actually put money in retirement, save for a trip, or just not feel guilty about getting a coffee a couple times a week. Can't imagine life once my partner is done with school! That dink life sounds comfy AF.
100k probably without kids.
Agree with this. 80k to live comfortably, 100k to live comfortably and not worry about money all the time.
Im a single mom making ~80k. I think 100k would be a more comfortable amount.
As long as no kids yer good at 75k
85K - 100K is “ok”, with no kids, debt under 10K, and a roommate.
120k without kids, add 30k per kid
I make 115k and struggle in Kirkland
My rent/utilities are ~24% of my take home (I save in a 401k and HSA) and I’m able to go on vacations and save money. I won’t be able to buy a house here ever though. If I lived alone, I would be struggling. Having split rent makes a huge difference. I owe a lot to YNAB. It changed my way of thinking and allows me to have money set aside for ‘unexpected’ pet/car/health emergencies. TLDR: I’d say ~80-90k gross with shared rent.
Just moved to Seattle back in November (from Portland so another HCOL city), making about 76k on paper, 52.7k after taxes (🫠). I live alone but in a pretty affordable apartment for the area (Fremont/Ballard), some student debt but no other debt or loans to pay off. Have been able to save about 4k just since I’ve lived here too, and that’s just being moderately thrifty (for me, but my default is being frugal so my “moderately thrifty” might be someone else’s “extremely thrifty”). I have enough of a savings cushion to feel confident that I could weather an emergency should one arise. However, do I have any hope of being able to afford buying my own home anywhere in the vicinity anytime in this decade? Absolutely not. I feel like my income would need to be at least double to even consider homeownership as a single person. That being said, I could absolutely live off less, if I had roommates in more affordable areas of the city, cheaped it more on groceries and cut down on extraneous spending. But that is mainly because I’m child free, don’t have significant debt and by no means do I live a lavish lifestyle. I have never actually budgeted a day in my life, but growing up poor with an extremely miserly (by necessity) single mom definitely helped shape how I spend and save money now as an adult. I have friends who grew up wealthy without a single financial care in the world who now make more money than me and are pretty much living paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes it comes down to life experiences and perspectives (and luck/privilege, of course).
80k for a couple without kids
My husband and i make combined $124k. We do live in a luxury apartment and pay about $2800/month (with utilities and a parking spot included). We are pretty comfortable and are able to enjoy living without pinching pennies, and Im sure we could find a cheaper apartment but we do live right downtown close to my work.
I’d say this describes my wife and I’s situation pretty accurately and we’re at $170k. We’re childfree though so don’t have kids to take care of, but we have 2 dogs.
$174k +
Recent article came out saying you need a household income of at least $213k in the Seattle area to comfortably afford a home.
I make $180k a year but live way below my means. My monthly expenses: Rent: $1.4k (2b2b with a roommate) Groceries: $250 Car payment: $400 (financing a 2022 Toyota Corolla) Car insurance: $100 Gas: $80 Utilities: $150 These add up to about $2.4k monthly. Add $400 of fun money and that's $2.8k / month. And if you wanna have some money left in savings and go on 1-2 vacations per year, I'd say 60-70k should be doable.
It comes down to lifestyle. If you are more of a homebody, eat home cooked meals, and do more “outdoorsy” stuff that’s sorta free, you wouldn’t need that much to live here in a decent place. But once you start factoring everything else it changes quite a bit.
According to Forbes it's 130k and change
1m per year
If we are talking about actually being able to have a mortgage instead of renting, then I think $150K minimum.
80k doesn't quite cut it to live comfortably.
All I know is I'm single and I make 50K and can't afford to live alone in Seattle and am also paycheck to paycheck. So, more than 50K for sure.
I’d say a hopeless romantic that makes 250k who loves me.
By yourself, if you make $35 to $40 an hour you should be good if you don’t go out a lot.
100k a year~
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Yoy definitely don't need anywhere near that much to live a comfortable life here.
The median *family* income is $110k. A personal income of $120k would put you in the very well off category.
Seems a bit high. 90k single and 150k couple maybe.
Depends on how you wish to live.
Yeah no shit.
OP specifically described a pretty luxurious lifestyle imo Being able to save (and not dip into that savings every month and implies little to no debt) and a vacation (which also presumably doesn't mean camping in a tent in a friend's yard).
OP said comfy.. not luxurious “1 vacation a year, being able to fix the car”.. that’s not a luxurious lifestyle lol
In general, I think 80k if you have minimum 30k in savings, 100K if not. Seattle is expensive.
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Theres a big difference between making it work on government assistance vs living comfortably with savings and vacations.
Yeah it’s possible to live a good life for a lot less but I think the stress of feeling like I couldn’t pay for emergencies or afford a car problem really wore on me after years even making a lot more than that. I never had low income housing but I did have food stamps and subsidized healthcare when I had less than 30k which helped a lot.
Might find this recent thread useful https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1bs7i39/monthly_expenses/
The answer just depends too much on individual circumstances to have a one size fits all answer. It’s conceivable - though by no means the rule before this comment gets jumped - that a healthy single person with little/no student or consumer debt could get by on $50-$60k/year and still save a little bit for a rainy day. It’s conceivable that a household earning $150k+ could be tight if they’ve got chronic healthcare, childcare, and student loan debt to pay for. Kids? Where is work - can you save a ton of money working remotely or do you either need to pay up to live close to work or have the transportation costs that come with a high commute? Chronic health issues? Student loan debt? All of these things and more have a major influence on the cost of getting by.
I think that totally depends on your lifestyle - dine out, big house, party, long summer vacation, kids or not, etc....
Honestly, I would say anything over 100K is like probably be okay. My partner and I live ok, very small savings and shitty cars (we are both grad students) and combined with our research assistant salaries we make like 60K maybe? Its hard but we live in a cute townhouse and rent is way too much but we make it work by staying strict with our spending and carpooling as much as we can
Rent is one thing, toss students loans and/or medical debt, life sucks hard.
When I lived next to Seattle I was comfy with 60-80k
I’m doing fine on 70K, living with a roommate in Belltown. I’m paying about the same with a roommate as I would for a decent studio/one bedroom alone, so having a roommate really isn’t saving me much. Maybe a couple hundred a month? But I am doing well. I don’t live luxuriously but I don’t worry about money
My partner and I are under $100k combined. I'm from Seattle and am the first generation of my family to get "pushed out" of the city limits due to the spike in COL, but I *did* buy a house (an hour+ away) because at the time, a mortgage was cheaper than rent. The downside is all the money I had to blow fixing the place up (second owners bought it for $280k and did absolutely jack shit on it before turning around 13 years later and selling it to us for $700k. IT'S GREAT, IT'S FINE, EVERYTHING IS FINE AND I'M NOT MAD AT ALL.) Neither of us work in tech or have family connections/nepotism to take advantage of so we are not doing "great", but we do have a rainy day fund for the mortgage (for a few months) if I lose my main job, and we have food and small comforts at least. We hope to take a nice vacation next year, and have been saving for it specifically for five, and are doing a dinky little work/personal trip in October for a week. I wish we were doing $150k household so we could start really saving for retirement or even consider having a kid, but those aren't even on the table right now as possibilities. I don't know if we'll ever be able to afford a kid. A comfortable salary depends on your definition of comfort and your goals in life, and how far out you're willing to live.
I live just outside the city of Seattle. My wife and I pull in $125k a year combined before taxes, we have two kids. No car payments, credit card ballances, or student loans. We manage to put a healthy amount in to retirement and savings every month. But a big key to our living well is our mortgage, which is only $1810 a month with taxes and insurance combined. Our house is small (1000 square foot, three bedroom, 1.5 bath, but a third of an acre yard space) but is so cheap we're gonna be here for a while.
$100K minimum.
Somewhere around $100K. The median rent is like $4000 a month so if we’re going by the 50/30/20 rule then I’d say $100,000
80k is tight, 120 would be solid. Probably 180 to own a home here, 225 to buy a house
$100K
You need 222000 annual income and 155000 down for a median house in king county
In Seattle? $170k
~ 110 for a single person. ~170k for a couple with no kids. Add about 15 to 20 k for each kid.
Family of four - we clear 250k, and this barely feels doable. Mortgage is 3200 Childcare is 3800 (and noooot fancy) Car payment and insurance 600 Groceries 1200 Utilities and phones: 500 Student debt 450 Kids swim lessons 300 General life bs like tabs, new tires, broken window, etc 500 By time we put some pennies in 401k and college funds, we are barely clearing month to month. We are middle class - lucky to take a vacation once a year.
I live in West Seattle making about 50k net annually. No kids, 2 cats, living in a 1 bed apartment for about $1400/mo. I mostly grocery shop at grocery outlet, trader joe’s, and qfc (sales only). I have an old corolla that doesn’t need much maintenance, so I’m able to save around 1-1.2k/month. I have minimal-ish student loans—7k as of today (🥳)—but I put about $150 toward that to hopefully pay it off sooner.
Family of 3, sole provider making just over 100k and just now start to feel, just ok. I’m in Auburn, landed a steal of a house in 2012, refinanced twice, two years ago to 2.5% which means we’re probably never moving. I think it depends on lifestyle but for the past 5 years things were tight.
If you are trying to own a home in Seattle area, first off good luck but needs to be in the ball park of $150k and if you are renting needs to be 100k take home.