I'd agree that's not rich, but plenty of people can and do survive on that. Obviously it varies from area to area, but 35% of households in the US make under 3

I'd agree that's not rich, but plenty of people can and do survive on that. Obviously it varies from area to area, but 35% of households in the US make under 30,000 a year. And that's not all just twenty-two year-olds fresh out of school. The thing is, whenever this comes up on a tech site, software engineers don't realize how much money they really do make. If you look at the median household income anywhere, it's shockingly low. ( $38,000 in NYC? $60,000 in San Fran proper? ) I guarantee that if most people here looked at the median income in their region, their jaws would drop at the thought of families getting by on that. But somehow they are. (Not that this has anything to do with FU money. It's just a pet peeve of mine whenever 'money needed to live' comes up in a group of highly-skilled highly-paid people, and they don't realize how good they have it.)