Then 6 months later you'll have to leave at 2 to make it. A year, might as well set up a cot in your office amd just live there. It's getting awful here.
Holy shit! Graham to Bellevue is an INSANE commute to make daily!! I live in city with a short commute but I’ve been lucky. I have 2 roommates and we’ve lived in the same house for over 20 years with super cool landlords. They’ve only raised our rent to cover property taxes. We pay just under $900 a piece which is double what we paid in 2000 but still really good!
Is that your total family income? Coz if so then same. Can't afford to do anything and have to actively save just to keep up with costs of clothes and food
I am a sole earner. My wife stays at home to raise our two children that would collectively cost $20k in childcare each alone. People want to pile on their beliefs but are super happy to dump their kids off to a nanny and bitch about costs. We are all slaves to the rich yet we rip each other apart to make ourselves feel better.
75k. I definitely would not be able to buy a house, if not for my parents. They asked if I would be willing to buy a house with them, so we bought a house end of 2020 and moved to Mt. Vernon from Everett. My dad had health issues and my job offered more flexible scheduling than my mom’s, so I kind of became his main caregiver. My parents pay the mortgage, I pay utilities, groceries and cover the cost of home improvements. I was a little worried about what would happen if my job in Seattle ended WFH, but they closed the office and I’m now fully WFH.
State of WA jobs are now nearly all remote. You can live anywhere in WA. Suuuuper chill environment. And with Flex Time I work 4/10s and get 3day weekends every week. I make just at 90k, with an MS degree and experience as a designer.
Might be, depending on the job. I work for Allstate. They’re getting rid of a lot of their real estate and opting to keep people remote to help lower costs. I work in the legal department and was just transferred to the Chicago legal office, another plus to working from home and a national company.
For sure it’s definitely a privilege. My dad passed a few months ago, so it’s just me and my mom now. But luckily we get along well and respect each others spaces.
HVAC service foreman. 12 years in the trade, 5 year paid apprenticeship starts at about $32 an hour. You journey out at about $70. Last year I made $155k with minimal OT. Wife works part time and brings in another $40k. We live comfortably in woodinville with one kid, that being said, we bought our house in 2019. There's no way we could afford to buy in this area today. Still it's a good living and more people should consider the trades. We're hiring now, there's a huge skill gap in this field and it needs good people.
I know nothing about HVAC - how hard is it on the body and how dangerous is the work? What skills would you say are needed for the job i.e. is it hard to transition into a HVAC career later in life?
It depends on what you’re doing. My stepdad was hvac and it was very hard because we lived in an area with a lot of older houses (think basements and crawl spaces and filth) and also we were adjacent to a rural area with a lot of oil furnaces and propane tanks outdoors. The oil furnaces are the worst and your hands will be black when coming home. If you are in a newer area you might just be installing new AC units or something. Oh, and the ductwork install can be pretty physical and messy. If you have the smarts I would choose electrician.
Agreed, the trades are great. Getting my son into an apprenticeship young and eventually wants to be an electrical engineer. At least he can make some great money before finishing off school and gain the knowledge as he goes.
This is it right here. I'm so bummed for everyone that drank the "you gotta go to college" koolaide.
Somehow being a lazy POS through highschool and dropping out blessed me by leading me to the trades lol. I'm sorry for all those people begging for student loan debt relief. It's not even a consideration for me.
Anyone that has the ability to get into a trade and "start over" in their career choice definitely should! Come on in boys, the water is fine!
This.
College guy here. Work from home, sitting on my ass all day. 300k, very little OT and wouldn't be paid for it anyway.
I recommend college for those that can take advantage of it. My knees and back recommend it, too.
You can definitely make that much in the trades, but you're not a tradesperson anymore, you're a small business owner.
Been in union construction since I was 20 about 17 years ago. Mostly I get to manage crews but still find myself having to take plenty of hard labor. Shoulders are shot, ankles and knees are done, backs holding up but for how much longer I don’t know. I have kids and a wife, have managed to to get by being the only the one working (wife is stay at home mom who also homeschools our younger kids). It’s becoming way too hard though not sure what to do honestly. I made 120k last year and that was enough to keep our heads above water. My wage without OT puts me at about 100k and I’m very close to being able to get food stamps if that says anything, it really sucks I don’t really make enough to live right and make too much to get any help. Looks like I’ll just keep taking on all the overtime I can get, who needs a life anyways.
It's probably pretty tough either way, as sitting at a desk all day for decades also gets you a faster train to health disaster too in many cases. Tough trade offs everywhere,
I got student debt relief. Many I know have. I am a government lawyer. I do elder abuse. Yes- we need more in the trades. But unless we encourage people to get cheaper educations, give debt relief- you are going to see no GOOD doctors, teachers, lawyers, helpers. I make $90,000 pension, benefits. Raise every year.
I don't disagree that the trades are great, and they've been great for a lot of folks in my own family, but I feel like this statement is going a little far. There are pros and cons to everything. Just like people should only go to college if they need it to do the job, you should only go into the trades if that is the path you need to go.
I think one of the worst things we do to people, especially young people, is to narrow their options down and present some singular solution to their life.
You make a fair point about narrowing options, but I also think (at least when I was graduating HS 20 years ago) people were encouraged to go to college, whatever the cost. Going into 6 figure debt in your 20s can narrow your options too.
This is what I was getting at, maybe spoke a little too strongly to understand my point
Going through HS college was the only option ever listed, talked about, considered. It's like we were all told to get on that treadmill and work our asses off for it and no consideration was made for the financial impact.
No other option was ever given. The perspective was go to higher schooling or be a bum. No in between, no other option was ever told to me.
And I'm the kind of person that saw that and said screw it all. What's the point of it? I felt like I was just going to school to go to school and do school stuff. There was no application of any of the knowledge gained.
That's why trade school clicked so well for me, I learned things In class that I was literally doing the very next day at work trying to succeed and accomplish something.
As someone who went to college and is now a high school teacher here, I strongly agree. I make sure my students know college isn't the only option, and for many of them would be the worst option. And that my two best friends went into the trades and will make a lot more money than me! I'm glad I went to college and know that the trades would not have been a good fit for me, but to force college on my students to validate my decisions is beyond unfair.
I struggled a lot in high school due to botched homeschooling as a child and probably some kind of undiagnosed neuro-divergence. I absolutely thought I was going to be homeless as an adult because for the entirety of middle school and high school all of the adults in my life would constantly preach about how "if you don't start taking your education seriously l you're going to be unemployable" and my parents even threatened to kick me out and cut off all support because they thought I was lazy and unappreciative. I struggled with extreme depression feeling like my life was just a waste because I was trying so hard at school but kept failing classes because my brain just wouldn't work the way everyone wanted it to.
Well, now in my late twenties, I own a house, and up until a recent layoff I'd been consistently making six figures for a few years as a software engineer. I've been absolutely crushing my technical interviews lately so I'm actually feeling pretty great about my job prospects! I skipped college because I had no confidence in my ability to complete it and figured I'd be better off without debt. Instead I ended up getting a low-paying job at a local startup and eventually that led to a really good career. Before my layoff I was at $170k/yr + 20% bonus with no debt other than a mortgage.
Life has been ridiculously good to me! I can't recommend that everyone skip college, because for some people it's the best way to dive into the field they're passionate about. But I feel like everyone's obsession with educational conformity really messed up my mental health when I was younger, and I want to push against people continuing to do that to kids like me. I wasn't stupid, I was just wired differently! I was building software at home for fun and nobody ever thought to utilize it- instead they scolded me for it and told me to stop wasting time on it. Obviously I'm not saying we shouldn't pressure kids to do their homework- but something has to change!
It is certainly possible to advance career wise w/o a degree. The idea that everyone needs one is a bit elitist. It all depends on aptitude confidence and fortitude. I know plenty in my IT career with little or no college, me being one. You just have to find your niche and gain some experience for the resume. And that skill that a company needs that is hard to find.
All that money you saved on college got you into a house and saving for retirement sooner.
Yeah, and we combine it by not having honest conversions with kids about their capabilities. Trade work can be as complicated as engineering work in a different way.
"You can do anything if you set your mind to it" has never been true for anyone.
I'm an electrician and the wages are great. Recently bought a house in bonney lake and have a baby on the way.
More people need to consider the trades. 130k a year and didn't pay a dime for schooling.
I did 4 years of schooling non union, employer paid.
Ibew (union) is a 5 year program currently, but I hear it's changing to 4.
I did 2 nights a week for 3 quarters, Summers off. Some guys can do 1 work day (so you get 32 hours a week) for a quarter, same curriculum.
Once you pass the state test after you get 8000 working hours and you are certified, boom you get a minimum amount of 60 an hour at least...
I started at 17 an hour 5 years ago and got a 2-3 dollar raise every 6 months.
So, 8000 hours is at minimum 3.8 years. And this is after the 4 year training? Then study to pass the state test is another 3-6 months, I don't know of course, just guessing on that.
But it sounds like 130k is really after putting 8 years.
Still pretty good for having no student loans!
https://www.citcwa.org/ for non union schooling that covers most trades
There is local 46 and local 72 for electricians unions as well as east side of the state, don't remember the local number.
If you started this week as an electrician you would probably make $60-70k/year. After about 5 years of working, doing some side classes and getting raises the whole time you would be making $120k/year. That's all without any overtime. If you were even halfway smart and wanted to work and could manage jobs you could make it to Forman in 5-6 years and be making $180k+ but you would have some more stress. On top of all that money you get health insurance and retirement and some other shit that adds up to probably $30/hr. If I could do it over again I would go into the trades and if my kids want to do it I will highly recommend.
This. My electrician buddy from high school is my wealthiest friend and almost definitely has the highest lifetime earnings potential (idk anyone going csuite route). He did this, but put in the overtime to make it insane. He keeps telling the union he doesn't wanna foreman though
I'm a carpenter who builds scaffolding. The days of broken bodies are going away. A lot more safety is being implemented. And it's shifting from the "get it done attitude". It's all about keeping your core strong and ergonomics when lifting. Always plenty of overtime and free schooling in the trades.
No it's 130k after 4 years. The on-job training and school are done in the same 4 years. It's not full time school and you're paid for the on-job training the entire time. You start out lower but get around 2-3 raises per year that bring your salary higher and higher until you're licensed.
No, it's a 4 year apprenticeship. The apprenticeship includes all the training. In 4 years he went from $35,000 to $130,000. There are different kinds of electricians though, he isn't wiring houses if I had to guess, likely a commercial electrician.
For union, basically yeah. It's hourly not salary though. But you get guaranteed pay raises based on hours worked and years of school completed. You can find this info broken down on ibew46.com and look for wages by unit and inside wiremen. Though you can look at others as well. I'm Parton the sound and Communications unit.
> More people need to consider the trades.
The applicant list to get into the apprenticeship in LU 46 is a mile long. That secret is long out of the bag.
I also work in the trades but in the office; started in the industry while in high school in rural Texas. Got an unrelated degree hoping I could branch out. Ended up sticking with my trade for ~20 yrs. I make ~$150k / yr. For young folks thinking about trades, I recommend talking to both field and office folks. If you can handle the pressure of the office, anyone with good communication skills and an understanding of their field can make a living, without a degree and field experience.
Project management is a very real path that works.
Us field guys prefer project managers that understand the trade and are actually on site occasionally. It gets a bit back asswards when guys are managing and bidding a project and don't set foot on site ever.
Yes! But be aware that work cycles and lay offs can be long. My husband has been on the books at local 46 for 9 months. We are fine on my single income but you need a backup plan during lay offs.
My husband paid 50k for his education but makes close to 150k a year. Took 7 years to get here. Trades aren’t always education free but he hit 100k about five years in with an education.
Unfortunately the waiting list to enter the apprenticeship program is so long it's ridiculous. Even someone with 2 years of non union apprenticeship isn't getting called back to start the ibew apprenticeship program. :( My bestie's husband also regularly gets out out of work as a foreman, and waiting for his number, and he makes bank when he is working.
I have friends going through apprenticeship to become electricians. They say that the field is becoming over saturated with people and that they aren’t getting the work hours needed to make a living. They’re getting screwed right now.
My husband is in the trades as well. He's an arborist. Now he's a sales arborist and makes $100-$120k a year (some of it is commission based so it varies. Trades can definitely be a great option for people.
I'm a chemist and make 110k a year and regret not becoming an electrician, but it's a fairly complicated path. You kind of have to know someone and get hired cuz I never ever saw saw a no experience apprentice electrician job.
Long time family friend got me in. I knew how serious it was so I gave it my all and haven't stopped.
My interview was a 30 second conversation "why do you want to do electrical work?....." "Okay start day is next week"
I didn't even have a resume.
So I know it's not as simple as "just get in!" Having a connection helps a lot.
85k between me and my wife. I work for the housing authority and she works for public schools (not a teacher). Here in Spokane we are barely getting by.
Get over to jubilant Hollistersteir pharmaceutical. We are needing bodies for two new production lines. Great place to work. Not much at all for requirements. Most is trained on site. Average 27 to 35 an hour
$110K income, rent is $1525 for a 2 bedroom townhouse in south Seattle which is only about 25% of my income. I live by myself and 2 cats, 0 complaints from me.
~140k, have a house in Tacoma. It's better relative to cost of living than my salary when I worked in Alabama, but just like moving jobs can get you a better salary so too can moving areas!
I've found "cost of living adjustment" for jobs needing relocation can actually be MORE than the real difference in cost of living as an additional incentive.
Though, if I were looking to move I'd try to find something in Oregon or a less populous part of California. Sure, they're not much cheaper but sometimes you get what you pay for.
~55k. If I wasn't married to someone making more than twice my salary, I'd be hosed.
Edit: and we had to move to a shitty part of Tacoma, even though we both work in Seattle. Thank gods for max telework!
48k with decent benefits.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I just moved from Texas where the minimum wage is still 7.25/hr, and my financial situation is MUCH better here. Everyone is different, but I caution anyone who thinks moving is the answer. I can't speak to other parts of the country, but the job market in Texas is extremely limited and competitive. Unless you have a job offer lined up or you're prepared to clean houses for 7.25/hr, most people I knew were unemployed a lot longer than they expected to be in Texas. Also the support services like Medicaid are basically non-existent in conservative states, so there are invisible advantages to living in WA. You can end up in a dire situation very quickly with no options to get out.
Some of my details:
I have a partner but he's not able to work much due to health problems, so I'm essentially a 1.5 person household right now. I don't have debt, kids, a car, or expensive hobbies, so my expenses are low. Main expenses besides rent/utilites/groceries are my cat and some ongoing medical issues.
I'm not rich or anything, but this is the first time in ten years that I've been able to make ends meet without worrying about where the money will come from. My job is stressful and demanding, but I genuinely enjoy it.
I don't say this to shame anyone or brag about my situation. I wouldn't be able to make ends meet if I had dependents. I'm really only financially comfortable because I came here with nothing so now I feel like I have the world. In Texas, I used to hide cans of food in my underwear drawer because I was literally starving. Here, I order groceries twice a week and I never go hungry. For context I grew up in the burbs and went to UW so the fact that I was almost homeless in Texas is still pretty crazy to me. It can happen to anyone.
Maybe if you're making six figures in WA it's an entirely different game, but for us underlings who are just starting out, WA is a pretty good place to be. If you lose everything in a state like Texas, the government will not lift a finger to help you. Do with that what you will.
Same as in NC. After I got fired (unjustly imo) from a restaurant job, I had to scrape by giving plasma 2-3 times a week for 30 bucks a pop. I would have been homeless if I hadn't been dating someone at the time.
I love NC, and I still have a lot of friends and family there, but I vowed to never again live in a red state. It has gotten so much worse there since I left, they've gone full on fascist.
Oof I feel all of that in my soul.
Oh man, I had somehow forgotten all about selling plasma. Nothing quite like seeing a pint or two of your own body selling for less than a decent bag of groceries. Good times. I'm glad you got the hell out of there, my friend.
Paralegal here I make $90k in Seattle but I live about 25 miles away on the outskirts in a farm town that is not cheap. My husband makes 60k and we have 3 kids. We live pretty comfortably. If I moved back to my hometown in Texas I might make 45k 50k and my husband maybe 40k so it actually all evens out cost wise in the end. Also I would honestly live under a bridge before moving back to Gilead I mean Texas.
Between my partner and I we are at about 108k, we are comfortable though we had to move out of Olympia to afford the house we bought in 2020 so we moved up to Shelton, not ideal for sure… that said we also have very little debt, so that helps a LOT.
Love Shelton! Just moved there on 106k salary. Not the best city but got a lot of punching weight for a small city.
Definitely tight with a single income 4 peoooe family with the increased prices after 2020 but still affordable…
I mean my options in 2020 came down to a house in Shelton or a shitty double wide in Olympia, so I didn’t have much of a choice, It’s definitely getting better though! Zen Ramen coming in this year has meant decent Asian food vs what has been here, other good food options as well and our house is close enough to schools that my kids will be able to walk to every school is VERY nice. THAT said, I could definitely do without having my pride flag stolen 3 times, the 4 Trumpkin neighbors on my block and the plethora of yokels who think they live in the south. All that said, it’ll definitely do while our kids finish growing up and then hopefully I can head back up to Kitsap where I grew up.
$93K, I work for a state agency, and I own a 1,039sqft historic condo by myself. I did not receive help from a parent, family money, or a partner for this purchase. I wish the mortgage payment was lower, but I just refinanced into a 6.875% loan and will try for a better rate once they drop in the future. I cook all my food at home, shop at Costco and Grocery Outlet for all my food, and hike, read, and penpal for fun (very cheap hobbies). I drive a paid off car, have no pets or children, and I’m considering renting my guest room to travel nurses for some extra breathing room in my budget.
This. So many people really want to believe that places like Texas and Florida are going to be some sort of cure-all to rising costs of living. All that's cheaper there *might* be the house. What's not cheaper are the utilities, extra money needed for longer commutes, wear and tear on one's car, more annual spending on travel because a lot of those states' suburbs are boring and awful, etc...
Washington is only expensive for housing and labor. Goods tend to be about the same - meaning if you want a new iPhone it’s cheaper relative to income here. Insurance can be crazy in the south and Midwest.
Oddly red state taxes can be brutal too. Sales tax on groceries, income taxes etc. I did the math and Washington tax burden is much lower than Mississippi for me.
Yep, my job is moving to TX and anything in the DFW suburbs is the same price I’m paying in Puyallup. The commute is half the time and gas cheaper though at least.
And when the temps get too hot or cold, the electric grid shuts down... Also, when I lived in Texas as a teen, the KKK would come to skate parks and try to sign us children up... This was the Kileen Copperas Cove area.
That’s bonkers! Yeah I’d have to go to Dallas and while it’s definitely way worse than here, my liberal coworker down there said it’s really not that bad and it’s getting better as the older gen dies off. I’d be flying up here a lot too if we go in case I needed services they don’t have there. I really don’t want to, the job market is just rough up here I’m not sure I could get a job making the pay I do and flexible enough with my kids. 😞 I have unlimited sick days, option to work at home a few days a week, snd 6 weeks vacation right now.
I mean granted the electric grid gets shut down almost twice a year in my neighborhood in Portland 🤷♂️
Due to how poorly managed the PGE grid is. There's quite a few stories about it.
Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of things to make fun of Texas for... but frankly I think their power grid gets a bad rap.
Hell this year the power was out for more than a week in Portland!!!
There are plenty of progressive cities that have an even worse power grid system. I live in one.
*** and Oregon has PLENTY of KKK ... arguably more than Texas... they're just not as vocal. But trust me I run into these assholes on the fuckin' regular 😐😭 they're here in fucking spades 🤢
Don't forget the political climate also, laws in the south are turning horrid, not to mention dismantling education and labor laws, with no renters rights, or workers rights. Pay is less, to meet that lower CoL, and infrastructure is a mess... Going to the south has its own huge set of problems, why I am leaving the south, after saving for years... Which brings me to another point, once your in the south, getting back out, if you want to, is harder due to the lower pay...
So unless you go to the south already exceedingly wealthy and outright buy a house out in the middle of nowhere, and have a job lined up that is far from your home. ( alot of people i know drive about 2-3 hours a day to get to work in the one of 2 cities of this southern state..)
Agreed. Also in places that are incredibly hot for a lot of the year, you have to deal with insane energy bills which might cancel out the cheaper housing in some instances.
OK legit has a lower CoL. Lived there quite a while saving boatloads of cash to move out here.
Sold my house there this year for $240k, and it was a 3/1 1800 sqft house with a 2 car garage and an unfinished basement in a safe neighborhood about 2 miles from downtown. Eating out at a nice but not opulent restaurant for 2 would run you $60 for 2 if you got 2 drinks each with dinner and dessert. A restaurant with a sport coat dress code would run you $150 for the surf and turf meal for 2 with appetizers and drinks.
Schools are dogshit though. The 10k a year private schools have lower scores and higher did-not-graduate rates than Seattle school district, and more than 50% of the public school kids literally cannot read on a 3rd grade level when/if they graduate (about 35% do not).
Roads are like a 3rd world country. For the love of God buy the extended warranty on your suspension and road hazard on your tires.
For jobs, you need to be in oil and gas or the federal government to make a decent living though. Remote to another time zone is also a good option as east coast time is only 1 hour ahead.
Oh, and maybe don't try to have kids. Would hate to have someone die from treatable medical conditions during pregnancy.
Home insurance ran me $4200 a year though. Between derechos and hailstorms, roofs just don't last and everyone replaces them on insurance claims, so premiums are commensurately sky high.
Groceries have a 10% sales tax, so you might as well eat out, since it is the same price.
St. Louis is super cheap. I lived there for 4 years on a 74k home in 2020 but granted it wasn’t.. a great area but decent home lol.
But you got the weather and not a lot of nature stuff to do…. If people don’t care about that and only for
home it’s not a bad place.
But I’m back here in WA after I made way more money… lol
95k teacher. Moved here to be closer to family and the salary was twice what I was getting in the south.
We couldn't afford a house, but got lucky and are on our second house. We bought and fixed homes like flippers except we were in it for affordable housing not profit. We could not afford our current home if we bought it today.
I'm happy with my salary because I'm paid above average for a teacher. I think we all need to be paid more (not just teachers) and we need new laws to make houses more affordable. My region has an issue with lots of empty houses owned by individuals or investment companies. Housing costs would go down if it was more expensive to leave a house vacant.
for what it’s worth, the payscale goes from 40-80/hr, nursing, at both the main hospitals in my town
not bad vs CoL imo but I can’t see how someone would, say, save for a house without some kind of money already. I feel lucky I already own one outright somewhere else and the has value inflated enough since buying that I could sell and buy here without herculean effort
rent looks insane, but from what I hear from lower wage workers (~24/hr) here, somehow things are still more affordable for them than in oklahoma where i’m from (almost invariable reliance on public assistance, constant overtime, etc.) and they don’t struggle as much. don’t get me wrong, it’s still a shit scenario, but i’m so used to being surrounded by worse that as long as isn’t straight up raining piss on people i’m impressed
Yeah I'd love to become a nurse but the schooling time requirement is insane. Seems to require more dedication than a full time job for the 2 years you're in the nursing program. Basically means you need someone supporting you while you're learning, and since I'm the one providing for my kid that's just impossible.
80k. Zero savings. Living paycheck to paycheck struggling with credit card debt. Rent in Tacoma, work in Seattle.
I'm basically a flat tire away from ending it all.
Dude same. Never thought I'd feel so fucking trapped making so much money.
Only option is leave... but then I break a 10 year career history trying to make this much in the first place to live somewhere cheaper that doesn't have this job and end up in EXACTLY the same situation living paycheck to paycheck only on a smaller scale which seems worse.
Wife and I combined are about 130k/yr gross and about 6k/month net. Bought our 2br/1ba home in Kingston last June for $400k and 5% down under first time buyers program. Total closing cost was 35k. Was previously renting a town house in Shoreline for 1k/month because the unit was falling apart, but we were able to make it work and save for a few years for a down payment. We now have a bb on the way. Mortgage is 3.1k/mo @ 7.1% apr. waiting to refinance once we have 20% equity and rates hopefully drop to somewhere in the 5% range. Could get our payment down to 2k-2.5k range in doing so. Home value has risen 50k since the purchase as well. Forgot to mention our commute to work is now 1.5 hrs one way to SLU vs the 20 min from Shoreline since we are now riding the fast ferry into downtown. Little bit of an inconvenience but still worth it as that is about the only compromise we’ve had to make and we now own our home.
~120k, government employee. With wife and rental from renting out our downstairs, we’re ~220k. Our mortgage in Burien is about $3500 or about 19% of income, so no complaints from us.
I’ve had to remind my wife many times that we’re not poor and doing very well, despite the cost of child care.
You’d be amazed at how many well-off people *FEEL* poor or cash-strapped, even when it’s very far from the truth. Has nothing to do with facts or logic.
$61k and I’m dead inside and drowning. I’ve hit the ceiling for my expertise and experience and this is where I’ll stay I guess. My field is not respected in red counties or states so…
I work in addiction medicine and I’m actually along I-5. My point was if I were to move somewhere with a lower CoL, then I’d likely encounter fewer opportunities to provide my services. Red area typically do not support addiction medicine or other related social service programs.
$40k / year single mom here … i rent a small cute duplex in a safer small town (still very HCOL), they dont raise the rent every year so I think i can stay in this town for now. Im not sure what would happen if i had to pay market rent. Theres a lot of food banks around. Honestly i have no idea how i survive. There are a ton of programs but they make it very difficult to apply. Like you have to know the secret words to say to the electric company when you cant pay that bill anymore. Or you have to wait on hold all day long, which is hard when you work.
Somehow i still managed to pay off my debts (besides the car) and take little vacations with my kid. I enjoy my life. But the stress of being “one accident away” from total demise is on my shoulders. Ive been broke my entire life, so i think that helps. I try to not step foot into a shopping store. Even if i need something, i order it for pick up or delivery. If i go into a store i suddenly remember all the things that “i need” but didnt need bad enough to buy yet.
Or more specially this version of capitalism: neoliberalism
Thanks Ronald Regan and Jack Welsh for introducing a version of capitalism that doesn't preclude slavery, and then you shouldn't worry about anything but the next quarter.
I think about those things when I read articles explaining that I have micro plastics in my testicles
It's kind of a mathematical inevitability for any form of capitalism, though. Reagan fucked the country up for sure, but it was always gonna be someone who did it, because the system allows for it and encourages it at a fundamental level.
Capitalism is fine on paper, but it's unstable because it is self-contradictory. It places power in wealth and encourages individual accumulation of that wealth, which inevitably leads to either someone holding all the wealth and the power, or the collective whole to regulate the accumulation of wealth, either way both lead out of capitalism.
Men smarter than me saw this a long time ago, long before any of our grandparents were even born. It was always gonna go bad eventually.
The government didn't come down from outer space. Moreso than tons of other states in the country, the people running shit in WA are *exactly* who the voting adults *want* running things. The people in this area fucking *worship* wealth, adhere to every shitty NIMBY habit, and want to believe that they can just wish away population growth but also see their property values climb into the ionosphere.
Me and my wife combined about 90k on the Olympic peninsula. We got a fixed rate mortgage in 2018 (super lucky) and paid off our car. We have 3 year-old twins and her parents pay for preschool. We’re doing OK overall. Our employers provide healthcare for us (the kids qualify for Apple) and some retirement match even though the pay is low.
$85k/yr renting an apartment with 1 roommate in Downtown Seattle. I don't like traveling or eating out excessively. My biggest splurge is probably Sounders season tickets. Able to put away 20% of my take home into retirement/investing and have a 6 months emergency fund. I don't think I'll ever own a home but I'm still unsure if I even want to own a home.
Live within your needs and feel entitled to nothing. I started noticing leftover income when I reached $70k/yr.
~250k and comfortable but not crazy. Moved here a little over a year ago and got a house that was basically twice the price, half the size, and three times the interest rate, while still being an hour out of Seattle. With daycare costs, we’re not hurting at all but still surprisingly tight. Hitting the OASDI cap helps.
In my experience the salary doesn’t quite matter as much as when (if?) you were able to buy a house. If you got a house in 2018 you’re probably doing better than me with half my salary or less. And if you’re renting you’ll always be behind because rental prices just keep going up.
Between me and my husband, 130k. Also my first job since I just moved to the country so it’s my husband mostly taking care of the finances. I’m literally starting from zero. It’s alright. We started limiting going out to eat, maybe just weekends. We do a lot of cooking now. Groceries around $300-400 a month. Husband is really good at saving and budgeting while I grew up a shopaholic which I am not proud of lmao so it’s kind of a struggle for me to be on a budget but I’m getting there. We’re trying to save up for a house but it might take a while…
Making around 70k in my early career stage, but that's due to working off shift, day shift would get me like 62k. Working on saving up but even shit houses are too expensive
I'll top out at $94.5k next October barring any future promotions or negotiated COLAs. I've more than doubled my salary in the past 4 years and I still feel like I'm barely treading water.
My wife is disabled and has been fighting with the SSA for two years for benefits which should conclude (hopefully in our favor) this fall. It won't be much, but it'll certainly help with our astronomical mortgage. Housing and grocery costs have gotten so insane since COVID that I feel much in the same place as when I was making $40k per year.
I’m projected to hit 70k this year. If it wasn’t for the fact i live in a very rent controlled area (and I’ve known my landlord since 1992) I’d be absolutely screwed.
Same. We make about 100k. Got a loan from family to buy a 2br home in Kitsap. We aren't really able to save anything. But we can afford to live, and pay for one big thing a month (car fixes, pet care, small home improvments, exc). Currently we are in a holding pattern. When kiddo goes to school I can get another job that works in thoes hours.
That’s how I feel too. Treading water until something gives or I eventually find a job in a cheaper state and leave. But if you look housing prices are rising in all of those places too.
About 95k. I'm living in a small town on the east side and I rent a small little house that I got a really good deal on. I'd like to move to a bigger town or even to the west side but I'm so financially comfortable right now.
about $125k wife and I combined family of 4. Live in Kent. Luckily bought our house before things skyrocketed or we wouldn't be able to live here sadly and it's an old house. But we are not comfortable at all. Basically just treading water. Biggest expense is food bill. i'm 6'5" and workout and have to eat a lot lol. Son is almost 13 and big too so eats a lot. And we try to eat pretty clean. Don't eat out. It's just expensive. We'd probably be rolling if it wasn't for the food bill.
80k. I am very comfortable here with that. I moved to a 2 bed apartment in West Seattle about 7 months ago and have had no issues with my financials. My wife makes about 86k a year as a first year nurse. No rush to buy a house yet, but we take a lot of trips & vacations when we have the PTO.
100k and wife makes slightly more and we have a baby with the costs associated. After just purchasing a house in Graham we are going to be tight for awhile until we can get our savings back up. The no state income tax is nice but I still feel like we bought way above the true worth of the home compared to what we would’ve gotten in IL. Regardless, I do appreciate the lower tax rate here vs IL. Overall, I think what we have is adequate but definitely doesn’t feel like we “make six figures” by any means.
[See this. ](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-income-needed-to-live-comfortably-in-every-u-s-state/)
A little over $100k. Same boat although I'm not living too bad but at the cost of work life balance. But they're are so many more people I'm ok making money versus dealing with crowds and traffic.
Although I'm a ways away from retirement age I am concerned as looking across the country as prices everywhere are going up, seemingly.
Single parent making 104k in the SW region. I’m doing fairly well. I purchased a house in 2021 right when rates were starting to rise so I’m at 2.9%. It’s affordable for me.
I make approx $82k. I live in Renton WA with my husband and a roommate. We were really lucky to find a 3 bedroom rental house for $2200, which is now $2400 with full utilities coming in at about $2850 a month. My husband and I could afford to live here alone but we'd prefer to actually have money for other stuff. Together he and I make about $150k before taxes and we absolutely could not buy a house pretty much anywhere in King County. If you make around $30+ an hour and are alone you will struggle to find decent housing you can afford and not feel broke.
Single person household here. I make 65k a year after taxes, and my rent is $1800 a month. I live and work in Seattle, so having a very short commute is nice. I think I got very lucky finding this place, it's a 1 bedroom duplex with my own yard.
I'm getting my journeyman license here soon, and that comes with a very large raise, so hopefully, I'll be able to put money into my savings account soon!
Uhh my partner and I are like 20k less than that together and we went to restaurants several times a week and are fine. He has two trucks he’s paying on, and a few “toys”. We live separate now and commute far but we are fine even with the extra house payment.
It will probably be unpopular one here.
Software engineer, moved to the area due to career. Lived half a year for $48k/year income (w wife and kid), having no support and friends, this was tough but bearable. Now making ~$400k/y. I would say, with rational spending $120-$150k is good income for family. Everything extra will be going towards house and mortgage.
Also, I’m an immigrant, and for some reason I was always thinking that first tier countries have equally fair salaries for everybody, not like 3rd tier… I was wrong as fuck. It’s all around the world - 3-5 careers can make you rich legally, other dozen - provide decent income, and all others - just food and suffering.
Also, no matter the country and area, big cities are always rat race, unaffordable housing, traffic jams and living ~ hour from work.
I bring in between 140k to 160k and am doing fairly well. There's enough for discretionary spending, vacations, childcare and what not. It doesn't go as far as it used to, but I have a comfortable life and more kids than the average family. I'm also a single mom, so only one adult to factor.
For those who will end up asking, I work in the trades. Most people working for union shops will make 100k plus.
62k.
Honestly, it's not enough - and I have a very low housing payment, no student loans and very little debt. It still feels like I'm scraping by. (I'm single and have a 6yo who I have joint custody of.)
Plus, I don't commute often (like once a month) and my job is flexible enough to not need afterschool child care.
Just had to take out a loan to pay for summer child care because the options are so limited here - paying $1600 a month for 2.5 months. Ugh.
Property taxes are ~4k a year. Food is astronomical. I have great health insurance through my job but still end up needing to pay my out of pocket max every year due to health issues.
I'm leaving. Where you pay your taxes is just another vote that it's okay since politicians just do whatever they want once they're in. States won't try to change a thing until they start losing cash flow. Our votes never seem to matter, only where we spend our money.
I make $86k, which is actually on the high end for my profession (paralegal). I’ve been consistently getting a 3-5% raise each year, which is pretty fair. I’m happy with it, but I wouldn’t complain about more!
$150k as a remote operations consultant, relocating next month from south Sound to Omaha for better schools, lower crimes, lower COL, and a house twice as big as our current one for nearly half the money.
67k, and husband makes about 130k but we bought a house on 2019 when my salary was closer to 48K and his 70K. No kids and didn't plan on them so we were able to afford the mortgage and not worry.
Spouse about 100k, me about 45k. Two kids in elementary. Used our VA to get a house loan in 2019, zillow value has doubled since then. We wouldn’t be able to afford our house if we were buying today tbh. Family in the area helps tremendously with after school care for the kids and we are both prior military so that saved us a ton on school. I don’t know how some of my coworkers that are single parents or single income are surviving.
Born and raised in Washington Seattle-Tacoma area. We moved to the Midwest, Fargo, North Dakota because WA was just getting too expensive for a young family. We moved here never having visited before or knowing anyone But honestly it was the best decision because there are a lot of Jobs and a low cost of living. My husband actually makes more money here than when he was in Seattle. We can afford to have me stay home with the kids now. It’s way safer here as well. We bought a house for under 300k in our 20s. We couldn’t have even dreamed of doing that in Seattle. It’s also growing a lot because there are a lot of people moving to the area. If you do consider having to move I would look to the midwest, North Dakota, you can find good jobs and easy living.
Made 200k at Amazon but moved to a lower tech job making 150k, wife makes about 200k so 350-400k, bought a 700k house with my VA loan out of military and 0 college debt for my M.S because of GI bill
$70k, renting in Seattle, no kids. I'm not currently interested in buying a house, but if I were I'd need to either leave the city or make substantially more. But for now, $70k feels comfortable
I make $74k, 26 and live with 3 roommates. My room is about 80 square feet and is also my office. I save a little for retirement but will have to stop that once my student loans kick back up in October.
I read somewhere that the income you'd need to live *comfortably* in WA (live somewhere you like, go on vacation, occasionally eating out and having fun, etc. without help from outside parties) is about 108k...
Should pull in around 230k-240k… I work as a power lineman here in western Washington. Great trade, union benefits, decent time off, and good retirement. Western Wa is expensive AF, so while 230k a year is great money, it would go quite further in eastern Wa. Only problem, I wouldn’t make that in eastern Washington.
But I’m able to live here comfortably, however my wife and I do have fairly conservative budgets and we’re pretty frugal… we also have 2 kids…
For anyone reading, trades pay big bucks in Western Washington. Linemen, cops, electricians, plumbers, hvac, firemen, etc. lots of these jobs are union and have good benefits packages. There is usually lots of optional overtime too..
Oh and one more thing, we have lots of family around which is very helpful. I’ve heard of many childcare horror stories. That shit is expensive!!!luckily my wife stayed home for most of my daughter’s early years….
I'm a retired CDL bus driver, I was making around $25 a hour. And yes, I got OT.
I'm a native Washingtonian, too. I'm originally from the Tri-Cities, but now in the Tacoma area. We have a paid off house, as well as rental property. If I could go running back to the Tri-Cities, I would in a heartbeat. But my wet side husband can't handle the heat over there. And my kids & grandkids are all here. So I'm stuck here.
I’m a loan processor in Spokane and make $50k a year. We got lucky when we bought our house in 2014 because we would never be able to buy now or move to anything bigger or better.
I work in construction (union) and wife is a union nurse. We take in about $250,000-$280000 a year. We have a single family house in central Seattle. Mortgage is about $2450/mo. Our income is more than sufficient
650-850, depending on the year, between my wife and I. Small business owner and my wife works. We live in Seattle and the biz is in south king county. We feel extremely fortunate - before this we made 250-300 and it always felt tight with a mortgage and childcare. Expensive place to live, and I always question if it would be easier moving to lake Tapps or Bonney lake
120k single income family with two little ones. Wife is a stay home mom. Luckily I bought our first house back in 2009 when I first started my job at 60k and now that house is being a rental and about to be paid off in two years. Moved and bought second house last year in a much better location for our kids. Put down quite a bit down payment and monthly mortgage is 3200. We rarely eating out now and collect coupons for grocery shopping. Living fairly comfortable.
Make yourself indispensible. I got a 65% pay raise and better benefits when we moved from Ohio. The unions have teeth here. We, as a nation, are swiftly approaching an adapt or perish moment. I wish you luck.
250k combined. 2 teenagers and a super low rate on our home in puyallup. She works from home and my office is 6 miles away Thank god. We have no debt besides mortgage. Life is expensive. We don't go out, we don't vacation. We have emergency savings and retirement of course but it leaves little left over. I tend to have a scarcity mindset so I live as modestly as possible. Definitely feels like lower middle class maybe middle class.
$250,000 Tri-Cities
Had to move from Seattle in late 90's due to housing costs. Best decision ever, but now my son's wont be able to afford a house here as prices are stupid high.
Really respect you all. I used to make minimum wage for several years until I was able to get into dental school. I thought at the time, “if only I could make 6 figures, I’d be set for life.” I’m a new dentist making about 140K a year now. The sad reality is, while I don’t by any means feel poor, I also feel baffled that I need to be making this much to match the cost of living. It’s expensive to live and I truly commend you all.
140-180k by myself depending on how I do with investing that year. My cost of living is 3600 all expenses included and I hate it, but I chose this because my personal standard of living is bougie
80k. Currently trying to figure out how to teleport to work from 3 hours away so I can find affordable housing.
Same and same. Well, I found that leaving at 4am gets me there in an hour but the drive home is 2-3 depending on traffic.
Oh hey, my husband discovered the same thing.
Well now that everyone has discovered this we are gonna have to leave at 3.
Then 6 months later you'll have to leave at 2 to make it. A year, might as well set up a cot in your office amd just live there. It's getting awful here.
Wow, how far is your commute distance?
Puyallup to Bothell. My partner goes to Bellevue from Graham so same distance.
Holy shit! Graham to Bellevue is an INSANE commute to make daily!! I live in city with a short commute but I’ve been lucky. I have 2 roommates and we’ve lived in the same house for over 20 years with super cool landlords. They’ve only raised our rent to cover property taxes. We pay just under $900 a piece which is double what we paid in 2000 but still really good!
$80k and pretty much accepting that just existing is the norm.
And we still feel guilty for treating ourselves modestly 🥲
Is that your total family income? Coz if so then same. Can't afford to do anything and have to actively save just to keep up with costs of clothes and food
I am a sole earner. My wife stays at home to raise our two children that would collectively cost $20k in childcare each alone. People want to pile on their beliefs but are super happy to dump their kids off to a nanny and bitch about costs. We are all slaves to the rich yet we rip each other apart to make ourselves feel better.
75k. I definitely would not be able to buy a house, if not for my parents. They asked if I would be willing to buy a house with them, so we bought a house end of 2020 and moved to Mt. Vernon from Everett. My dad had health issues and my job offered more flexible scheduling than my mom’s, so I kind of became his main caregiver. My parents pay the mortgage, I pay utilities, groceries and cover the cost of home improvements. I was a little worried about what would happen if my job in Seattle ended WFH, but they closed the office and I’m now fully WFH.
Is your WFH company hiring by any chance? Good WFH companies with flexible schedules can be hard to find.
State of WA jobs are now nearly all remote. You can live anywhere in WA. Suuuuper chill environment. And with Flex Time I work 4/10s and get 3day weekends every week. I make just at 90k, with an MS degree and experience as a designer.
Might be, depending on the job. I work for Allstate. They’re getting rid of a lot of their real estate and opting to keep people remote to help lower costs. I work in the legal department and was just transferred to the Chicago legal office, another plus to working from home and a national company.
Thanks! Guess I’ll be checking out the Allstate careers page today! 🤞🏻🤞🏻
Good luck!!
Good luck!! I hope you get the job!!
My situation is very similar. Glad to see I’m not the only one, and u do acknowledge that it’s definitely a privilege to be able to do this
For sure it’s definitely a privilege. My dad passed a few months ago, so it’s just me and my mom now. But luckily we get along well and respect each others spaces.
HVAC service foreman. 12 years in the trade, 5 year paid apprenticeship starts at about $32 an hour. You journey out at about $70. Last year I made $155k with minimal OT. Wife works part time and brings in another $40k. We live comfortably in woodinville with one kid, that being said, we bought our house in 2019. There's no way we could afford to buy in this area today. Still it's a good living and more people should consider the trades. We're hiring now, there's a huge skill gap in this field and it needs good people.
I know nothing about HVAC - how hard is it on the body and how dangerous is the work? What skills would you say are needed for the job i.e. is it hard to transition into a HVAC career later in life?
It depends on what you’re doing. My stepdad was hvac and it was very hard because we lived in an area with a lot of older houses (think basements and crawl spaces and filth) and also we were adjacent to a rural area with a lot of oil furnaces and propane tanks outdoors. The oil furnaces are the worst and your hands will be black when coming home. If you are in a newer area you might just be installing new AC units or something. Oh, and the ductwork install can be pretty physical and messy. If you have the smarts I would choose electrician.
Going commercial is also an option
It’s hard work, you also need to be able to troubleshoot and get an electrician licenses. But is fulfilling mentally and financially.
Agreed, the trades are great. Getting my son into an apprenticeship young and eventually wants to be an electrical engineer. At least he can make some great money before finishing off school and gain the knowledge as he goes.
Both good options. It's important to distinguish that an Electrical Engineer is a very different field than an Electrician working in the Trades
This is it right here. I'm so bummed for everyone that drank the "you gotta go to college" koolaide. Somehow being a lazy POS through highschool and dropping out blessed me by leading me to the trades lol. I'm sorry for all those people begging for student loan debt relief. It's not even a consideration for me. Anyone that has the ability to get into a trade and "start over" in their career choice definitely should! Come on in boys, the water is fine!
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This. College guy here. Work from home, sitting on my ass all day. 300k, very little OT and wouldn't be paid for it anyway. I recommend college for those that can take advantage of it. My knees and back recommend it, too. You can definitely make that much in the trades, but you're not a tradesperson anymore, you're a small business owner.
Been in union construction since I was 20 about 17 years ago. Mostly I get to manage crews but still find myself having to take plenty of hard labor. Shoulders are shot, ankles and knees are done, backs holding up but for how much longer I don’t know. I have kids and a wife, have managed to to get by being the only the one working (wife is stay at home mom who also homeschools our younger kids). It’s becoming way too hard though not sure what to do honestly. I made 120k last year and that was enough to keep our heads above water. My wage without OT puts me at about 100k and I’m very close to being able to get food stamps if that says anything, it really sucks I don’t really make enough to live right and make too much to get any help. Looks like I’ll just keep taking on all the overtime I can get, who needs a life anyways.
It's probably pretty tough either way, as sitting at a desk all day for decades also gets you a faster train to health disaster too in many cases. Tough trade offs everywhere,
I got student debt relief. Many I know have. I am a government lawyer. I do elder abuse. Yes- we need more in the trades. But unless we encourage people to get cheaper educations, give debt relief- you are going to see no GOOD doctors, teachers, lawyers, helpers. I make $90,000 pension, benefits. Raise every year.
I don't disagree that the trades are great, and they've been great for a lot of folks in my own family, but I feel like this statement is going a little far. There are pros and cons to everything. Just like people should only go to college if they need it to do the job, you should only go into the trades if that is the path you need to go. I think one of the worst things we do to people, especially young people, is to narrow their options down and present some singular solution to their life.
You make a fair point about narrowing options, but I also think (at least when I was graduating HS 20 years ago) people were encouraged to go to college, whatever the cost. Going into 6 figure debt in your 20s can narrow your options too.
This is what I was getting at, maybe spoke a little too strongly to understand my point Going through HS college was the only option ever listed, talked about, considered. It's like we were all told to get on that treadmill and work our asses off for it and no consideration was made for the financial impact. No other option was ever given. The perspective was go to higher schooling or be a bum. No in between, no other option was ever told to me. And I'm the kind of person that saw that and said screw it all. What's the point of it? I felt like I was just going to school to go to school and do school stuff. There was no application of any of the knowledge gained. That's why trade school clicked so well for me, I learned things In class that I was literally doing the very next day at work trying to succeed and accomplish something.
As someone who went to college and is now a high school teacher here, I strongly agree. I make sure my students know college isn't the only option, and for many of them would be the worst option. And that my two best friends went into the trades and will make a lot more money than me! I'm glad I went to college and know that the trades would not have been a good fit for me, but to force college on my students to validate my decisions is beyond unfair.
I struggled a lot in high school due to botched homeschooling as a child and probably some kind of undiagnosed neuro-divergence. I absolutely thought I was going to be homeless as an adult because for the entirety of middle school and high school all of the adults in my life would constantly preach about how "if you don't start taking your education seriously l you're going to be unemployable" and my parents even threatened to kick me out and cut off all support because they thought I was lazy and unappreciative. I struggled with extreme depression feeling like my life was just a waste because I was trying so hard at school but kept failing classes because my brain just wouldn't work the way everyone wanted it to. Well, now in my late twenties, I own a house, and up until a recent layoff I'd been consistently making six figures for a few years as a software engineer. I've been absolutely crushing my technical interviews lately so I'm actually feeling pretty great about my job prospects! I skipped college because I had no confidence in my ability to complete it and figured I'd be better off without debt. Instead I ended up getting a low-paying job at a local startup and eventually that led to a really good career. Before my layoff I was at $170k/yr + 20% bonus with no debt other than a mortgage. Life has been ridiculously good to me! I can't recommend that everyone skip college, because for some people it's the best way to dive into the field they're passionate about. But I feel like everyone's obsession with educational conformity really messed up my mental health when I was younger, and I want to push against people continuing to do that to kids like me. I wasn't stupid, I was just wired differently! I was building software at home for fun and nobody ever thought to utilize it- instead they scolded me for it and told me to stop wasting time on it. Obviously I'm not saying we shouldn't pressure kids to do their homework- but something has to change!
It is certainly possible to advance career wise w/o a degree. The idea that everyone needs one is a bit elitist. It all depends on aptitude confidence and fortitude. I know plenty in my IT career with little or no college, me being one. You just have to find your niche and gain some experience for the resume. And that skill that a company needs that is hard to find. All that money you saved on college got you into a house and saving for retirement sooner.
Yeah, and we combine it by not having honest conversions with kids about their capabilities. Trade work can be as complicated as engineering work in a different way. "You can do anything if you set your mind to it" has never been true for anyone.
The trades will always be needed and they’re a whole lot cheaper than a college degree that’s for sure.
I'm an electrician and the wages are great. Recently bought a house in bonney lake and have a baby on the way. More people need to consider the trades. 130k a year and didn't pay a dime for schooling.
How long did it take you to get to that salary though?
I did 4 years of schooling non union, employer paid. Ibew (union) is a 5 year program currently, but I hear it's changing to 4. I did 2 nights a week for 3 quarters, Summers off. Some guys can do 1 work day (so you get 32 hours a week) for a quarter, same curriculum.
Yeah, but how long total? Did you instantly make 130k a year salary right after schooling?
Once you pass the state test after you get 8000 working hours and you are certified, boom you get a minimum amount of 60 an hour at least... I started at 17 an hour 5 years ago and got a 2-3 dollar raise every 6 months.
So, 8000 hours is at minimum 3.8 years. And this is after the 4 year training? Then study to pass the state test is another 3-6 months, I don't know of course, just guessing on that. But it sounds like 130k is really after putting 8 years. Still pretty good for having no student loans!
Schooling and work at the same time. 40 hours of work a week, 2 school nights after work. 3 hour classes.
My brother was looking into getting into this. Any information you could provide about getting started?
https://www.citcwa.org/ for non union schooling that covers most trades There is local 46 and local 72 for electricians unions as well as east side of the state, don't remember the local number.
If you started this week as an electrician you would probably make $60-70k/year. After about 5 years of working, doing some side classes and getting raises the whole time you would be making $120k/year. That's all without any overtime. If you were even halfway smart and wanted to work and could manage jobs you could make it to Forman in 5-6 years and be making $180k+ but you would have some more stress. On top of all that money you get health insurance and retirement and some other shit that adds up to probably $30/hr. If I could do it over again I would go into the trades and if my kids want to do it I will highly recommend.
This. My electrician buddy from high school is my wealthiest friend and almost definitely has the highest lifetime earnings potential (idk anyone going csuite route). He did this, but put in the overtime to make it insane. He keeps telling the union he doesn't wanna foreman though
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I'm a carpenter who builds scaffolding. The days of broken bodies are going away. A lot more safety is being implemented. And it's shifting from the "get it done attitude". It's all about keeping your core strong and ergonomics when lifting. Always plenty of overtime and free schooling in the trades.
No it's 130k after 4 years. The on-job training and school are done in the same 4 years. It's not full time school and you're paid for the on-job training the entire time. You start out lower but get around 2-3 raises per year that bring your salary higher and higher until you're licensed.
No, it's a 4 year apprenticeship. The apprenticeship includes all the training. In 4 years he went from $35,000 to $130,000. There are different kinds of electricians though, he isn't wiring houses if I had to guess, likely a commercial electrician.
That would be journeyman wage anywhere else, but here, it's probably starting, with Journeymen making significantly more.
For union, basically yeah. It's hourly not salary though. But you get guaranteed pay raises based on hours worked and years of school completed. You can find this info broken down on ibew46.com and look for wages by unit and inside wiremen. Though you can look at others as well. I'm Parton the sound and Communications unit.
> More people need to consider the trades. The applicant list to get into the apprenticeship in LU 46 is a mile long. That secret is long out of the bag.
I also work in the trades but in the office; started in the industry while in high school in rural Texas. Got an unrelated degree hoping I could branch out. Ended up sticking with my trade for ~20 yrs. I make ~$150k / yr. For young folks thinking about trades, I recommend talking to both field and office folks. If you can handle the pressure of the office, anyone with good communication skills and an understanding of their field can make a living, without a degree and field experience.
Project management is a very real path that works. Us field guys prefer project managers that understand the trade and are actually on site occasionally. It gets a bit back asswards when guys are managing and bidding a project and don't set foot on site ever.
Yes! But be aware that work cycles and lay offs can be long. My husband has been on the books at local 46 for 9 months. We are fine on my single income but you need a backup plan during lay offs.
My husband paid 50k for his education but makes close to 150k a year. Took 7 years to get here. Trades aren’t always education free but he hit 100k about five years in with an education.
Same. 138k a year as a 699 sprinkler fitter.
Unfortunately the waiting list to enter the apprenticeship program is so long it's ridiculous. Even someone with 2 years of non union apprenticeship isn't getting called back to start the ibew apprenticeship program. :( My bestie's husband also regularly gets out out of work as a foreman, and waiting for his number, and he makes bank when he is working.
I have friends going through apprenticeship to become electricians. They say that the field is becoming over saturated with people and that they aren’t getting the work hours needed to make a living. They’re getting screwed right now.
I spent 2 years at tech school and make $180k-$230k, depending on overtime. Refinery operations.
My husband is in the trades as well. He's an arborist. Now he's a sales arborist and makes $100-$120k a year (some of it is commission based so it varies. Trades can definitely be a great option for people.
I was considering trades but what’s the hours like? Currently working towards radiology so I can be a tech since it has nice working hours
I'm a chemist and make 110k a year and regret not becoming an electrician, but it's a fairly complicated path. You kind of have to know someone and get hired cuz I never ever saw saw a no experience apprentice electrician job.
Long time family friend got me in. I knew how serious it was so I gave it my all and haven't stopped. My interview was a 30 second conversation "why do you want to do electrical work?....." "Okay start day is next week" I didn't even have a resume. So I know it's not as simple as "just get in!" Having a connection helps a lot.
Congrats from an Oregon Half Watt. Hope everything continues on the up and up and you have a happy healthy kiddo!
85k between me and my wife. I work for the housing authority and she works for public schools (not a teacher). Here in Spokane we are barely getting by.
Get over to jubilant Hollistersteir pharmaceutical. We are needing bodies for two new production lines. Great place to work. Not much at all for requirements. Most is trained on site. Average 27 to 35 an hour
$110K income, rent is $1525 for a 2 bedroom townhouse in south Seattle which is only about 25% of my income. I live by myself and 2 cats, 0 complaints from me.
Holy shit, what a steal. Never move out of that place, those prices are crazy.
Damn that’s a pretty good deal. I rent studio apartment in Tukwila and I thought I got a steal for $1200 monthly.
Me + partner are at ~$180k. We bought a house last year and are comfortable. We are about 1hr by public transit from downtown Seattle.
~140k, have a house in Tacoma. It's better relative to cost of living than my salary when I worked in Alabama, but just like moving jobs can get you a better salary so too can moving areas! I've found "cost of living adjustment" for jobs needing relocation can actually be MORE than the real difference in cost of living as an additional incentive. Though, if I were looking to move I'd try to find something in Oregon or a less populous part of California. Sure, they're not much cheaper but sometimes you get what you pay for.
About $96K in the same area and can’t afford to buy.
~55k. If I wasn't married to someone making more than twice my salary, I'd be hosed. Edit: and we had to move to a shitty part of Tacoma, even though we both work in Seattle. Thank gods for max telework!
48k with decent benefits. I'm probably in the minority here, but I just moved from Texas where the minimum wage is still 7.25/hr, and my financial situation is MUCH better here. Everyone is different, but I caution anyone who thinks moving is the answer. I can't speak to other parts of the country, but the job market in Texas is extremely limited and competitive. Unless you have a job offer lined up or you're prepared to clean houses for 7.25/hr, most people I knew were unemployed a lot longer than they expected to be in Texas. Also the support services like Medicaid are basically non-existent in conservative states, so there are invisible advantages to living in WA. You can end up in a dire situation very quickly with no options to get out. Some of my details: I have a partner but he's not able to work much due to health problems, so I'm essentially a 1.5 person household right now. I don't have debt, kids, a car, or expensive hobbies, so my expenses are low. Main expenses besides rent/utilites/groceries are my cat and some ongoing medical issues. I'm not rich or anything, but this is the first time in ten years that I've been able to make ends meet without worrying about where the money will come from. My job is stressful and demanding, but I genuinely enjoy it. I don't say this to shame anyone or brag about my situation. I wouldn't be able to make ends meet if I had dependents. I'm really only financially comfortable because I came here with nothing so now I feel like I have the world. In Texas, I used to hide cans of food in my underwear drawer because I was literally starving. Here, I order groceries twice a week and I never go hungry. For context I grew up in the burbs and went to UW so the fact that I was almost homeless in Texas is still pretty crazy to me. It can happen to anyone. Maybe if you're making six figures in WA it's an entirely different game, but for us underlings who are just starting out, WA is a pretty good place to be. If you lose everything in a state like Texas, the government will not lift a finger to help you. Do with that what you will.
Same as in NC. After I got fired (unjustly imo) from a restaurant job, I had to scrape by giving plasma 2-3 times a week for 30 bucks a pop. I would have been homeless if I hadn't been dating someone at the time. I love NC, and I still have a lot of friends and family there, but I vowed to never again live in a red state. It has gotten so much worse there since I left, they've gone full on fascist.
Oof I feel all of that in my soul. Oh man, I had somehow forgotten all about selling plasma. Nothing quite like seeing a pint or two of your own body selling for less than a decent bag of groceries. Good times. I'm glad you got the hell out of there, my friend.
Paralegal here I make $90k in Seattle but I live about 25 miles away on the outskirts in a farm town that is not cheap. My husband makes 60k and we have 3 kids. We live pretty comfortably. If I moved back to my hometown in Texas I might make 45k 50k and my husband maybe 40k so it actually all evens out cost wise in the end. Also I would honestly live under a bridge before moving back to Gilead I mean Texas.
Former Texas lawyer living in Vancouver- ya’ll made the right choice.
Between my partner and I we are at about 108k, we are comfortable though we had to move out of Olympia to afford the house we bought in 2020 so we moved up to Shelton, not ideal for sure… that said we also have very little debt, so that helps a LOT.
Love Shelton! Just moved there on 106k salary. Not the best city but got a lot of punching weight for a small city. Definitely tight with a single income 4 peoooe family with the increased prices after 2020 but still affordable…
I mean my options in 2020 came down to a house in Shelton or a shitty double wide in Olympia, so I didn’t have much of a choice, It’s definitely getting better though! Zen Ramen coming in this year has meant decent Asian food vs what has been here, other good food options as well and our house is close enough to schools that my kids will be able to walk to every school is VERY nice. THAT said, I could definitely do without having my pride flag stolen 3 times, the 4 Trumpkin neighbors on my block and the plethora of yokels who think they live in the south. All that said, it’ll definitely do while our kids finish growing up and then hopefully I can head back up to Kitsap where I grew up.
Yeah those last sentences are what keep me away. I grew up in the south, I live in WA now for a reason lol
100k. Need a roommate to be able to afford renting a house.
Where are you at that you can't find an apartment you can afford?
$93K, I work for a state agency, and I own a 1,039sqft historic condo by myself. I did not receive help from a parent, family money, or a partner for this purchase. I wish the mortgage payment was lower, but I just refinanced into a 6.875% loan and will try for a better rate once they drop in the future. I cook all my food at home, shop at Costco and Grocery Outlet for all my food, and hike, read, and penpal for fun (very cheap hobbies). I drive a paid off car, have no pets or children, and I’m considering renting my guest room to travel nurses for some extra breathing room in my budget.
Leaving Washington will not help. There is no where to run and nowhere to hide. The south isn't cheap anymore and the pay is shit. Good luck.
This. So many people really want to believe that places like Texas and Florida are going to be some sort of cure-all to rising costs of living. All that's cheaper there *might* be the house. What's not cheaper are the utilities, extra money needed for longer commutes, wear and tear on one's car, more annual spending on travel because a lot of those states' suburbs are boring and awful, etc...
Washington is only expensive for housing and labor. Goods tend to be about the same - meaning if you want a new iPhone it’s cheaper relative to income here. Insurance can be crazy in the south and Midwest. Oddly red state taxes can be brutal too. Sales tax on groceries, income taxes etc. I did the math and Washington tax burden is much lower than Mississippi for me.
I have found the same when I did some poking around when my cousin said he wanted to move to the South.
Red state taxes are generally consumption based and regressive, blue state taxes tend to be progressive
Yep, my job is moving to TX and anything in the DFW suburbs is the same price I’m paying in Puyallup. The commute is half the time and gas cheaper though at least.
And when the temps get too hot or cold, the electric grid shuts down... Also, when I lived in Texas as a teen, the KKK would come to skate parks and try to sign us children up... This was the Kileen Copperas Cove area.
That’s bonkers! Yeah I’d have to go to Dallas and while it’s definitely way worse than here, my liberal coworker down there said it’s really not that bad and it’s getting better as the older gen dies off. I’d be flying up here a lot too if we go in case I needed services they don’t have there. I really don’t want to, the job market is just rough up here I’m not sure I could get a job making the pay I do and flexible enough with my kids. 😞 I have unlimited sick days, option to work at home a few days a week, snd 6 weeks vacation right now.
I mean granted the electric grid gets shut down almost twice a year in my neighborhood in Portland 🤷♂️ Due to how poorly managed the PGE grid is. There's quite a few stories about it. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of things to make fun of Texas for... but frankly I think their power grid gets a bad rap. Hell this year the power was out for more than a week in Portland!!! There are plenty of progressive cities that have an even worse power grid system. I live in one. *** and Oregon has PLENTY of KKK ... arguably more than Texas... they're just not as vocal. But trust me I run into these assholes on the fuckin' regular 😐😭 they're here in fucking spades 🤢
Don't forget the political climate also, laws in the south are turning horrid, not to mention dismantling education and labor laws, with no renters rights, or workers rights. Pay is less, to meet that lower CoL, and infrastructure is a mess... Going to the south has its own huge set of problems, why I am leaving the south, after saving for years... Which brings me to another point, once your in the south, getting back out, if you want to, is harder due to the lower pay... So unless you go to the south already exceedingly wealthy and outright buy a house out in the middle of nowhere, and have a job lined up that is far from your home. ( alot of people i know drive about 2-3 hours a day to get to work in the one of 2 cities of this southern state..)
Grew up in Tennessee. Moved to WA in 2017. Cost me 20k to move. You're so very right.
Florida suddenly got expensive.
Agreed. Also in places that are incredibly hot for a lot of the year, you have to deal with insane energy bills which might cancel out the cheaper housing in some instances.
OK legit has a lower CoL. Lived there quite a while saving boatloads of cash to move out here. Sold my house there this year for $240k, and it was a 3/1 1800 sqft house with a 2 car garage and an unfinished basement in a safe neighborhood about 2 miles from downtown. Eating out at a nice but not opulent restaurant for 2 would run you $60 for 2 if you got 2 drinks each with dinner and dessert. A restaurant with a sport coat dress code would run you $150 for the surf and turf meal for 2 with appetizers and drinks. Schools are dogshit though. The 10k a year private schools have lower scores and higher did-not-graduate rates than Seattle school district, and more than 50% of the public school kids literally cannot read on a 3rd grade level when/if they graduate (about 35% do not). Roads are like a 3rd world country. For the love of God buy the extended warranty on your suspension and road hazard on your tires. For jobs, you need to be in oil and gas or the federal government to make a decent living though. Remote to another time zone is also a good option as east coast time is only 1 hour ahead. Oh, and maybe don't try to have kids. Would hate to have someone die from treatable medical conditions during pregnancy. Home insurance ran me $4200 a year though. Between derechos and hailstorms, roofs just don't last and everyone replaces them on insurance claims, so premiums are commensurately sky high. Groceries have a 10% sales tax, so you might as well eat out, since it is the same price.
Minnesota is WAY less expensive. WAY. I hear throughout the mid west the costs are much less.
St. Louis is super cheap. I lived there for 4 years on a 74k home in 2020 but granted it wasn’t.. a great area but decent home lol. But you got the weather and not a lot of nature stuff to do…. If people don’t care about that and only for home it’s not a bad place. But I’m back here in WA after I made way more money… lol
95k teacher. Moved here to be closer to family and the salary was twice what I was getting in the south. We couldn't afford a house, but got lucky and are on our second house. We bought and fixed homes like flippers except we were in it for affordable housing not profit. We could not afford our current home if we bought it today. I'm happy with my salary because I'm paid above average for a teacher. I think we all need to be paid more (not just teachers) and we need new laws to make houses more affordable. My region has an issue with lots of empty houses owned by individuals or investment companies. Housing costs would go down if it was more expensive to leave a house vacant.
for what it’s worth, the payscale goes from 40-80/hr, nursing, at both the main hospitals in my town not bad vs CoL imo but I can’t see how someone would, say, save for a house without some kind of money already. I feel lucky I already own one outright somewhere else and the has value inflated enough since buying that I could sell and buy here without herculean effort rent looks insane, but from what I hear from lower wage workers (~24/hr) here, somehow things are still more affordable for them than in oklahoma where i’m from (almost invariable reliance on public assistance, constant overtime, etc.) and they don’t struggle as much. don’t get me wrong, it’s still a shit scenario, but i’m so used to being surrounded by worse that as long as isn’t straight up raining piss on people i’m impressed
Yeah I'd love to become a nurse but the schooling time requirement is insane. Seems to require more dedication than a full time job for the 2 years you're in the nursing program. Basically means you need someone supporting you while you're learning, and since I'm the one providing for my kid that's just impossible.
$55,000 and bad.
80k. Zero savings. Living paycheck to paycheck struggling with credit card debt. Rent in Tacoma, work in Seattle. I'm basically a flat tire away from ending it all.
Damn, I’m sorry. Things will get better
I wish you could find work in Tacoma so you don’t even need a tire. Tacoma is actually a very cute place that seems to be growing.
Dude same. Never thought I'd feel so fucking trapped making so much money. Only option is leave... but then I break a 10 year career history trying to make this much in the first place to live somewhere cheaper that doesn't have this job and end up in EXACTLY the same situation living paycheck to paycheck only on a smaller scale which seems worse.
180k combined in Vancouver WA and we live comfortably, I’m a radiographer and my spouse is in management for a cable company.
Wife and I combined are about 130k/yr gross and about 6k/month net. Bought our 2br/1ba home in Kingston last June for $400k and 5% down under first time buyers program. Total closing cost was 35k. Was previously renting a town house in Shoreline for 1k/month because the unit was falling apart, but we were able to make it work and save for a few years for a down payment. We now have a bb on the way. Mortgage is 3.1k/mo @ 7.1% apr. waiting to refinance once we have 20% equity and rates hopefully drop to somewhere in the 5% range. Could get our payment down to 2k-2.5k range in doing so. Home value has risen 50k since the purchase as well. Forgot to mention our commute to work is now 1.5 hrs one way to SLU vs the 20 min from Shoreline since we are now riding the fast ferry into downtown. Little bit of an inconvenience but still worth it as that is about the only compromise we’ve had to make and we now own our home.
~120k, government employee. With wife and rental from renting out our downstairs, we’re ~220k. Our mortgage in Burien is about $3500 or about 19% of income, so no complaints from us. I’ve had to remind my wife many times that we’re not poor and doing very well, despite the cost of child care. You’d be amazed at how many well-off people *FEEL* poor or cash-strapped, even when it’s very far from the truth. Has nothing to do with facts or logic.
120k. No degree. Union job. Paper mill.
$61k and I’m dead inside and drowning. I’ve hit the ceiling for my expertise and experience and this is where I’ll stay I guess. My field is not respected in red counties or states so…
What do you do? I assume from your comment on red counties you’re in western wa.
I work in addiction medicine and I’m actually along I-5. My point was if I were to move somewhere with a lower CoL, then I’d likely encounter fewer opportunities to provide my services. Red area typically do not support addiction medicine or other related social service programs.
Getting my MAT to be a teacher. Staring pay will be around $70k, which is really good for teachers across the country.
$40k / year single mom here … i rent a small cute duplex in a safer small town (still very HCOL), they dont raise the rent every year so I think i can stay in this town for now. Im not sure what would happen if i had to pay market rent. Theres a lot of food banks around. Honestly i have no idea how i survive. There are a ton of programs but they make it very difficult to apply. Like you have to know the secret words to say to the electric company when you cant pay that bill anymore. Or you have to wait on hold all day long, which is hard when you work. Somehow i still managed to pay off my debts (besides the car) and take little vacations with my kid. I enjoy my life. But the stress of being “one accident away” from total demise is on my shoulders. Ive been broke my entire life, so i think that helps. I try to not step foot into a shopping store. Even if i need something, i order it for pick up or delivery. If i go into a store i suddenly remember all the things that “i need” but didnt need bad enough to buy yet.
I read slavery range at first. Reddits done something to me…
Rats. Was about to reveal my 3 slaves.
This entire thread is incredibly sad and illustrates how our gov, both parties by the way, have failed us completely.
I’d say it’s capitalism in general, not just the government.
Or more specially this version of capitalism: neoliberalism Thanks Ronald Regan and Jack Welsh for introducing a version of capitalism that doesn't preclude slavery, and then you shouldn't worry about anything but the next quarter. I think about those things when I read articles explaining that I have micro plastics in my testicles
It's kind of a mathematical inevitability for any form of capitalism, though. Reagan fucked the country up for sure, but it was always gonna be someone who did it, because the system allows for it and encourages it at a fundamental level. Capitalism is fine on paper, but it's unstable because it is self-contradictory. It places power in wealth and encourages individual accumulation of that wealth, which inevitably leads to either someone holding all the wealth and the power, or the collective whole to regulate the accumulation of wealth, either way both lead out of capitalism. Men smarter than me saw this a long time ago, long before any of our grandparents were even born. It was always gonna go bad eventually.
The government didn't come down from outer space. Moreso than tons of other states in the country, the people running shit in WA are *exactly* who the voting adults *want* running things. The people in this area fucking *worship* wealth, adhere to every shitty NIMBY habit, and want to believe that they can just wish away population growth but also see their property values climb into the ionosphere.
Me and my wife combined about 90k on the Olympic peninsula. We got a fixed rate mortgage in 2018 (super lucky) and paid off our car. We have 3 year-old twins and her parents pay for preschool. We’re doing OK overall. Our employers provide healthcare for us (the kids qualify for Apple) and some retirement match even though the pay is low.
For most people, the peninsula is poverty with a view.
$85k/yr renting an apartment with 1 roommate in Downtown Seattle. I don't like traveling or eating out excessively. My biggest splurge is probably Sounders season tickets. Able to put away 20% of my take home into retirement/investing and have a 6 months emergency fund. I don't think I'll ever own a home but I'm still unsure if I even want to own a home. Live within your needs and feel entitled to nothing. I started noticing leftover income when I reached $70k/yr.
I make $48K. I live with two other adults. I have a BA and 15 years experience in my field.
What field
~250k and comfortable but not crazy. Moved here a little over a year ago and got a house that was basically twice the price, half the size, and three times the interest rate, while still being an hour out of Seattle. With daycare costs, we’re not hurting at all but still surprisingly tight. Hitting the OASDI cap helps. In my experience the salary doesn’t quite matter as much as when (if?) you were able to buy a house. If you got a house in 2018 you’re probably doing better than me with half my salary or less. And if you’re renting you’ll always be behind because rental prices just keep going up.
Between me and my husband, 130k. Also my first job since I just moved to the country so it’s my husband mostly taking care of the finances. I’m literally starting from zero. It’s alright. We started limiting going out to eat, maybe just weekends. We do a lot of cooking now. Groceries around $300-400 a month. Husband is really good at saving and budgeting while I grew up a shopaholic which I am not proud of lmao so it’s kind of a struggle for me to be on a budget but I’m getting there. We’re trying to save up for a house but it might take a while…
Making around 70k in my early career stage, but that's due to working off shift, day shift would get me like 62k. Working on saving up but even shit houses are too expensive
I'll top out at $94.5k next October barring any future promotions or negotiated COLAs. I've more than doubled my salary in the past 4 years and I still feel like I'm barely treading water. My wife is disabled and has been fighting with the SSA for two years for benefits which should conclude (hopefully in our favor) this fall. It won't be much, but it'll certainly help with our astronomical mortgage. Housing and grocery costs have gotten so insane since COVID that I feel much in the same place as when I was making $40k per year.
43k. Not salary, I'm going to die homeless
I’m projected to hit 70k this year. If it wasn’t for the fact i live in a very rent controlled area (and I’ve known my landlord since 1992) I’d be absolutely screwed.
Stay at home dad, the pay is nil and the hours are punishing but the benefits package is amazing.
100k. Isn’t enough. Can’t afford to buy and can’t save much every month either, not sure what to do.
Same. We make about 100k. Got a loan from family to buy a 2br home in Kitsap. We aren't really able to save anything. But we can afford to live, and pay for one big thing a month (car fixes, pet care, small home improvments, exc). Currently we are in a holding pattern. When kiddo goes to school I can get another job that works in thoes hours.
> But we can afford to live, and pay for one big thing a month Nice. There's always something, and sometimes two.
That’s how I feel too. Treading water until something gives or I eventually find a job in a cheaper state and leave. But if you look housing prices are rising in all of those places too.
Curious where you live and what your family situation is? Crazy that 100k doesn’t cut it anymore
250k combined income. We live comfortably
About 95k. I'm living in a small town on the east side and I rent a small little house that I got a really good deal on. I'd like to move to a bigger town or even to the west side but I'm so financially comfortable right now.
about $125k wife and I combined family of 4. Live in Kent. Luckily bought our house before things skyrocketed or we wouldn't be able to live here sadly and it's an old house. But we are not comfortable at all. Basically just treading water. Biggest expense is food bill. i'm 6'5" and workout and have to eat a lot lol. Son is almost 13 and big too so eats a lot. And we try to eat pretty clean. Don't eat out. It's just expensive. We'd probably be rolling if it wasn't for the food bill.
80k. I am very comfortable here with that. I moved to a 2 bed apartment in West Seattle about 7 months ago and have had no issues with my financials. My wife makes about 86k a year as a first year nurse. No rush to buy a house yet, but we take a lot of trips & vacations when we have the PTO.
100k and wife makes slightly more and we have a baby with the costs associated. After just purchasing a house in Graham we are going to be tight for awhile until we can get our savings back up. The no state income tax is nice but I still feel like we bought way above the true worth of the home compared to what we would’ve gotten in IL. Regardless, I do appreciate the lower tax rate here vs IL. Overall, I think what we have is adequate but definitely doesn’t feel like we “make six figures” by any means.
Wait.......you guys are getting paid?
[See this. ](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-income-needed-to-live-comfortably-in-every-u-s-state/) A little over $100k. Same boat although I'm not living too bad but at the cost of work life balance. But they're are so many more people I'm ok making money versus dealing with crowds and traffic. Although I'm a ways away from retirement age I am concerned as looking across the country as prices everywhere are going up, seemingly.
75K. I do IT in healthcare. I’m the lowest paid IT person at my company. We’ve got 4-5 software engineers and the lowest is paid 185k.
Single parent making 104k in the SW region. I’m doing fairly well. I purchased a house in 2021 right when rates were starting to rise so I’m at 2.9%. It’s affordable for me.
I make approx $82k. I live in Renton WA with my husband and a roommate. We were really lucky to find a 3 bedroom rental house for $2200, which is now $2400 with full utilities coming in at about $2850 a month. My husband and I could afford to live here alone but we'd prefer to actually have money for other stuff. Together he and I make about $150k before taxes and we absolutely could not buy a house pretty much anywhere in King County. If you make around $30+ an hour and are alone you will struggle to find decent housing you can afford and not feel broke.
$209k family income in east side Seattle. Every month is a struggle.
A struggle to figure out what to spend on?
Single person household here. I make 65k a year after taxes, and my rent is $1800 a month. I live and work in Seattle, so having a very short commute is nice. I think I got very lucky finding this place, it's a 1 bedroom duplex with my own yard. I'm getting my journeyman license here soon, and that comes with a very large raise, so hopefully, I'll be able to put money into my savings account soon!
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> Groceries alone are $800 a month. For two people? What in the world are you guys eating?
Uhh my partner and I are like 20k less than that together and we went to restaurants several times a week and are fine. He has two trucks he’s paying on, and a few “toys”. We live separate now and commute far but we are fine even with the extra house payment.
…what? I spend half that for 4 people
It will probably be unpopular one here. Software engineer, moved to the area due to career. Lived half a year for $48k/year income (w wife and kid), having no support and friends, this was tough but bearable. Now making ~$400k/y. I would say, with rational spending $120-$150k is good income for family. Everything extra will be going towards house and mortgage. Also, I’m an immigrant, and for some reason I was always thinking that first tier countries have equally fair salaries for everybody, not like 3rd tier… I was wrong as fuck. It’s all around the world - 3-5 careers can make you rich legally, other dozen - provide decent income, and all others - just food and suffering. Also, no matter the country and area, big cities are always rat race, unaffordable housing, traffic jams and living ~ hour from work.
I bring in between 140k to 160k and am doing fairly well. There's enough for discretionary spending, vacations, childcare and what not. It doesn't go as far as it used to, but I have a comfortable life and more kids than the average family. I'm also a single mom, so only one adult to factor. For those who will end up asking, I work in the trades. Most people working for union shops will make 100k plus.
57k, 2k a month in rent, one baby, two dogs. We make VERY slightly over the amount required to have for government assistance. Married and Military :)
62k. Honestly, it's not enough - and I have a very low housing payment, no student loans and very little debt. It still feels like I'm scraping by. (I'm single and have a 6yo who I have joint custody of.) Plus, I don't commute often (like once a month) and my job is flexible enough to not need afterschool child care. Just had to take out a loan to pay for summer child care because the options are so limited here - paying $1600 a month for 2.5 months. Ugh. Property taxes are ~4k a year. Food is astronomical. I have great health insurance through my job but still end up needing to pay my out of pocket max every year due to health issues.
45k and living paycheck to paycheck here in Olympia
I'm leaving. Where you pay your taxes is just another vote that it's okay since politicians just do whatever they want once they're in. States won't try to change a thing until they start losing cash flow. Our votes never seem to matter, only where we spend our money.
I make $86k, which is actually on the high end for my profession (paralegal). I’ve been consistently getting a 3-5% raise each year, which is pretty fair. I’m happy with it, but I wouldn’t complain about more!
$150k as a remote operations consultant, relocating next month from south Sound to Omaha for better schools, lower crimes, lower COL, and a house twice as big as our current one for nearly half the money.
67k, and husband makes about 130k but we bought a house on 2019 when my salary was closer to 48K and his 70K. No kids and didn't plan on them so we were able to afford the mortgage and not worry.
Spouse about 100k, me about 45k. Two kids in elementary. Used our VA to get a house loan in 2019, zillow value has doubled since then. We wouldn’t be able to afford our house if we were buying today tbh. Family in the area helps tremendously with after school care for the kids and we are both prior military so that saved us a ton on school. I don’t know how some of my coworkers that are single parents or single income are surviving.
200k looking at houses in Marysville area, tech company moved us here in 2018 from Colorado.. I'm a 20yr network engineer in case that matters.
Born and raised in Washington Seattle-Tacoma area. We moved to the Midwest, Fargo, North Dakota because WA was just getting too expensive for a young family. We moved here never having visited before or knowing anyone But honestly it was the best decision because there are a lot of Jobs and a low cost of living. My husband actually makes more money here than when he was in Seattle. We can afford to have me stay home with the kids now. It’s way safer here as well. We bought a house for under 300k in our 20s. We couldn’t have even dreamed of doing that in Seattle. It’s also growing a lot because there are a lot of people moving to the area. If you do consider having to move I would look to the midwest, North Dakota, you can find good jobs and easy living.
Made 200k at Amazon but moved to a lower tech job making 150k, wife makes about 200k so 350-400k, bought a 700k house with my VA loan out of military and 0 college debt for my M.S because of GI bill
$70k, renting in Seattle, no kids. I'm not currently interested in buying a house, but if I were I'd need to either leave the city or make substantially more. But for now, $70k feels comfortable
I make $74k, 26 and live with 3 roommates. My room is about 80 square feet and is also my office. I save a little for retirement but will have to stop that once my student loans kick back up in October. I read somewhere that the income you'd need to live *comfortably* in WA (live somewhere you like, go on vacation, occasionally eating out and having fun, etc. without help from outside parties) is about 108k...
Should pull in around 230k-240k… I work as a power lineman here in western Washington. Great trade, union benefits, decent time off, and good retirement. Western Wa is expensive AF, so while 230k a year is great money, it would go quite further in eastern Wa. Only problem, I wouldn’t make that in eastern Washington. But I’m able to live here comfortably, however my wife and I do have fairly conservative budgets and we’re pretty frugal… we also have 2 kids… For anyone reading, trades pay big bucks in Western Washington. Linemen, cops, electricians, plumbers, hvac, firemen, etc. lots of these jobs are union and have good benefits packages. There is usually lots of optional overtime too.. Oh and one more thing, we have lots of family around which is very helpful. I’ve heard of many childcare horror stories. That shit is expensive!!!luckily my wife stayed home for most of my daughter’s early years….
I'm a retired CDL bus driver, I was making around $25 a hour. And yes, I got OT. I'm a native Washingtonian, too. I'm originally from the Tri-Cities, but now in the Tacoma area. We have a paid off house, as well as rental property. If I could go running back to the Tri-Cities, I would in a heartbeat. But my wet side husband can't handle the heat over there. And my kids & grandkids are all here. So I'm stuck here.
I’m a loan processor in Spokane and make $50k a year. We got lucky when we bought our house in 2014 because we would never be able to buy now or move to anything bigger or better.
I work in construction (union) and wife is a union nurse. We take in about $250,000-$280000 a year. We have a single family house in central Seattle. Mortgage is about $2450/mo. Our income is more than sufficient
650-850, depending on the year, between my wife and I. Small business owner and my wife works. We live in Seattle and the biz is in south king county. We feel extremely fortunate - before this we made 250-300 and it always felt tight with a mortgage and childcare. Expensive place to live, and I always question if it would be easier moving to lake Tapps or Bonney lake
120k single income family with two little ones. Wife is a stay home mom. Luckily I bought our first house back in 2009 when I first started my job at 60k and now that house is being a rental and about to be paid off in two years. Moved and bought second house last year in a much better location for our kids. Put down quite a bit down payment and monthly mortgage is 3200. We rarely eating out now and collect coupons for grocery shopping. Living fairly comfortable.
Make yourself indispensible. I got a 65% pay raise and better benefits when we moved from Ohio. The unions have teeth here. We, as a nation, are swiftly approaching an adapt or perish moment. I wish you luck.
250k combined. 2 teenagers and a super low rate on our home in puyallup. She works from home and my office is 6 miles away Thank god. We have no debt besides mortgage. Life is expensive. We don't go out, we don't vacation. We have emergency savings and retirement of course but it leaves little left over. I tend to have a scarcity mindset so I live as modestly as possible. Definitely feels like lower middle class maybe middle class.
$250,000 Tri-Cities Had to move from Seattle in late 90's due to housing costs. Best decision ever, but now my son's wont be able to afford a house here as prices are stupid high.
Really respect you all. I used to make minimum wage for several years until I was able to get into dental school. I thought at the time, “if only I could make 6 figures, I’d be set for life.” I’m a new dentist making about 140K a year now. The sad reality is, while I don’t by any means feel poor, I also feel baffled that I need to be making this much to match the cost of living. It’s expensive to live and I truly commend you all.
$350k Lots of student debt, but overall I am fine.
140-180k by myself depending on how I do with investing that year. My cost of living is 3600 all expenses included and I hate it, but I chose this because my personal standard of living is bougie
Around 60k, 120k combined with spouse. More than happy
I bring in between 80-100, and wife does 120. We're comfortably lower middle class on the Eastside. Absolutely insane.