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That’s not “salary before tax”, that’s $90k _net_, as in, living off the savings or $90k in post tax income. But it also has fairly generous budgets for groceri

That’s not “salary before tax”, that’s $90k _net_, as in, living off the savings or $90k in post tax income. But it also has fairly generous budgets for groceries ($2k/mo) and one $7k vacation a year, and real estate taxes as of 2018, with house value more than doubled. I calculated this just to see whether I have to work. Turns out I don’t, but I work anyway.

vanilla_nut 9y ago
Oh my gosh I'm terribly sorry, I totally misinterpreted what you meant. 90k post-tax before saving for college/retirement sounds, sadly, very right for Seattle today-- since your model uses 2012 housing prices, I'm not sure I even want to think about what it would be using 2018 housing prices. However, the exercise of calculating those numbers out was still very interesting -- particularly the fact that I pay close to 2x the taxes of a Seattle-ite as a New Yorker. Holy cow, state and local taxes take a huge chunk out of my pay. I really wonder what NYS/NYC do with those taxes... but perhaps more importantly, how does Seattle get by without state/local taxes? Who pays for public transit subsidies? I guess it must come from property taxes? Boy I wish NYC charged more property taxes, especially since metropolis properties are largely owned by the very, very rich and even with a respectable tech salary I'll likely never own property in the city ever.
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  Keep voting for tax-and-spend politicians, and sky is the limit in terms of taxes. There are always creative ways to piss money away. But to emphasize once again, this is upper middle class, with very little compromise. Not everyone has to live like this. Not everyone has to pay $10k/yr in property taxes or spend $2k/mo on food, or budget $1500/mo in health insurance/out of pocket costs. We factored in inviting people over, etc. Basically little to no change in lifestyle.

vanilla_nut 9y ago

Oh my gosh I'm terribly sorry, I totally misinterpreted what you meant. 90k post-tax before saving for college/retirement sounds, sadly, very right for Seattle today-- since your model uses 2012 housing prices, I'm not sure I even want to think about what it would be using 2018 housing prices. However, the exercise of calculating those numbers out was still very interesting -- particularly the fact that I pay close to 2x the taxes of a Seattle-ite as a New Yorker. Holy cow, state and local taxes take a huge chunk out of my pay. I really wonder what NYS/NYC do with those taxes... but perhaps more importantly, how does Seattle get by without state/local taxes? Who pays for public transit subsidies? I guess it must come from property taxes? Boy I wish NYC charged more property taxes, especially since metropolis properties are largely owned by the very, very rich and even with a respectable tech salary I'll likely never own property in the city ever.

throwaway84742 9y ago
Keep voting for tax-and-spend politicians, and sky is the limit in terms of taxes. There are always creative ways to piss money away. But to emphasize once again, this is upper middle class, with very little compromise. Not everyone has to live like this. Not everyone has to pay $10k/yr in property taxes or spend $2k/mo on food, or budget $1500/mo in health insurance/out of pocket costs. We factored in inviting people over, etc. Basically little to no change in lifestyle.