Wow, so far I think we have a really wide array of incomes and situations and we’re not even to 50 posts yet!
I’m a 29yo single female living in a suburban town between Cleveland and Akron, OH.
I have a $150,000 house that I bought in 2005. $15,000 down.
My mortgage is about $945/mo (including insurance, tax, etc) but I pay $1000/mo.
I pay about $300/mo for utilities. Maybe less (I budget that much)
I make $47,000/year running my own Web design company.
The company pays all my medical bills (not much per year)
I do not have any perks or retirement funds or investments.
I am in $2600 of credit card debt (to be paid off in the next 2 months)
I owe $5k to my grandpa yet for my home downpayment (to be paid off in the next 6 months)
I have no student loans.
I own outright a 2004 Ford Escape that I paid about $21k for.
I am a 35 year old man, married to a 33 year old woman. I am a non commission based financial planner, my wife is an economist who works for the Federal Government. I make $95,000 with an annual bonus of 20-100% of my salary. She makes $98,000. I love my job and work a lot of hours, but it is hard to find a non-sales oriented financial planning job and I don’t plan to leave unless I am escorted out the door by security.
We live in the Virginia suburbs outside of DC and own our house, which is worth around $500,000. Our mortgage is $3,000 with taxes and insurance.
We have no debt outside of our home and honestly I have very little idea as to how much I spend for utilities and the like. We are doing well on savings and are building some retirement savings early. We still spend way too much on eating out, but there is a baby on the way which should change that substantially.
My employer puts 15% of my salary into a retirement account for me each year. That goes up to 18% shortly and caps out at 20%. Her’s matches the first 5% she contributes and she gets a pension at retirement equal to 1% of her pay for every year she works.
I hate to say this, but too many times some Doper has taken it upon themselves to play detective with all personal info submitted, then “out” someone after they guess who it “really” is.
Well, then it’s a good thing you didn’t.
I’d like to think the folks that did at least contemplated this before posting.
As for me, well, I just fell off the turnip truck, and if I had a nickel for every unwise thing I did, I might have a little more savings. Guess I’ll go take my SSN off of my MySpace page.
29 yr old female, here, Married & living in Columbus OH. I live with my husband & 2 roomates. I work outsource for an ISP & support their phone, high speed internet & security software. I would rather not reveal my income level, suffice it to say we’re not rich…
Wow. This is an amazing amount of candor; I assumed the subject matter would be touchy enough that it might quickly degenerate or fizzle out.
Me: Male, mid-40s, single. I live in the ‘South Bay’ of Los Angeles, which is quiet, cramped, beautiful and safe. I work in the defense industry: “gray-beard guy with physics degree helping the software people make useful things.”
Salary: I can’t bring myself to say the number. I earn far more than I’d ever dreamed, but I grew up on welfare and AFDC, so my dreams were embarrassingly humble. My company matches 50% of the first 6% I put into my 401K. Add my savings, and my net worth is a little less than $400K, which I think is low, given my age. I also qualify for a small, defined-benefit pension, but the numbers are slightly lower than what I’ll get from SS, should SS still exist when I retire.
I rent a small, inexpensive apartment very close to the beach, drive an 11-year-old Acura Integra, commute 6.5 miles to work, never cook and lead a fairly boring life, except that since I’m scared of so many, many things, I interpret my life as very stressful and often terrifying.
Monthly expenses:
$3000 into 401K & other savings (Suze Orman told me to pay myself first, and on this point I agree with her)
$1000 rent
$600 medical/psychological/psychiatric/meds
$250 food
$250-$400 for DVDs & shiny things
$110 for DirecTV
$70 cell phone
$70 internet
$120 car/motorcycle/renter’s insurance
$60 laundry (I drop it off)
$50 electricity; pocket change for natural gas
$40 gasoline
Age, Sex, Location, Occupation, and Income
28-yo male, live in Iceland, work as a purchaser and make a bit over 60k a year w 3 years experience. They match my retirement savings (4% of gross earnings paid by me - 4% by them) and lots of social services is “free” here that I guess cost money in the States.
Taxes on income are close to 30%
Car
1998 Opel Astra - paid in cash.
**
Rent and Utilities**
Renting a 1 br apartment - $850 (which is kinda cheap). All utilities and internet included.
Insurance: $150/month
Food - no idea but several hundred a month (I eat out a lot)
I’m not sure what someone could do with the information even if they did figure out exactly who I am and where I live. If they know me, they could already make some pretty reasonable guesses about my finances anyway.
Exactly. I am sure that one day someone will explain why it is unwise, but I have thought about it and I am pretty sure you take more risk with your identity when buying something from a small business on the internet with a credit card. I will never be the type of poster that inspires controversy so the odds I get a stalker are miniscule.
Anyway this is a cool thread and given my job I am fascinated. For anyone who cares to, I would love to know retirement savings, so I can get an idea across a broad cross section of a population.
I agree - and I’m usually pretty uptight about my privacy.
Anyone who knows my profession and the town I live in could make a pretty good guess at my income/house value - tho they would not know the amount of debt I carry or my savings. Hell, my salary is a matter of public record, and if you have my address you can look up a comp for my house any number of places.
This is a really interesting thread, so I thought I’d join in.
43 year old female living in the UK; married with 2 children under 12. I’m a middle manager (I don’t want to be any more specific than that) and my husband is an IT Consultant.
In the last financial year I earned £40, 000 gross ($78,720 US) and £29,000 ($57,072) after tax. My husband earned around £35,000 after tax. I have a generous pension plan in that my employer pays all contributions. My tax payments cover welfare/NHS contributions as well as income tax, so there are no further deductions from my salary. Like Worm the Red mentioned, taxes are high but cover stuff I would otherwise have to pay out for (such as healthcare). In addition the government gives me approx £130 per month because I have 2 kids. Everyone with children gets this, regardless of income. In fact it’s the only welfare payment I have ever qualified for (!) It’s our holiday fund I get 6 weeks of that per year and go abroad (usually) for 2 of those.
Cars- one Ford Focus 2002 vintage and one Mazda somethingorother slightly older.
We own a large (by UK standards) 4 bed house and have an outstanding mortgage of around £115,000. We pay around £1100 per month off the mortgage. This is a bit higher than we need to because we want to pay it off a bit quicker. We’ve lived here for 12 years.
The cost of living is pretty high - we spend around £100 per week on groceries, sometimes more. Petrol is ridiculously expensive too mainly due to the vast tax on it. It costs me £50 every time I fill up my fairly modest sized car.
We pay off our credit card each month and have no debts to speak of (other than out mortgage). We are not rich by any means but neither are we poor.
People dance around the subject, but there are clues… When someone remarks, “Hmm. They didn’t take any money out for Social Security in my last check,” you know their base salary. A guy I work with made the mistake of calculating out loud the monthly cost of his property taxes. Almost without pause, another guy said, “So, you have $2.1 million in assessed real estate, huh?” And anyone mentioning that they didn’t get a stimulus check has told you, at least in broad terms, whether or not they’ll be up against the wall when the revolution comes.
But why jealously guard one’s salary? Over the years, I’ve found out the salaries of some of my cow-orkers. My reactions have been:
[ol][li]Well, good! You deserve it; I’m glad they see that.[/li][li]Um, I’ve been meaning to tell you. You’re suffering from a PR issue. There seems to be an impression in management that you’re a little unreliable.[/li][li]Dude, take English as a Second Language. It’s holding you back so much.[/li][li]Motherf***er! What is he doing? (Much later: What can I learn from this?)[/li][li]Okay; now I’m pissed. (This caused me to, for the one and only time, to write a number on a piece of paper, hand it to my department manager and say, “If I’m not earning that by the end of next year, I’m going to have to look seriously at my options. I do NOT have another job offer and would never do anything until Project XXX is delivered. But the way I am, if I go through the process, by the time I give my two weeks’ notice, it will be an irrevocable decision.” – Kids, don’t try this at home! It was kinda stupid, and there were some special circumstances that made this a little less than criminally stupid. I think an important factor was that I gave the impression that I was feeling guilty about making a stir.)[/ol] [/li]
I think the people who most benefit from the silence is the employers. They strive to figure out, for each employee, the minimum $$ they need to pay to keep you from quitting.
I’m 39 and married. I work as a biologist / environmental project manager for the Federal Government. My salary is just under $100,000 and the government picks up most of the health insurance premium. My wife does not work.
We’re just about to close on a house. 30-yr fixed, 10% down will put the monthly prinicipal/interest/taxes at about $2,600.
Car payment for my wife’s car is $350. This will be paid off in 5 months, but I’ll probably take on another similar payment to replace the old junker I drive.
We’ll be putting her son through college, but we have a 529 college fund to take care of that.
Absolutely no credit card or other revolving debt.
The above comes out several hundred more than my take-home, but I cover it from the profit I made on selling my previous house. I’ve got quite a bit of additional promotion potential and the price we’re paying for the house is such a steal I almost feel sorry for the bank who is selling it to me. (Almost.)
Retirement? I’ve got the typical pension plan and the government matches my 5% contribution to the Thrift Savings Plan (like a 401-k). It’s building nicely. I expect the house will be a very good investment. After I retire from the gov, I will be quite marketable in private consulting. I’ve also got some stocks and a rare book collection that (I hope) will be worth more as time goes on.
I do jealously guard my salary at work, and I don’t want to know what other people make either. We have a published range chart by position level, but personally I don’t want to know others’ position levels either. If someone comes into a position that’s been posted, yes, I will know but I don’t know where in the range it falls.
But you’re right–it does indirectly come out. I was thinking of moving to NH and my friend said I need to factor in the drop in state taxes when considering rent. She thought it should be $300 and in fact it’s $175. I had inadvertantly seen her approximate salary (through no fault of my own) and I see why the difference!!
But here? No big deal to share generic info.
As mentioned, I’m 40 and I have about $70K in retirement, from ten years of employer and employee contributions (ranging from 6% to 20% of salary). It’s in a growth thingie right now but of course it fell screamingly last quarter. It will just be me retiring so maybe I will have some chance of supporting myself modestly.
I’m a 40 year old lawyer working at a firm in downtown Toronto. I have a wife of the same age who is a financial editor and a 2 and a half year old son.
I expect to earn, in salary and bonus, between $230,000 and $276,000 (depending on bonus) and my wife earns around $70,000 - so a before-tax family income of between $300,000 - $346,000.
Three years ago we bought a house for $660,000, taking a $325,000 mortgage and paying the rest down. My mortgage payments are $1,250 every two weeks, plus I have been making extra payments - I hope to have it paid off in 4 years or so (I’m down to $190,000).
We drive a used Ford Taurus we bought second hand.
My yearly budget is something like this, off the top of my head:
mortgage payments: $32,500
extra payments to principal: $24,000
savings in RRSP: $25,000
Nanny salary: aprox. $16,000
House improvements: $10,000
Property tax: $6,000
Insurance (house, life, car): $2,000
Utilities: say around $2,000
Gym membership, trainer: $3,000
Groceries, toddler toys, gas, transit: $13,000
Clothes, books, entertainment etc: $10,000
Vacations: $4,000
Education savings fund for kid: $2,000
Savings for new car, house addition, etc.: everything else
No doubt there are a bunch of things I’m forgetting and many numbers are extremely approximate.
61-year old male, Alaska, presently working as a quality control manager for about $100K/year. My spouse is a property manager, underpaid at about $60K/year.
We live in a 2000 sq.ft. condo, drive a 2-year old car, own a 4-year old RV and have zero debt (as in nada). I have no idea what our annual expenses are, as my wife does the finances and I do the investments. I know that our monthly credit card estimate is about $3-4K, and we put most everything on that card (food, gas, whatever). We pay a couple hundred a month for condo fees and annual property taxes are about $3,000 (but there’s no state income tax and we both get a check every year from oil royalties, net taxes = zero).
Net assets from retirement accounts and investments, including the condo, is about $1.4 million. I’m working at what I hope is my last full-time job. The condo and the car will be up for sale next summer.
I’m a 30 year old male, living in the suburbs of Chicago. I’ve been in the business world for 8 years and currently am an analyst with a major retailer. I currently make in the mid-$50’s and live alone in a one bedroom apartment. I contribute 8% to my 401K, of which my employer matches 3%, for a total of 11%. My major monthly expenses:
I get 6 weeks of that per year and go abroad (usually) for 2 of those.