8 ms·

How to Find a Million-Dollar, One-Person Business Idea

161 points by gamechangr 8y ago

growt 8y ago
A lot of those businesses listet will just be another legal arrangement that replaces employees with sub contractors or something else (trucking, construction, etc)
ivanhoe 8y ago
Here's one great idea: write blog on how to earn money and then sell the visitors your books/videos - contrary to common sense, it seems to be working over and over again, even after so many have already did exactly the same and none of their customers earned any money thanks to them...
- sufiyan 8y ago
  And I'm one among the suckers who paid ~300 USD. I'm just stupid.
point78 8y ago
Everyone is complainig about the intro, but if you read the entire article some great info at the bottom....
TruffleLabs 8y ago
The author’s disclosure should have been at the top “Elaine Pofeldt is author of The Million-Dollar, One Person Business (Random House, January 2, 2018), a book looking at how to break $1M in revenue in a business staffed only by the owners.”
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  I liked the article and her writing style (I have written many books myself, so when I read material I think both of the content and how the content is presented), and when I saw that she had written a book on the subject, I read the book reviews and just ordered it. I agree that the disclosure would have been better placed at the beginning of the article.
gandalfian 8y ago
I did enjoy the articles about mattress bloggers making a remarkably high incomes. Even though it ended in profitable tears. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  This is so deceptive and disgusting but I enjoyed the story.
casper345 8y ago
A stockbroker calls 10,000 people. He tells 5,000 that the stock is going to go up, and the other 5,000 that it is going down. The next day the stock goes up. He then calls the 5,000 people who he told the stock would go up, he tells 2,500 that the stock goes up and the other half it will go down. Stock goes down next day.. . rinse, repeat. Until it gets down to 100 people and now those 100 people believe that stockbroker has 100% success rate. Problem with these "motivator speakers" is that alot of people are doing thse strategies but alot of it goes with luck and oppurtunity. SO they are not spouting wisdom, just preaching strategies that worked for them in their time.
- ken 8y ago
  This is exactly the plot of a Mathnet episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-XMRu_q4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-XMRu_q4s
- jaclaz 8y ago
  A similar example is also in the known John Allen Paulos' book "Innumeracy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book)
sershe 8y ago
"Welcome to our 'how to become a millionaire' seminar! Just to get to know each other, would someone make a guess, how many of you are here in the audience today?" "About a thousand?" "That is correct from the third row! What is your name?" "John." "Good guess John, there's exactly one thousand people here! Now John, how much did you pay for your ticket?" "$1100" "That is also correct, John! Well, thanks everyone, it was great to have you all here, have a wonderful day!"
GarrisonPrime 8y ago
The article doesn’t offer any suggestions, of course. It just lists categories of those individuals bringing in $1 million or more per year. But the list did strike me as notable, in that the numbers are so small. Less than 10,000 people total in the whole US bring in at least a million in revenue. And their profits are likely to be a fraction of that (though informational trades may have a much larger margin). That makes me think these are outliers. Not sure one can learn much from such a small sample size, as their successes are more likely to be due to highly specific individual circumstances, rather than any coherent general perspective. I’d be happy to be shown otherwise though.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  10,000 people is a small number on the context of the entire US labour force but it is very far from being a small sample size.
  - gamechangr 8y ago
    The articles doesn't imply there are only 10,000 people? Look at a quote just one group: >"The largest group (9,143 businesses) is the professional, scientific, and technical services sector," If you add up all the categories mentioned you get 33,618 businesses above $1 Million
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Same order of magnitude, still insignificant.
      - gamechangr 8y ago
        original OP here. It's quite significant actually, if you visualize it correctly. This article doesn't say there are 33,000 businesses making $1M a year (or you're right that's pretty small). It says there are 33,000 businesses making a $1m a year that have only 1 full time employee. That's big. Is it a commentary on the gig economy making 33,000 millionaires out of traditional business sectors? I'm not saying that's true, but something is shifting and it's big.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
femto 8y ago
Based on this quote, some of the business aren't quite one person: "He relies on a team of three virtual assistants, who are contractors, to help him with tasks like phone and email support." More to the point some of the businesses are one employee, which then opens the ongoing question of when is a contractor a defacto employee? Maybe the numbers are compensated by the existence of other single employee businesses who "employ" family members to spread income?
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  The article specifically mentions that these businesses have no W-2 employees, not that they don't utilize any contractors. > which then opens the ongoing question of when is a contractor a defacto employee? There are very specific IRS rules about when someone is classified as a W-2 employee vs a contractor; it's not like it's just up to the business. Of course there are gray areas (e.g. the whole "Uber drivers should be employees" debate), and there are many court cases focused on employee classification, but in general, having no W-2 employees whatsoever is a pretty good indication you are a single person business.
justboxing 8y ago
The story is a plug to buy the author's book (see last para).
- paultopia 8y ago
  Seriously. The profiled business owner in the first paragraph runs a business teaching people how to run a business, and then the author of the article is running the equivalent of a writing business teaching people how to run businesses teaching people how to run businesses. Hey, I've got my million dollar idea. I'll run a business, teaching people how to write articles, promoting books, about people who run businesses, teaching people how to run businesses. It's just turtles all the way down.
  - gandalfian 8y ago
    And you found it on hacker news, run by a company that makes a living helping people start business's :0 (Slight stretch admittedly but not entirely untrue).
  - sjg007 8y ago
    I mean technically this scales all the way up towards starting a business school.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Decades ago, there was an ad in the the classified in the newspaper: Learn how to make money through classified ads. Send $1 to XXXXX. Sending a dollar gets you a postcard with the text on it: Place a classified ad with the following text: Learn how to make money through classified ads. Send $1 to XXXXX.
personjerry 8y ago
I hate these "business coaching" people. They sell themselves across all channels like spammers, with bait like "You can make a million dollars like I did!" They link everything back to their YouTube or book or whatever, providing no real content. They only make money by hooking people in, so they're effectively MLMs minus the bureaucracy and actual product. The unfortunate new "entrepreneurs" are now short a few grand that they paid for the "lessons", and if they try themselves they're unlikely to succeed. And there's a ton of these "marketing entrepreneurs" out there, just search "how to make a million dollars" on YouTube.
- happy-go-lucky 8y ago
  Can’t agree more. Things on sale are a course, some digital tools, and a book. One of Forbes' topics is marketing.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  They prey on the "I want to be a millionaire CEO but don't have any real skills and don't know what I actually want to do with my life" crowd. Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). I wonder how many truly successful businesses actually started from that point? The "entrepreneurs" I know had business that grew organically out of fulfilling a genuine need that either they had or that they could satisfy for someone else with their skillset and knowledge. Saying they got where they are by accident is probably a bit too dismissive but I don't think any of them set out with the end goal in mind - it just happened organically. I include myself in that of course.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). The more advanced such snake-oil salesmen have added elements of "of course you also need to put in the effort", or even directly promote "struggle-porn" [1] -- while everything else you wrote about them remains true. [1] https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a01108 https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
0x8BADF00D 8y ago
I’m not a huge fan of one person startups. Most of those are lifestyle businesses. I feel like having three cofounders is ideal. That way if two of you disagree about a major decision, the third founder can cast the tie-breaking vote. At the very least, you need two cofounders minimum so you can get a different perspective on problems (provided both of you are not similar in your thinking).
- siquick 8y ago
  You can have as many co-founders as you want but they will never ever know more than your customers.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  What exactly is wrong with lifestyle businesses? I know plenty of people having a fantastic time off the back of their lifestyle business.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  FYI: "I Love Lucy" was a lifestyle business. Lucille Ball was past 40 and wanted children with her musician husband who was constantly on the road. They dreamed up the show as a means to be able to work together and have sane hours that would allow them to be parents. The industry at the time was so grueling that it was less horrible to reinvent the industry than accept the status quo. At the time, TV was live broadcast twice a day, once for East Coast and once for West Coast. Archival quality footage did not exist. This made for grueling, horrible days for actors and crew. They invented modern TV as we know it. They pioneered many practices that are still in use today. In technical terms, they were the Star Wars of their day and completely revolutionized TV. Star Wars gave us modern movie special effects as we know it. I Love Lucy gave us modern TV as we know it. And Lucy got to see her husband regularly and got to start a family, which was all she really wanted out of it.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I’m not a huge fan of one person startups. Most of those are lifestyle businesses. So? You say it like it's a bad thing. Back in the day we used to call "lifestyle businesses" as just businesses, and things like modern-day startups "BS moonshots with no real revenue model that will statistically fail, but a tiny minority will succeed (mostly by selling privacy) and continue to inspire suckers".
iliketosleep 8y ago
From the article: Polish recommended that Thompson document how he had created his web business in a course. Thompson took his advice. When he spoke the following year, he ended up selling $35,000 worth of his courses. Bingo! Bingo indeed. It does make me wonder... is the "best" way to make a quick million to sell courses that purport to teach people how to make a quick million?
- zhte415 8y ago
  This is what happened in the gold rush. From retrospect, if you wanted to get rich you'd do a lot better selling hammers, pans and jeans than actually searching for gold.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Yep. Gold is scarce (if it exists at all). Suckers looking for gold, however, are in huge supply.
  - rv-de 8y ago
    Then again though - those tools actually worked. While those podcasts don't.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Even if they did, your chances of succeeding are slim. If success is gold, those podcasts are really hammers and pickaxes. Whereas to get any sure-fire success, you'd need someone to sell you a ground-penetrating radar and some drilling machines.
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      The key thing about picks, shovels, and subscriber-only podcasts is that the customer pays upfront. So whether or not they work, you get paid. And if they don't work for a particular customer, well, that's probably user error, right? You only need one or two great stories to power your marketing. If you sell 10,000 shovels and one person gets rich... put that person in your ads and sell 10,000 more shovels. A lot of businesses depend on this marketing model... lotteries, casinos, app stores, college basketball, college football, etc.
max76 8y ago
> In a business that brings in $1 million in revenue, the owner could very likely be in the highest tax bracket and is likely to take home an income in the mid-six figures. Then again, that is a lot more than the average American makes. It’s enough to allow you to do things like save for retirement, buy the healthcare you need, pay for college for your kids, if you have them, and go on a nice vacation every year. These are things you can do in the low six figures, not mid six figures. They are also things I wish everyone could be able to do. Edit: The Math. Retirement: Maxing a 401k and Roth Ira is $23,000/yr Healthcare: Insurance for a family is about $600/month or $7,200/yr. Let's add another $500/yr in expected expenses and another $1000/yr in emergency savings. Total $8,700/yr Saving for college: $200/month for 21 years (age when child pays last tuition) with 1% interest (pessimistic and safe long term view) will yield north of $50,00k, which is enough for state university tuition. Lets say we are saving for three children. $3,600k/yr. Nice vacation: Nice doesn't have a specific meaning, but it's safe to say $10,000k is nice. Total: $55,300k/yr. Considering how important these things are, it's within the reach of a household with a post tax income of $150,000 assuming average US cost of living. People with mid six figure post tax income can do much more. I really dislike these two paragraphs. It makes it seem like being a very high income household is the only way to provide the basic quality of life.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  > Insurance for a family is about $600/month Where the... ?? Oh... you mention '401k', so you're probably employed by someone else. I don't think we've seen $600/month/family insurance policies that someone pays full-cost for in years. 3 years ago I knew people paying $1400-$1800, and for us, just 2, next year is slated to be $1300/month. Oh, and that's just base cost - you have a $10k deductible in there so... realistically budget $20k/year for a family with some regular medical expenses. But yeah, if a separate employer is footing some of the bill, then you might get away with 'only' ~$8k. > It makes it seem like being a very high income household. POST TAX $150k/year is a very high household income in many parts of the US. You're talking > $200k/year income, which is excluding 80% of US households. I guess for sake of argument, that might still be 'low' 6 figures, not 'mid', but many of the jobs that pay that sort of money are going to be in high-tax states, and I suspect you're going to be closer to > $250k. In CA, you'd need to earn $250k for a take home of ~$150k.

161 points by gamechangr 8y ago

A lot of those businesses listet will just be another legal arrangement that replaces employees with sub contractors or something else (trucking, construction, etc)

ivanhoe 8y ago

Here's one great idea: write blog on how to earn money and then sell the visitors your books/videos - contrary to common sense, it seems to be working over and over again, even after so many have already did exactly the same and none of their customers earned any money thanks to them...

sufiyan 8y ago
And I'm one among the suckers who paid ~300 USD. I'm just stupid.

point78 8y ago

Everyone is complainig about the intro, but if you read the entire article some great info at the bottom....

TruffleLabs 8y ago

The author’s disclosure should have been at the top “Elaine Pofeldt is author of The Million-Dollar, One Person Business (Random House, January 2, 2018), a book looking at how to break $1M in revenue in a business staffed only by the owners.”

mark_l_watson 8y ago
I liked the article and her writing style (I have written many books myself, so when I read material I think both of the content and how the content is presented), and when I saw that she had written a book on the subject, I read the book reviews and just ordered it. I agree that the disclosure would have been better placed at the beginning of the article.

gandalfian 8y ago

I did enjoy the articles about mattress bloggers making a remarkably high incomes. Even though it ended in profitable tears. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...

onemoresoop 8y ago
This is so deceptive and disgusting but I enjoyed the story.

casper345 8y ago

A stockbroker calls 10,000 people. He tells 5,000 that the stock is going to go up, and the other 5,000 that it is going down. The next day the stock goes up. He then calls the 5,000 people who he told the stock would go up, he tells 2,500 that the stock goes up and the other half it will go down. Stock goes down next day.. . rinse, repeat. Until it gets down to 100 people and now those 100 people believe that stockbroker has 100% success rate. Problem with these "motivator speakers" is that alot of people are doing thse strategies but alot of it goes with luck and oppurtunity. SO they are not spouting wisdom, just preaching strategies that worked for them in their time.

ken 8y ago
This is exactly the plot of a Mathnet episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-XMRu_q4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-XMRu_q4s
jaclaz 8y ago
A similar example is also in the known John Allen Paulos' book "Innumeracy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book)

sershe 8y ago

"Welcome to our 'how to become a millionaire' seminar! Just to get to know each other, would someone make a guess, how many of you are here in the audience today?" "About a thousand?" "That is correct from the third row! What is your name?" "John." "Good guess John, there's exactly one thousand people here! Now John, how much did you pay for your ticket?" "$1100" "That is also correct, John! Well, thanks everyone, it was great to have you all here, have a wonderful day!"

GarrisonPrime 8y ago

The article doesn’t offer any suggestions, of course. It just lists categories of those individuals bringing in $1 million or more per year. But the list did strike me as notable, in that the numbers are so small. Less than 10,000 people total in the whole US bring in at least a million in revenue. And their profits are likely to be a fraction of that (though informational trades may have a much larger margin). That makes me think these are outliers. Not sure one can learn much from such a small sample size, as their successes are more likely to be due to highly specific individual circumstances, rather than any coherent general perspective. I’d be happy to be shown otherwise though.

barry-cotter 8y ago
10,000 people is a small number on the context of the entire US labour force but it is very far from being a small sample size.
- gamechangr 8y ago
  The articles doesn't imply there are only 10,000 people? Look at a quote just one group: >"The largest group (9,143 businesses) is the professional, scientific, and technical services sector," If you add up all the categories mentioned you get 33,618 businesses above $1 Million
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Same order of magnitude, still insignificant.
    - gamechangr 8y ago
      original OP here. It's quite significant actually, if you visualize it correctly. This article doesn't say there are 33,000 businesses making $1M a year (or you're right that's pretty small). It says there are 33,000 businesses making a $1m a year that have only 1 full time employee. That's big. Is it a commentary on the gig economy making 33,000 millionaires out of traditional business sectors? I'm not saying that's true, but something is shifting and it's big.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

femto 8y ago

Based on this quote, some of the business aren't quite one person: "He relies on a team of three virtual assistants, who are contractors, to help him with tasks like phone and email support." More to the point some of the businesses are one employee, which then opens the ongoing question of when is a contractor a defacto employee? Maybe the numbers are compensated by the existence of other single employee businesses who "employ" family members to spread income?

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
The article specifically mentions that these businesses have no W-2 employees, not that they don't utilize any contractors. > which then opens the ongoing question of when is a contractor a defacto employee? There are very specific IRS rules about when someone is classified as a W-2 employee vs a contractor; it's not like it's just up to the business. Of course there are gray areas (e.g. the whole "Uber drivers should be employees" debate), and there are many court cases focused on employee classification, but in general, having no W-2 employees whatsoever is a pretty good indication you are a single person business.

justboxing 8y ago

The story is a plug to buy the author's book (see last para).

paultopia 8y ago
Seriously. The profiled business owner in the first paragraph runs a business teaching people how to run a business, and then the author of the article is running the equivalent of a writing business teaching people how to run businesses teaching people how to run businesses. Hey, I've got my million dollar idea. I'll run a business, teaching people how to write articles, promoting books, about people who run businesses, teaching people how to run businesses. It's just turtles all the way down.
- gandalfian 8y ago
  And you found it on hacker news, run by a company that makes a living helping people start business's :0 (Slight stretch admittedly but not entirely untrue).
- sjg007 8y ago
  I mean technically this scales all the way up towards starting a business school.
WalterBright 8y ago
Decades ago, there was an ad in the the classified in the newspaper: Learn how to make money through classified ads. Send $1 to XXXXX. Sending a dollar gets you a postcard with the text on it: Place a classified ad with the following text: Learn how to make money through classified ads. Send $1 to XXXXX.

personjerry 8y ago

I hate these "business coaching" people. They sell themselves across all channels like spammers, with bait like "You can make a million dollars like I did!" They link everything back to their YouTube or book or whatever, providing no real content. They only make money by hooking people in, so they're effectively MLMs minus the bureaucracy and actual product. The unfortunate new "entrepreneurs" are now short a few grand that they paid for the "lessons", and if they try themselves they're unlikely to succeed. And there's a ton of these "marketing entrepreneurs" out there, just search "how to make a million dollars" on YouTube.

happy-go-lucky 8y ago
Can’t agree more. Things on sale are a course, some digital tools, and a book. One of Forbes' topics is marketing.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
They prey on the "I want to be a millionaire CEO but don't have any real skills and don't know what I actually want to do with my life" crowd. Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). I wonder how many truly successful businesses actually started from that point? The "entrepreneurs" I know had business that grew organically out of fulfilling a genuine need that either they had or that they could satisfy for someone else with their skillset and knowledge. Saying they got where they are by accident is probably a bit too dismissive but I don't think any of them set out with the end goal in mind - it just happened organically. I include myself in that of course.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Usually the message is that you can get there without doing any actual real work (kind of says all you need to know about their target audience). The more advanced such snake-oil salesmen have added elements of "of course you also need to put in the effort", or even directly promote "struggle-porn" [1] -- while everything else you wrote about them remains true. [1] https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a01108 https://medium.com/@nateliason/no-more-struggle-porn-202153a...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

0x8BADF00D 8y ago

I’m not a huge fan of one person startups. Most of those are lifestyle businesses. I feel like having three cofounders is ideal. That way if two of you disagree about a major decision, the third founder can cast the tie-breaking vote. At the very least, you need two cofounders minimum so you can get a different perspective on problems (provided both of you are not similar in your thinking).

siquick 8y ago
You can have as many co-founders as you want but they will never ever know more than your customers.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
What exactly is wrong with lifestyle businesses? I know plenty of people having a fantastic time off the back of their lifestyle business.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
FYI: "I Love Lucy" was a lifestyle business. Lucille Ball was past 40 and wanted children with her musician husband who was constantly on the road. They dreamed up the show as a means to be able to work together and have sane hours that would allow them to be parents. The industry at the time was so grueling that it was less horrible to reinvent the industry than accept the status quo. At the time, TV was live broadcast twice a day, once for East Coast and once for West Coast. Archival quality footage did not exist. This made for grueling, horrible days for actors and crew. They invented modern TV as we know it. They pioneered many practices that are still in use today. In technical terms, they were the Star Wars of their day and completely revolutionized TV. Star Wars gave us modern movie special effects as we know it. I Love Lucy gave us modern TV as we know it. And Lucy got to see her husband regularly and got to start a family, which was all she really wanted out of it.
coldtea 8y ago
>I’m not a huge fan of one person startups. Most of those are lifestyle businesses. So? You say it like it's a bad thing. Back in the day we used to call "lifestyle businesses" as just businesses, and things like modern-day startups "BS moonshots with no real revenue model that will statistically fail, but a tiny minority will succeed (mostly by selling privacy) and continue to inspire suckers".

iliketosleep 8y ago

From the article: Polish recommended that Thompson document how he had created his web business in a course. Thompson took his advice. When he spoke the following year, he ended up selling $35,000 worth of his courses. Bingo! Bingo indeed. It does make me wonder... is the "best" way to make a quick million to sell courses that purport to teach people how to make a quick million?

zhte415 8y ago
This is what happened in the gold rush. From retrospect, if you wanted to get rich you'd do a lot better selling hammers, pans and jeans than actually searching for gold.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Yep. Gold is scarce (if it exists at all). Suckers looking for gold, however, are in huge supply.
- rv-de 8y ago
  Then again though - those tools actually worked. While those podcasts don't.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Even if they did, your chances of succeeding are slim. If success is gold, those podcasts are really hammers and pickaxes. Whereas to get any sure-fire success, you'd need someone to sell you a ground-penetrating radar and some drilling machines.
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    The key thing about picks, shovels, and subscriber-only podcasts is that the customer pays upfront. So whether or not they work, you get paid. And if they don't work for a particular customer, well, that's probably user error, right? You only need one or two great stories to power your marketing. If you sell 10,000 shovels and one person gets rich... put that person in your ads and sell 10,000 more shovels. A lot of businesses depend on this marketing model... lotteries, casinos, app stores, college basketball, college football, etc.

max76 8y ago

> In a business that brings in $1 million in revenue, the owner could very likely be in the highest tax bracket and is likely to take home an income in the mid-six figures. Then again, that is a lot more than the average American makes. It’s enough to allow you to do things like save for retirement, buy the healthcare you need, pay for college for your kids, if you have them, and go on a nice vacation every year. These are things you can do in the low six figures, not mid six figures. They are also things I wish everyone could be able to do. Edit: The Math. Retirement: Maxing a 401k and Roth Ira is $23,000/yr Healthcare: Insurance for a family is about $600/month or $7,200/yr. Let's add another $500/yr in expected expenses and another $1000/yr in emergency savings. Total $8,700/yr Saving for college: $200/month for 21 years (age when child pays last tuition) with 1% interest (pessimistic and safe long term view) will yield north of $50,00k, which is enough for state university tuition. Lets say we are saving for three children. $3,600k/yr. Nice vacation: Nice doesn't have a specific meaning, but it's safe to say $10,000k is nice. Total: $55,300k/yr. Considering how important these things are, it's within the reach of a household with a post tax income of $150,000 assuming average US cost of living. People with mid six figure post tax income can do much more. I really dislike these two paragraphs. It makes it seem like being a very high income household is the only way to provide the basic quality of life.

mgkimsal 8y ago
> Insurance for a family is about $600/month Where the... ?? Oh... you mention '401k', so you're probably employed by someone else. I don't think we've seen $600/month/family insurance policies that someone pays full-cost for in years. 3 years ago I knew people paying $1400-$1800, and for us, just 2, next year is slated to be $1300/month. Oh, and that's just base cost - you have a $10k deductible in there so... realistically budget $20k/year for a family with some regular medical expenses. But yeah, if a separate employer is footing some of the bill, then you might get away with 'only' ~$8k. > It makes it seem like being a very high income household. POST TAX $150k/year is a very high household income in many parts of the US. You're talking > $200k/year income, which is excluding 80% of US households. I guess for sake of argument, that might still be 'low' 6 figures, not 'mid', but many of the jobs that pay that sort of money are going to be in high-tax states, and I suspect you're going to be closer to > $250k. In CA, you'd need to earn $250k for a take home of ~$150k.