If there's even a single 70-80k income involved, then I expect that household is no longer in the "can’t afford a basic monthly budget for housing, food, transp

If there's even a single 70-80k income involved, then I expect that household is no longer in the "can’t afford a basic monthly budget for housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and a monthly smartphone bill" bucket, unless it's insisting on living in a specific location with very high housing costs. All I was saying above is that I am not surprised that a large fraction of households _are_ in that bucket as defined in the United Way report, because child care is expensive. And I expect the fraction of households in that bucket would likely be a lot smaller if "child care" were not being included in basic life necessities. I am not going to comment on your personal financial situation; you are obviously a better judge of that than I am! I certainly know people with 200k household incomes who also have significant fixed expenses (student loans, medical expenses, whatever) that lead to them not having as much disposable income as one might think. But that's not really related to the United Way study.