Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I sincerely doubt it.

 Frazzled wrote:

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
If you have a family of 4 (wife, two children) would put you in the poverty level.

Corrected your typo

Poverty, at any income stream. Little rugrat vacuums!

I missed this gem--and it gave me a good chuckle. I absolutely agree, regardless of what your W2 says---kids definitely drive you to want more salary .

 AgeOfEgos wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
If you have a family of 4 (wife, two children) would put you in the poverty level.

Corrected your typo

Poverty, at any income stream. Little rugrat vacuums!

I missed this gem--and it gave me a good chuckle. I absolutely agree, regardless of what your W2 says---kids definitely drive you to want more salary .

Kids and a spouse.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:

Mortgage: 700/month (assume a 100k home in the Midwest with good credit scores)
Utilities: 225/month (assume summer spike of electricity, winter spike of gas---and a decent energy consuming home--and no heavy water usage)
Health Insurance: 580/month (assume family coverage with dental/eye/I'm not going to go bankrupt if I haven't met my max out of pocket)
Gas: 150/month
Groceries: 500/month (Assume frugal spending here--no eating out)
Phone (Landline or cell): 20/month (I know this is low--but this will hopefully keep the "You don't need a cell phone crowd" away). I do consider cell phone plans (just cheap ones) a necessity for life now. They save lives and I would rather subsidize someone's 20/month phone service then die on their lawn because they can't dial 911.
Trash/Sewer: 25/month
Out of pocket "Life happens" moments: 200/month (Sick kid copay/medication, tire blows out, home window breakage, whatever)

That's 2400/month. That leaves you 800/month to save--if you skip out on cable TV, any luxury activities, retirement pay in, no credit card bills, no travel, no eating out---and assuming you have a 700/month mortgage (which is very likely low). And that's 50,000/year---over twice what they consider poverty level.

Not to mention clothes for the kids (as a child, I recall having a knack for burning through clothes fast), school fees if applicable, covering extracurricular activities for the kids such as BSA, school trips, or, god forbid, a musical instrument. I suppose the "your fridge is a luxury item" crowd would no doubt find those mostly luxury items, but I've seen kids who played with sticks their entire first 18 years, and as the risk of presuming what's best for other people's kids, they need something more going on above and beyond school. Don't get me wrong though, I played with sticks. My brother and I smacked the hell out of each other with some sticks. I think I still have scars. That doesn't change the fact that we only did that because we wanted to, not because there was nothing else to do. Idle minds are decaying minds. I guess you could count some of that as your "Life happens" budget.

You're also assuming a reasonable house in the midwest for which 50k/year seems to even be high per some of the salaries I've heard people making, and zero debt. Also, no car payment, no car insurance. My parents raised us on about 55k/year, which was pretty awesome for about 20 years ago, but dad also had a company car, which made having a single 8 year old vehicle paid off a long time ago much easier to pull off. It never occurred to me, logistically, how much easier it was on us for mom to still traffic us around or go get groceries for the 10-12 hours that dad was at or going to work.

One of my coworkers has two kids, and a stay at home wife. He makes roughly between 40-45k. I'm unsure of his complete financial situation, but he's told me that living as frugally as he can, he has about $50 a month to save or spend on emergencies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the cheapest cell phone plan I've seen is a T-Mobile one. $30/month, 100 min talk and unlimited data. The vast majority of my communication is email, and I have the talk for emergencies. That would probably be best for your estimate. That's per line effectively though. If I had a daughter, you can bet she'd have her own phone as early as about 12 or 13.

Wife is a GS14....first off

 Jihadin wrote:
Wife is a GS14....first off

No need to brag.

Edited by AgeOfEgos

Serious lack knowledge on pay rates of the US government

But since you made a asinine comment Grundz

We clear well over 10K after taxes a month

 Jihadin wrote:
Serious lack knowledge on pay rates of the US government

But since you made a asinine comment Grundz

We clear well over 10K after taxes a month

Serious question then: CAN you adopt someone over the age of 18?

Can you pretend to 18 years over again ....wait...whats coverage for kids under their parents plan under ACA? 27? Come hug Daddy Little D

edit 2

I'm so going to disappoint you as a Father...so later on in life you be in the Clock Tower....with a scope rifle...screaming how I wouldn't let you play 2nd base.....

edit 3

and we don't have to worry about child labor laws then

 Jihadin wrote:
Can you pretend to 18 years over again ....wait...whats coverage for kids under their parents plan under ACA? 27? Come hug Daddy Little D

Well, I WISH I could be 18 again. Maybe that counts? 27 still misses me by a couple years, but assuming I get to keep my current job, ACA isn't a concern either.

I'm so going to disappoint you as a Father...so later on in life you be in the Clock Tower....with a scope rifle...screaming how I wouldn't let you play 2nd base.....

Christ, that's dark.

and we don't have to worry about child labor laws then

I'll work for it. I don't mind.

I would so take the gas prices at age 18 though...and my Ford Terino...my very first car....

The article is a bit odd, and most likely is deliberately written that way to score points on Obama. I mean, yeah, warehousing jobs might not be part of Obama's new middle class, but warehouse jobs aren't the only jobs at Amazon and its a bit weird pretending they are.

 Grundz wrote:
In fact if you twist it more, all this scraping along and long hours cause stress and wear people out, hurting their health and eventually killing them, how many people do the rich kill in this way yearly?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110616193627.htm

"The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
I missed this gem--and it gave me a good chuckle. I absolutely agree, regardless of what your W2 says---kids definitely drive you to want more salary .

They also make getting that extra salary pointless, because you still never see any of it yourself

I did this job they're talking about. Its pretty demanding, but picking wasnt too bad. Just a lot of walking. All that really sucked was that it would get hot (warehouse was getting to 80 degrees when it was 10 degrees outside) and there was no music or anything to help pass the time. Other jobs though, like anything in receiving looked like a nightmare.

pay wasn't too bad, lord knows I've had worse jobs, but its way better than working retail. I would consider it a "get you by" job for people in college. Decent pay for a single guy if you can stand the hours. During the summer though that heat would be murder. I also don't see this as a job you could support a family with, there's just no way. You'd have to spend money on childcare because you would be way too tired to take care of them yourself.

Only other thing I remember about the job was that I spent around 50% of my time handling dildoes and shoes. I was starting to think that's all Amazon sold by the end of it. Ended up getting terminated because I had some unrelated medical issues that caused me to miss too many days.

I worked my way through college slinging dildos in a Amazon warehouse!

You whippersnappers don't know how good you have it!

I had a summer job lately....130+ heat...wearing tacticool body armor....running around at times....driving at times....looking for some insurgents name Akbar up in the mountains...towns...villages...valley....tunnels...rocks....never did find Akbar...a bunch of his friends we found though....they do this neat thing with a pressure cooker.....or maintain some of the dirtiest weapon...damn things still work....well.....it was Paradise.....especially living near the infamous "Poo Pond" of Kandahar

 Jihadin wrote:
Wife and mine income a month.......would make you all want for us to adopt you.....

Uncle Jihadin, if you adopt me, I come with my own guns *puppy dog eyes*

 djones520 wrote:
and then basic cost of items is significantly higher then what it is in the US.

That's not always our fault though.

Part of it is a relic of a bygone age when the USD to CAN conversion was closer to 1.5-1.6

Then our dollar got stronger while the US's got weaker but it took companies a long time to get away from that "$6 US, $10 Can" approach to pricing things.

Not to mention how smug I got to feel when we broke parity on the positive side for once in my lifetime. Now whenever I check we're usually hovering within 5 cents or so on either side.

Edit: obviously I'm talking about goods shipped across the boarder here, though. Yes, the fact the same McD's meal doubles in price (depending on where you're comparing) can be a bit grating.

Well, back on topic, 5000 jobs paying 11-13/hour in a city the size of Chattanooga is huge. That is on par with a large hospital or university opening in terms of economic influence.

Well since are are talking about a job in Chattanooga TN, let us look at the cost of living there.

If I made $30,000 in Eugene Oregon, I would only need to make $26,211 in Chattanooga, TN to afford the same lifestyle.

The primary difference was that housing is 32% less in TN. This is not a shock. I looked via the Century 21 website and found no end of 3 bedroom houses for around 20k-30k.

Meaning if you make $18k after taxes. If you got your wife to work a job for 2 years to help cover the bills, you would have your house paid off in 2 years.

Then you could look at having two kids, and using your income for whatever.

Sounds pretty good to me.

I didn't believe those numbers so I looked. Today I learned you can buy a house for $20,000, and a house you'd want to live in for $30,000.

As a New Yorker transplanted elsewhere, this is mind blowing.

 Ouze wrote:
I didn't believe those numbers so I looked. Today I learned you can buy a house for $20,000, and a house you'd want to live in for $30,000.

As a New Yorker transplanted elsewhere, this is mind blowing.

You're not talking about Detroit..eh?

But, yeah... NY/NJ area home prices are flat out ridiculous.

Bet it was a shocker for you when you moved to IA.

Hell, I've lived in the middle of Illinois and now St. Louis my entire life and I find this mindblowing.

If only we could develop a means of getting a house out of that area into a place you'd actually WANT to live.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I found an article herethat attempts to figure out where the middle-class starts and ends:

Plenty of smart people have taken a stab at that question. In the past few years, the "middle class" income range has been described as between $32,900 and $64,000 a year (a Pew Charitable Trusts study), between $50,800 and $122,000 (a U.S. Department of Commerce study), and between $20,600 and $102,000 (the U.S. Census Bureau's middle 60% of incomes).

Obviously, these discussions are highly reliant upon where you live. The idea that the middle class ends at $122K in the Philadelphia suburbs is fairly ridiculous. Two very average professional jobs doesn't make a couple upper class or lead to an upper class lifestyle here. I figure maybe the conversation begins around $180K in these parts, with $200K probably being a safer number.

 daedalus wrote:
Hell, I've lived in the middle of Illinois and now St. Louis my entire life and I find this mindblowing.

If only we could develop a means of getting a house out of that area into a place you'd actually WANT to live.

The area of Tennessee in question is actually kind of nice. Chattanooga is also within the economic spheres of Nashville and Atlanta.

 Ouze wrote:
I didn't believe those numbers so I looked. Today I learned you can buy a house for $20,000, and a house you'd want to live in for $30,000.

As a New Yorker transplanted elsewhere, this is mind blowing.

I'm flying to North of Chicago tonight for a house hunting trip this weekend, coincidentally. $30k won't cover jack in the neighborhoods I'm looking.

Keeping my fingers and toes cross for the wife to land a embassy job in Thailand.....my bennies alone will draw close to 100K baht.....


edit 2
She also put in for Aussie land......that might be bad....some silly Aussie going to try to scare me with a spider and he's coming out the house with two knives in the hand and three in the knee...now I would have to hunt down the spider on the house with a m1bayonet clenched between my teeth and a bowie ready to go.....wearing my boonie with Apocalypse Now playing in the back ground...

100k baht?

That's a lot of Go-Go girls!

I'm also half Thai so I can buy and own property there to and leave it in the Will for my daughter when I go to the pearly gates when they bury me with two turn tables at my feet...no Lady Boys....NO NO NO NO

 Jihadin wrote:
no Lady Boys....NO NO NO NO

Oh who hasn't made that "mistake" at least once?