40-year-old homeowner says economy doesn’t add up: ‘I’m making the most money I’ve ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck’
40-year-old homeowner says economy doesn’t add up: ‘I’m making the most money I’ve ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck’
'I’m making the most money I've ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck'
“There's this wild disconnect between what people are experiencing and what economists are experiencing,” says Nikki Cimino, a recruiter in Denver.
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Her mortgage is $1650/mo, which is incredibly reasonable in Denver. I think this specific person's problems have more to do with her recent divorce. She was used to splitting costs, and probably spent quite a bit on the divorce itself
She's paying $1650 for a house? You'd pay more for a house in a neighborhood where every night is the purge here.
That's supply and demand, for you.
...that's more than I'd make with minimum wage in my state, which I don't think is that far behind colorado. Yikes.
ETA: ok nvm I did math and if you make a little over $10/hr 40 hrs a week, your entire paycheck would go just toward that.
You're still off unfortunately.
Full time at $10/hr is $1600/month before income tax. For simplicity, we'll say federal+state tax is 15% so now we're at $1360. Social security is 6.2% so take away another $100.
Then, of course, this is the United States where most people have to rely on their employees for "affordable" health insurance - and often still have money taken out of their check for it.
So now we're at $1000-1260 monthly take home pay for a full time job at $10/hr
The standard deduction is $13850 so there's no way you're paying 15% tax on an income of $20,000
You're paying about a little over $600 federal plus whatever state tax and usually state tax is less than federal, but depends on the state. In some states you don't pay state income taxes.
So best case scenario you pay a little over 3% federal and no state.
At that salary you'd also get EIC and likely pay no taxes at all.
Someone making minimum wage is unfortunately not likely to be getting a mortgage.
It's always been pretty interesting to me how crazy the price of living changes. $1650 a month for a house seems insane to me.
$1650/mo for a mortgage in Denver, CO at 5.25% interest is a fantastic price. You're going to find it can be a lot less in a lot of places in the US, but not in highly desirable major metropolitan areas
lol i'm looking at paying ~4500/mo for a 3br 2ba ~1300sqft.
That is absolutely ridiculous
You must be in an area like SF or NYC. Or this is a luxury space.
Greater boston area, not inside boston. Malden/Medford/Everett/Chelsea area. Everett and Chelsea are NOT desirable.
The smallest of places are 650k+ here for 2br minimum. You can find 1br condos for 500-600k sometimes.
We're talking about 20-100yo+ homes. Not new construction. There's no "luxury" involved. No yard or acreage. Often no parking included.
At a certain point - isn't it just cheaper to move to a cheaper area?
Not that it's easy. It's what I had to do. 6 hours away from friends/family.
Wages took a 25% hit. Bills took a >50% hit so came up on top.
Wife refuses.
In order to keep your mortgage at 1/3 your income, you would need to be making $700,000/yr.
You're calculating it based on take home pay or something? because 1/3rd of 700,000 / 12 = $19,250/mo
Household income is about 230k. Mortgage comes out to less than 50% of take home pay. 230k/12 = 19166/mo (gross) 4500 is 23% of gross income.
Afaik every couple around here by 30 with professional experience and a degree is making over 200k (so 100k per person.) I've seen IT support roles for 100k+ (example from the highest paying company i've ever seen, liberty mutual insurance: https://searchjobs.libertymutualgroup.com/careers?location=Boston%2C Massachusetts%2C United States&department=Technology&pid=618496295577&domain=libertymutual.com&sort_by=relevance )
Nah I'm probably just dumb and did the math wrong. Those figures are still dizzying to me, as a BA in the Midwest. $100,000/yr is considered pretty decently middle class, I can't imagine anyone here paying $4,500/mo on rent. Maybe I'm just very lucky.
A room is basically ~1k/mo here if you're renting with roommates, maybe up to 1500 if the place is really nice. 1800 for a studio, give or take.
Entry level roles are usually 60kish+ but everybody hits 100k very quickly in any kind of white collar gig. With the pharma industry being here a huge portion of roles in greater Boston are pharma or pharma adjacent with 200k-400k salaries(+bonus/options) which drive up the cost of housing like crazy. Plus some finance and legal too. There's a few ad agencies, plenty of healthcare companies and some world class hospitals. Plus a significant amount of highly desirable colleges that lure in the rich foreign exchange students. It makes for a really expensive housing situation unfortunately.
$1650/mo hopefully includes taxes and homeowners insurance
Yes, mortgages include an escrow payment for these
I pay more than $2k for a 1-bed apartment in Seattle. Would love that rate for sure.
As someone with mortage of 520€/month there's nothing reasonable in what she's paying. I don't care if it comes with 6 bedrooms, a maid, cook, gardener and a chauffeur - I'm not paying that. I'm more than fine in my tiny granny cottage on the outskirts of a middle sized city.
You couldn't rent a shack that had a floor made of perpetual dirty needles for $520/month near me.