Originally Posted by
NowCorporate
Ah yes....yet another pilot who judges from his moms rent-free basement.
If you think you will have 8.5K avail to keep up with the Joneses on 150K you may want to consider a few things you missed that most in the real world have to contend with:
- State taxes
- County taxes?
- City taxes?
- Property taxes (House/car/boat)
- Sales taxes
You are now down to about 50%
How about these:
- Retirement (oh yeah, that)
- Savings (got 1 years cash on hand?)
- College fund (little Johnny gonna get a scholarship?)
Now this:
- do you have any hobbies?
- do you eat?
- Do you wear clothes?
- have any pets?
- Cars break? (lets assume mommy bought you them and no payments)
- Do you buy gifts? (kids events, birthday, xmas?)
- Do you ever take a vacation?
- do you give back some to charity?
etc...etc.
Hold off on that new BWM Captain, lots to consider before worrying about keeping up with the Joneses. You should think more about keeping up with the migrant farm workers...as what they make in cash is about what you will have after you, the wife, and kiddies live like responsible SoCal citizens.
SoCal makes even other metro area look expensive as the semi-nice areas are right next to ghettos. Ghetto areas mean private schools, add 10K+ to your above notes. There is no driving a little further to live better/rural as I can reasonably do in the NY area etc. Taxes are horrendous compared to most. Any idea what it costs to register a car in SoCal? Its not my idea of a family area on 150K, not by ANY stretch.
Yes I think one CAN live on 150K anywhere...maybe not how I want to live, hence we (like most pilots?) have other income means...but the idea that you pay minumum federal tax and have the rest for a nice house and a golf club membership is a bit of a stretch.
Good Luck.
You know... condescension is a very ugly trait that is usually used to hide some sort of inadequacy. What's worse is that it shows complete lack of class. Hardly a good trait for a corporate pilot, even for one based in NY...
But I digress...
The housing in SoCal has really gone off the deep end, and that is the driving force indeed. But again, things boil down to individual choices. Do you have to drive a BMW, or will a Toyota do? Do you have to live in a 3500 square foot house, or will an apartment in a nice part of town do for the time being?
We lived in a gated community decent size apartment in coastal Orange County while the house I own elsewhere was rented out; my kids went to a decent school. We could ride bikes to the beach, or we could even walk as we lived about a mile from the beach, or we hopped in the car and drove down. We lived a rather active outdoorsy lifestyle (surfing, snowboarding, fishing off Catalina, road trips, etc.) and had a lot of fun in the process. All of this during the run-up in real estate prices, and I wasn't making anywhere near 150k.
See, what I've noticed in SoCal, and most notably in Orange County (think Newport Beach area) is that you have a lot of pretentious, self-centered, egotistical people who will drive themselves into major debt just to keep up with the Joneses for no other purpose than just for show, and live way outside their means because they have to show to others they live like millionaires.
If you've made your fortune and live within your means as a millionaire, good for you. In SoCal, you're right in that you can't live like a rockstar on 150k a year, but to compare a family living off of 150k with migrant workers is... a bit too dramatic, especially considering that median income for the region is substantially less, about a third actually.
You can have a nice middle class lifestyle in SoCal on 150k a year by living within your means, and anyone who tells you otherwise is... a bit of a drama queen.