| 32 years old, married, one child (another on the way), living in the Bay Area renting a house. My salary until May of this year was $120k. My wife is staying at home with our son so we're a single income family. Monthly expenses.. Rent: $1750, student loans: $225, credit card: ≈$2,000 (paid off in full each month) Savings... We have about $50k in 401k, $50k in a brokerage account, $20k in Lending Club and some mid term savings in the bank around $5-10k. I was having 15% post tax taken out for ESPP and 14% pre tax for 401k. The only loans we have are about $17k for my wife's schooling. We started paying cash for the last 2 years of it. We are pretty frugal in most areas which aren't important to us (don't go out to eat much) but it enables us to be generous in areas we are passionate about (paid $5k for a kid in Ghana to have heart surgery and gave my sister $12k as a gift since they're moving to do medical work in Africa). Our frugality also enabled me to quit my job and bootstrap a startup (going on 6 months at this point). It's interesting because it's normal (I think) to look at others and feel poor. The truth is that no one knows what a person's finances looks like. The guy driving a Mercedes and wearing nice clothes may or may not be doing so well. I wish people were more open about this stuff. |