• college debt
• car debt (public transit has been actively dismantled by oil and car lobby in past 100 years) forcing most people to have to go into hock for a car.
• medical debt because think of the profits
• educational debt - public education that could lead to a populace making better decisions about finance has been deliberately and now almost completely destroyed. We're going to put crosses in schools but definitely remove math requirements for HS diplomas.
• predatory, colluding landlord practices combined with corporate funds now accounting for 30+% of all residential real estate purchases. Accelerates affordability crisis and related issues

That's just the starter pack for the US.

Congrats on living in what is likely a low COL area, but many are concentrated in HCOL areas in the US and elsewhere. Look at Vancouver BC and Toronto, same deal in Canada. US has that as well combined with above.

Straight up no idea how you're doing that - genuinely you should be proud of your budgeting.

My partner and I live quite comfortably admittedly, but we rarely buy "things" - our biggest discretionary spending by far is on higher quality food. Our net expenses last year was around 65k CAD.

24k went to housing, around 20k went into investments and savings, and the last 20k was on "everything else", including discretionary spending. We live comfortably but not nearly extravagantly and our expenses floor for the two of us is probably 40k... let alone adding two kids.

And we live in an incredibly cheap city compared to Vancouver/Toronto!

In HCOL areas, 150k/yr can be barely above poverty level. (See SF as an example, poverty income for a single earner is ~118k USD)

Given the number of those kind of areas, and the cost of rent now, it makes perfect sense.

We live off way less then that. And bills are getting paid. I want to see what they're spending their money on.

I imagine a lot of people making that much did exactly what I did. Over-leverage but temporarily. House poor basically.

When COVID hit I was renting in the bay area with my girlfriend. During lockdown I proposed, and after deciding we want a family, decided to take our bay area salaries elsewhere to buy a house.

We traded our 3k rent for a 2k mortgage with 1k insurance and taxes. Even.

But, leaving the bay we needed cars. My one little two seater wasn't going to do it, we're starting a family. So we got two larger cars, right when the market was inflated. Financed both of them.

The new big property we got has a little barn, let's renovate that into an ADU for guests and to generate rent. Didn't have the cash on hand so took out another loan about the same as a car to fix that up.

Now we're strapped, basically living month to month. But those secondary loans were all 5 year loans, so in 2 more years they're paid off, freeing up about $3k per month.

I basically don't think any of these articles about people making that kind of salary are taking into account how weird a time covid was. Lots of people made big changes while interes rates were low, purposely over-leveraging themselves. It also gave everyone this yolo attitude as well, like fuck it all, treat yourself.

I'd be more interested to revisit this in 2027 when any 5 or 6 year car loans and secondary loans taken out during the record low rates are all paid off.

It is very difficult to do. You really do have to be over-leveraged and bad with money. Which is probably why 99.966% of households making 150k+ are showing up as not delinquent on loans in these data.

most likely irresponsible decision: buying some expensive toys like new cars, new flagship phones, shopping eating out everyday, it adds up, getting yourself scammed. i know people who are in this income range and they do this, despite telling them the SO is spending shit ton on eating out and shopping, but one of them is a pushover, so it falls on deaf ears. if your eating out everyday it adds up, like 70-100$(restaurants)/day+gas+ shopping , not to mention yearly taxes/ monthlyutility bills. you can afford to do this if you earn like twice that much, or a million/year. but not at the low 100k/yr income.

i highly suspect its mostly eating out everyday, which can amount in the 10s of thousands per YEAR of just take out food, and restuarants. 30-40k/year on average if people are eating out.

Yeah, lifestyle inflation is a a problem that so, so many people put themselves into.

They are living paycheck to paycheck, get that nice new job earning 3x as much. And instead of paying off their debt and getting into a very cosy financial space; they instantly start spending 3x as much money on stuff, and now they are suddenly living paycheck to paycheck again.