MrsHaloFIRE
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 929
https://www.financialsamurai.com/when-earning-one-million-a-year-is-not-enough/
pulled this from reddit.
pulled this from reddit.
Please give a summary or quote and not just the link.
+1Please give a summary or quote and not just the link.
From the endingIn this post, I’d like to explore the lifestyle of a typical $1 million income-earning household living in New York City. They’ve anonymously shared with me their expenses, and I’ve done my best to tell their story without sharing their exact details.
They recognize they are extremely fortunate, and for the most part, they are happy. The Chens just wonder whether the grind is worth it, especially when they see friends from high school leading happy lives on much less.
The only way to live a freer life is to drastically reduce expenses, change their lifestyle completely, or accumulate at least 20X their annual expenses in net worth. At their current $500,000 annual burn rate, Rachel will truly need to work another 15 years to finally experience the joys of financial freedom.
What surprises me is the property tax rate. Mine is twice that and I'm in an ordinary home in flyover country. I guess I expected the rate in NYC to be much higher.
Two cars in Manhattan? That, and 2 kids in private school, 3 vacations a year, and their food+enterntainment expenses are what blow my mind. I guess the subway is beneath them (literally and figuratively!).
+1
And they spent $24K for clothes? Prada? Gucci? What are they trying to prove, why, and to whom? That screams of junior high school level insecurity to me.
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+1
It ALL blows my mind. $18K fees for the country club PLUS $15K on sports, fitness, music lessons, etc?
$2167/month in car payments, plus $267/month for gas? I thought they lived in Manhattan where everything is nearby and nobody drives. I mean, from what I understand, that's the whole point of living in Manhattan. I just live in a suburb, and so far this year (driving everywhere I could possibly want to go), I have spend an average of $30/month on gas. It was about the same when I was still working.
And they spent $24K for clothes? Prada? Gucci? What are they trying to prove, why, and to whom? That screams of junior high school level insecurity to me.
They have taken "Blow that Dough" to a new level. I thought I'd look at their budget and maybe get some ideas (since I have some excess to spend), but I just don't see anything there for me.
The professional that doesn’t need the money can’t be relied on to do whatever it takes to drum up new business or make the quarterly corporate targets, and has no place among the senior management of US business.
What surprises me is the property tax rate. Mine is twice that and I'm in an ordinary home in flyover country. I guess I expected the rate in NYC to be much higher.
On paper, everything looks great for the Chens. Yet, Rachel tells me she doesn’t know if it’s worth working 65 hours a week for the next 15 years. Even the finest lobster at Le Bernardin or the most picturesque luxury villa off the Almalfi Coast gets old after a while.
Rachel sees a therapist every other week to help her manage the constant pressure she feels to provide for her family, outperform her peers, and outperform the markets. The market takes no prisoners and every month she starts with incredible anxiety. This type of pressure has begun to pulverize what little peace and quiet she has left inside. She’s also recently begun to develop heart palpitations, which has her worried.
Colin also sees a therapist once a month to help him get through his feelings of unworthiness for being a stay at home father. Although he’s truly a great dad, he often feels gutted to have given up his career. None of his friends, who all work, understand what he’s going through. He feels isolated and occasionally depressed. Sometimes he gets jealous of Rachel’s success, which leads to fights.
+1
It ALL blows my mind. $18K fees for the country club PLUS $15K on sports, fitness, music lessons, etc?
$2167/month in car payments, plus $267/month for gas? I thought they lived in Manhattan where everything is nearby and nobody drives. I mean, from what I understand, that's the whole point of living in Manhattan. I just live in a suburb, and so far this year (driving everywhere I could possibly want to go), I have spend an average of $30/month on gas. It was about the same when I was still working.
And they spent $24K for clothes? Prada? Gucci? What are they trying to prove, why, and to whom? That screams of junior high school level insecurity to me.
They have taken "Blow that Dough" to a new level. I thought I'd look at their budget and maybe get some ideas (since I have some excess to spend), but I just don't see anything there for me.