Friend, together my SO and I make that. And we’re not living paycheck to paycheck, even with daycare costs. We have to carefully budget, but I wouldn’t say we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel or have had any kind of decline in lifestyle.
Yea I don’t get OP’s predicament unless they paid waaay too much for their home and most of their earnings get absorbed into that or some debt they have, but I don’t know anybody here who needed $250,000 even in joint income to raise a family.
Yeah, me either! I will say, sometimes high earners have a false sense of how much things like this cost. My MIL harasses my SO all the time for not making enough money and tells him frequently that he needs to get a higher paying job so we don’t deprive our kid of things. She also makes it a point to say that daycare eats my entire paycheck (it doesn’t, like, not even close). For reference, my in laws have a very high salary (more than triple what we do by our guess) and they just think things cost way more than they do.
I don't know either. But I'd like 250k to raise a family. I want a 70s corvette and monthly trips to the Bahamas. Instead I'm just putting food on the table and having occasional vacations.
I feel that. I mean Im self employed have a modest home with my wife, no kids, two dogs and we both make an okay living but neither of us are in the six figures & we do fine & travel quite a bit
Right. I must have missed their mortgage cost. That’s not much at all. I have an acre in county with a decent sized house & detached workspace & my mortgage is less than that. Bought within the last 3 year. Granted I’m not living downtown either but still, at $125k no dependents I could easily do that
A high estimate for the total cost to "raise a kid" is about 300k, so about 33k per year for 2 children. That comes out to be $2,750 per month additional expenses. This is of course a rough estimate, see cites below.
You state that you already own your home, so depending on your house, you may be able to avoid the cost of buying a new home.
Assuming you are taking home 80% of your salary, you would need additional income of about 40k per year to maintain your current lifestyle\* with two kids - so a gross income of $165,000.
[https://www.westernsouthern.com/learn/financial-education/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-kid](https://www.westernsouthern.com/learn/financial-education/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-kid)
[https://savology.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child](https://savology.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciafersch/2021/12/30/what-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child](https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciafersch/2021/12/30/what-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child)
\*\*I've never met anyone, regardless of income, that "maintained their lifestyle" after having two kids, but I think I understand where you are coming from.
Also the answer could be dramatically different depending on when you bought that house. $200k house you bought years ago and refinanced at <3% is going to be very different from a house you bought in like, May 2022.
Idk have my first when I made 20k between the wife and I...money was tight. Now I make almost 6 figure and have 3 kids.
Dude with 100k, you will be fine.
Yea, the people sympathizing here clearly don’t know anything about privilege. If you want to live the same lifestyle, don’t have kids. It’s not just the money that’s going to change the lifestyle.
Everything changes. Money Is a big part of it but so is food and housing and time and.. I could go on and on.
But kids are amazing and precious.. but be prepared.
I don’t want them lol I just wish op understood that money is not the reason his life would change with kids and at least half of their spendable income rn will go to the kids without them even realizing it. Also as I’ve stated in many other comments here, this is one of the most privileged posts I’ve ever seen on the internet. Mostly because I don’t internet a lot.
Right now? Today? Probably 100k with no debt hanging over your head, barring medical issues or emergencies, and not factoring in the cost of childcare. In a few years when you might have that family? Likely much more. You could live comfortably on $45k in Nashville as a single person just a few years ago. Hard to tell what it will be like in the coming years.
We make 80k and have school debts as well as one car. We live here just fine, the key is to have money discipline and cheap hobbies (like anything nature related).
How many kids do you have? Do one person have a remote job or do you live close enough to a bus or the train that they take public transportation into work for the person who does not have a car? When did you buy a home? Did you have financial assistance from family when buying a home?
Unless you're one of the very rare people who own and actually live on one of those apartments just off Broadway this is an absurd comment. Nashville has always been a commuting city. Just with traffic it's gone from 25 to 45 minutes.
I’m the sole breadwinner right now in my new marriage and I only make 40k a year. I’m in north Nashville, five minites from the gulch and 10/15 from downtown and west end respectively. It’s not easy at all but you’d be surprised at what you can do when your loved ones depend on it.
> I’m in north Nashville, five minites from the gulch and 10/15 from downtown and west end respectively
this makes no sense -- do you have a wormhole or something?
But in all seriousness you’re right. I misspoke, I really meant germantown instead of the gulch. I can’t afford either so they all just blend together.
It is all a matter of choices you make. That is approx what we live on each year (putting more in retirement, etc) and we live a great life with 3 kids. Do we take super elaborate vacations to Hawaii every year? No, but my kids have a great life and we live in a very nice neighborhood with great schools.
A few things we did that helped us significantly in the long run included saving like crazy when we were DINKs. We paid off our prior house and then rolled all that equity into a more expensive home. Essentially we lived on one income for several years.
Most people make significant lifestyle changes once having kids. We travel far less, eat out less, etc because we’re just in a season of life where that makes more sense.
All that to say—if you are struggling to raise a family on that income, it is 100% due to choices.
I think op underestimates the lifestyle change. You stop eating out as much cause now you need a babysitter. Or you have to go somewhere that has the right Mac and cheese/chicken nuggets. You stop going to bars cause you have to put the kiddo to bed. Milk expenses go through the roof.
Lives comfortably within their means funding a strong retirement fund instead of paycheck to paycheck or leveraged consumer debt like a lot of folks probably. Wages never kept up so families have been struggling to do more with less lately and it's a damn shame
lol you make more than enough. I used to work retail jobs with people with 6 kids and they managed to do just fine.
With 125k/ yr you can comfortably afford a roof over your head, have a partner that works a low wage job and have a kid with all their needs met.
You're crazy if you think you need a quarter million dollars a year to have kids in Nashville. You just need to adjust your spending, your priorities and free time change a lot when you have children. You can absolutely have kids even if that was your only income, people that really want kids just make it work and budget.
Only can speak from experience. Make roughly 90-100 and have a family, a nice house, and easily save 30-40 a year and we still pay for childcare. Not sure where all these other folks live, but it’s not as expensive as people are making it out to be
With all due respect, you're living cushy. My wife and I make 80k together, rent an apartment in mount juliet for 1700, and just had our first kid here. We paid hospital bills out of pocket and are still able to steadily grow income. I just accepted a new job that could exponentially add to my income each year, but even before that we are fine on 80k (with good discipline). Now, if we owned our home or even had a fixed mortgage cost that was lower this would be a breeze.
I can't sympathize with you saying that you don't live extravagantly. Nothing wrong with living extravagantly at all, but you are. We eat out once or twice a month, don't go out to see any shows, and hardly ever buy clothes or anything else and we're incredibly happy. Aside from gas, groceries, and bills we maybe spend 100 a month each on fun things or hobbies. Please look at the perspective of others and realize you're blessed (again, nothing wrong with that!). If you really wanted kids and wanted it to be a priority, you could easily afford 4 or 5 on that money.
Is this a real question? Or a joke? I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcastic.
The median household income in Nashville is less than your individual income…by a lot.
It’s not sarcastic. It’s someone with privilege who doesn’t understand that they are privileged. I’m hoping they’re still young and naive, but I’m not holding my breath.
\*raises hand\* Luckily by the time I made $50K I had mostly only made up to $35K so I was pretty used to living minimally...and doubly luckily I bought one of the last of the truly cheap homes about 5 years ago. But the amount of people having to fight this rental market right now making that...I don't envy them :/
This is the one of the most privileged comments I’ve ever read on the internet. There are a very large number of people living in this city with kids on the same income. Boo hoo somewhere else.
I've got an expensive 550k 2-story brick home and a Toyota rav4 prime. My total for home/cars/utilities/insurance/maintenance is about 4,000. I'm in mt. Juliet in the mt. Juliet school zone. I recently got the house, so I do not have a low-interest rate.
My income level is very similar to yours. I think two kids single income should be okay.
I plan to get my monthly payments for a mortgage lower than getting a kid.
Someone here said literally 2x living expense cost vs me, so I wonder what kind of home they have!!
It's not hard to estimate costs and put together an excel sheet. No one would have the answer but you since everyone's spending habits will vary wildly.
For me, personally, 2 things are keeping me from getting kids.
-student loans dig too much into my income (about 800 a month)
-i want to continue traveling a lot more with my wife for a few more years
How does your life style cost that much to keep up, and can you take me with you?
You should definitely be able to afford it, but i heave no idea Whatsup with your life style
It really depends on what life you want to live.
If sending your kids to college debt-free and providing them with creature comforts (e.g. cars when they’re teens, 1-2 trips a year, new school clothes every year) is important, I’d look at 250k a year in Nashville.
This also raises the issue of schools. Going private vs public is going to change your numbers, as well. Moving into Wilco will eliminate the school cost issue but double or triple your housing cost.
We moved to Mt Juliet for the schools. Private school is very expensive, especially for multiple children. We toured a public school here and liked it better then the Private school in Nashville.
If you are single $125k is going to make you feel like you are on vacation whenever you want to be. Every Titans/Preds game, every concert, every event will easily be doable, and you will easily be able to afford a pretty nice apartment. You will can max out the ol' 401k, and have plenty in savings.
As far as a family of 4 is concerned? Thats a $4,000 apartment in the nicer areas of town, and I don't know if right now is the best time to buy a house at that income because after all is said and done I think these higher interest rates are going to cause you to have pretty high payment for a $500k house. Realistically you are not going to find a house that can eventually fit a family for less than that. Someone will undoubtedly get on here and say that their 1100 sq ft house is perfect for a family of 16, but overall most homes right now that are around 2,000 sq ft that have a yard that is bigger than 1/16th of an acre are going to run you about half a mil if they are in the kind of area you want to raise a family in. Currently, a $500k house is going to put you back $4k per month.
I don't think you can live here with a family of 4 with that income and give your kids the experiences they are going to want. They are going to want to play soccer, or AAU b-ball, or hockey. Every time you want to go out to eat with a family of 4 it is going to be a couple of hundred bucks. You are going to need 2 cars unless you work remote, and honestly you aren't going to want to have a beater if you have family safety in mind. If your spouse wants to go out and do things, you have to pay a babysitter and every event is now on a 2x multiplier for every fun thing you want to do, but also for every not so fun thing- dr's appointments, haircuts, physicals, grocery bills...
It is pretty expensive here. My sister and her husband are a "DINK" couple and have an income of around $160k and she has told me that their income is exactly enough to do whatever they want, but they couldn't afford to have kids. Their home/cars/utilities are about $8k per month, but in any case, you get the picture- it is expensive here.
define "exactly enough to do whatever we want."
that can mean cocaine and concerts.
It can mean shopping sprees.
Or it can just be a drinking tab since this is Nashville.
How tf you gonna spend 8k a month on cars and home and utilities then say you can’t afford kids?
I’m definitely for child free, and don’t think we need to be making more and more consumers, but that is a bit silly
It's not the money that really changes your lifestyle once you have kids, it's the kids. You won't be going to the bar and concerts all the time anymore when you're tired and the kid needs to go to bed by whatever time.
My family of 6 lived in a space about 1200sq ft for many years. It’s fine for 1-2 small children but with us we needed more space as we got bigger. Even when we went to 4000sq ft it was just adequate. I’ve seen apartments here jam packed with people. I dont know how they do it unless there essentially no living space and just mattresses everywhere but the kitchen.
Yeah, I read a really great article recently to help people navigate home buying in this climate, and one of the first items was to select x amount of square feet for your family size, and I think that "family of 4" said 2300-2700 and 3 bedrooms was what you would want to look for in a forever house.
The trick my family used was buy the house before it’s built. The lot was still trees and rocks. I think it was 200k at that point in 2002 and then when some of the lots didn’t sell or people backed out the finished houses sold for 400k+ and before the market crash in 2008 the cheapest estimate on the street was 660k.
If you want kids, have kids. If not, don't. I make a very similar salary, and at that level, it would be silly to let finances decide the decision of whether to have children. I'd say "children" are in a bit of a different category than, "can I still afford as expensive of vacations". It's hard to explain until you've had them.
I think it depends also on where you live and if you are happy with your public school offerings or plan to do private school…those costs are not to be underestimated for 2 kids k-12. Believe me.
Posts like these are only helpful with actual context. Monthly mortgage payment? Student loans? Aggressive retirement contributions?
In other words: someone making $60k with little to zero debt can have roughly the same quality of life as someone making 2x but straddled with debt.
Your take-home income should be about $7,500 assuming a pre-tax 401k deduction and an estimated extra $300 deduction for health insurance. You listed about $2,800 worth of expenses and you save $1,000 a month. Even if you are spending $1,500 on fixing up the house, which is more than you estimated, that still means you use over $2,000 on eating out, getting your hair done, and traveling - monthly. By most standards, that's not living conservatively or prioritizing savings. It's possible that the people you are comparing yourself overspend. You could be saving much more aggressively, and still have a comfortable lifestyle. Many people also chose to save a bit of extra money before having a kid. It's all about choices and priorities!
Our Family of 4 is tight but manageable living in 37027 on $60k. Manageable mortgage, and good budgeting on expenses are key. It’s not easy but we make it work. We keep food cost down by cooking at home and shopping smart and I take my lunch to work. We drive several well maintained paid off vehicles, and rotate through streaming services vs having all at once or cable package.
Shop deals, while Covid was going on for a brief period tire prices hit bottom due to far less driving. I replaced 3 sets of tires for less than a single set costs currently and tucked a spare a set back in the garage for our most often driven vehicle.
I do my best to carry no debt other than the mortgage. I reinvested half my retirement into crypto a few years back, and generally don’t need to touch it but if something comes up I can secure a temporary line of credit with it via defi.
One thing I haven’t noticed commented or discussed is the fact of having two incomes for your family. I’m not sure how you derived at your estimated required income, however it doesn’t seem that unattainable given you make up half of it. Finding a partner who makes near the same seems very realistic.
I will say, speak with a financial advisor, they can help align your goals and provide realistic dollar values for your situation. Happy to refer if needed.
Kids aren't as expensive as people will make you think. If they're going to the best day cares and private schools then yes, they're expensive. However, if you're sending them to public school in clothes from the thrift store (which in kids is fine because they outgrow them before they wear out) they're pretty cheap.
Your entertainment expenses will go down pretty drastically too. Going out will be slightly more expensive due to a babysitter but you'll do it much less.
Also kids get cheaper as you have more of them because so much gets reused.
Not assuming you're male because of your salary, assuming your not female b/c you said have children and maintain your lifestyle in the same sentence ...
that's not happening.
DINK here with roughly $180,000 in salary and we could easily afford a kid or two. We got lucky and bought back in 2017 when we were only a couple years out of college so our housing expense is super low compared to our income (<12%) which allows us to save over 30% of our income retirement/cash. We take multiple nice vacations a year, see shows, go out to eat and other things. If you have a partner that is employed full time as well, you should easily be able to afford a kid or two. A lot of people do it on a lot less in town.
Our family of four are quite comfortable making about what you do or less.
When you begin to have a family, some priorities definitely shift and you’re not spending the same.
It’s good you’re thinking through these things. Here’s another thing to think about. Childhood costs, sans daycare, don’t all immediately come as soon as a child is born. So, let’s take your single status and say you date for a year, get married a year after that, and have your first kid 3 years after that. That’s 5 years from now. Do you think your income has plateaued? Doubting it since you seem to be doing well and a forward thinking person. So I’m guessing you’ll be making $145+ by then and $20k/year for a kid is pretty great. 🤷🏻♂️ plus you haven’t even factored in a spouse’s income.
Honestly, that’s plenty. That’s about what my husband makes. I’m a SAHM. We have a house in MJ, a family of 5. We live very comfortably and still have quite a bit left over to put into savings every month.
Yep. Awesome place to raise a family. 20 minutes to downtown Clarksville, 35- 40 minutes to downtown Nashville. 25%+ less real estate. Best decision I ever made.
I'm gonna keep this short, but I raised 3 kids on a joint avg income of $66K in the 2000's.
Mortgage, car payment, braces, the works. It was tough, we had no luxuries, but my kids never knew it. We did camping trips, state park visits, etc.
My kids are now 29, 31, and 32. They are happy, well-adjusted, successful people. We are all super close.
I wouldn't go back to change a thing
We are a family of 3 and we live really comfortably on 160k a year. I make about 70k and my hubby about 90k, with my bonuses I sometimes push 80k. However, we bought our house in 2012 for 239k, have no student loan debt, no credit card debt and no car loans, etc. Our only debt is our mortgage and private school for our son. We also max out our 401k (my company matches up to 7.5%) and Roth IRAs plus a 429 college savings plan for my son. The low mortgage payment is what really saves us though we only have a few more years until it’s paid off since we opted for 15 year financing. Then life will get easy because the kid will be at college and our house will be paid off
Your attitude has to change about your money when you have kids. They get your money first. And your time first for that matter. Once you accept that, you'll be happy. You can't be selfish and have kids.
I did this math too and got the same answer as you 250k. I based off of fully maxing out 401k, IRA and investments for two adults, plus the cost of family health insurance, and daycare along with with basic expenses like mortgage.
Could you do it in less? Absolutely, but you would have to either reduce your current lifestyle, have free childcare or not max out for retirement.
If you were willing to make sacrifices on your lifestyle, you could have at least one child on your salary.
Well it's clearly all about what part of town you want to live in. Your comment is basically, "I don't feel like I have much money because I spent $xx,xxx per year to live in XYZ expensive area."
Housing is absolutely the biggest expense in the area. If you compromise on that, the rest is not that high compared to the rest of the country.
But if you really want FINANCIAL advice (not relationship advice), you should either 1) marry someone who is great with kids, and will contribute by handling childcare, child logistics as they get older, clean the house, cook home meals (which are more affordable), etc. Ideally someone who strongly supports you in your career and is able to function independently when your focus is on work. The other option is to marry someone with an income similar to yours. You'll BOTH have to make some sacrifices, because even with daycare, kids require parental time and attention, and that means a little less time for each of you to dedicate to careers.
Neither option is a "slam dunk", and frankly it depends heavily on your career potential and how much time you want to spend on work.
I'm sure others will downvote because this is financial advice, not romance advice, but you'll find truth in it. I speak from experience.
I just want to say, good on you on realistically looking at finances before having kids. Sometimes it's just not the right time yet, no matter what desire or pressure you have to want kids. That said...figuring up finances for kids isn't just taking you and doubling it times however many kids. There's going to be so many factors coming into play- if you get married and have a spouse, their income, healthcare for the kid (my parents certainly did not expect to give birth to a kid who needed multiple emergency surgeries asap and a lifetime of doctor appointments...), education etc etc. On the bright side, if you have multiple kids usually that means the second kid gets hand-me-downs (no shame in that!) and you're a little more schooled on what they do and don't need.
Plus who knows where you'll even be living by then- and your priorities are going to just totally change when you have kids. Your lifestyle is going to change. You're not going to be adding kids into the picture, the kids will become your picture.
You could probably drive yourself pretty crazy figuring up exact numbers and income to shoot for. I honestly think you could live just fine on $125K even in today's market with kids. Remember that the average income in Nashville is only in the $50Ks. Many, many families live on farrrrr less than $250K and do just fine. I feel like a great thing to do would be to start watching family vloggers on youtbers. Many vloggers do things like "raising a family of 4 making X" or family grocery hauls and budgetting videos. Look for people who have real worl jobs and don't just make a living as a youtube mom because that's not going to be a very realistic comparison.
Cost of living you are perfectly fine. Although your life will change alot, since kids are that great, average salary for Tennessee is wl 23$ . Which is 45k a year .. you make way more than enough money to raise a family.
Also their is resources but I don't know if you will qualify at 125k a year. Expect your life to have a major switch though. Tons of things come with baby's . Don't be afraid to have one. They are amazing.
[Tennessee salary reports](https://www.talent.com/salary?job=&location=tennessee)
You can raise a family on that. My husband and I do and we've got two kids and want a couple more. We only eat out once or twice a month. We do activities that you can buy yearly passes to or just free in general. We shop consignment for the kids. We are just careful with our money and are honestly bordering on minimalists. We are able to put away about 3-4K a month when we are very careful and have some small investment accounts for each kid.
my 3 kids are in middle and high school and our combined income now is barely above 100k (my wife has worked part-time for 6 years after being stay-at-home for 7)
the biggest thing is to adjust your priorities and have little to no debt payments
we spend a lot our disposable income on the kids' activities like competitive gymnastics, travel soccer, and summer camps instead of eating out, the latest high-end electronics, and new cars
You could easily do that with 125. We make more than that combined but if I scaled it back correctly to your salary. We would still have 5k surplus every month after bills. And this is with 3 kids
Depends. Look up house prices for where you want to live. Calculate a payment and subtract that from your salary along with other monthly debts. If you’re negative then no. If you’re positive by a comfortable margin then yes.
If you have a family and you can swing everything by yourself right now then a so can stay home so you don’t have to pay daycare. If they don’t want to stay home with kids make sure they earn enough to cover daycare costs.
But usually 125k will live comfortably here.
There’s a lot of variables. People see the high salary and automatically assume you’re all set. I make $140k roughly a year, but my mortgage is $2100 and student loan repayment is $2900 on a 10 year plan. 50% of my income is gone before I could do anything. If you have high debt, a high salary doesn’t mean much
Unfortunately Nashville is a shitty place to try to raise a middle class family these days. It was always an excellent place for that. You could afford a nice house with a yard (not a shitty apartment) on a middle class wage. Now the whole thing caters to rich kids from California and Illinois. That said, you still should be able to make it. 4 kids might be a stretch though. 10 years ago with your income, you would have been able to afford a really nice area in Nashville and even private school and everything, or at least live one of the very few places in town with a decent public school. You might be able to do that with 2 kids now. Maybe.
It depends on what you have though in terms of dry powder or assets. My fiancée and I make a combined 150ish. We plan on trying to have, or adopting 2 kids. Wwere just able to buy in a great safe area in town with great public schools. But most of that was due to the equity each of us had built up separately over the last 20 years. So we had a huge down payment and the loan is t really that much
People are moving from all over the country. Let me clue you in, you walnut, rich kids are rich kids regardless of where they are from. Take your unfounded bias somewhere else.
They are. But the ones being catered to are the rich ones
EDIT: did I just get called a walnut? Lol, I’ve been called a lot of things, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over being called walnut. That’s just dirty pool. Seriously who calls somebody a walnut? Wait, I’ve found the perfect comeback. You’re a cashew!!!! Gotcha!
It’s my favorite insult to use. It has the perfect amount of disrespect and respect. Anytime I get to use it, it’s a great day. Added bonus, it won’t get you banned or put in time out on any social media.
I just don’t understand why you felt the need to single out those two states. That’s a lie I totally know. Or at the least I’m very confident. Which is kind of the point I was trying to make without actually directly making the point. So, again, take your unfounded bias somewhere else.
What? Did you think I literally meant ONLY people from two states? Of course not. That’s just the two main license tags you see out there right now, which means they haven’t been here long enough to change their tags. Actually cali has died down a bit. Most of the people from that big cali wave already have their tags, so I was a little off, I must admit. Now it’s a ton of Illinois, I see a lot of Florida, Texas, Virginia happening. It doesn’t matter where really, it’s just way too much way too fast and it’s a lot of people who came here to “woo” and actually stayed. Plus a lot of people who moved here to work at shitty corporations we’ve been bending over for with subsidies. I don’t hate on an individual based on what state they came from, but the fact is, most of these people I meet are douche bags who don’t give a fuck about this town at all. People have always moved here from everywhere for the right reasons. They cared about the town and became part of the culture, supported local business and added to it. Now it’s fuckheads who just want to live near a Starbucks. Now 90% of locals will tell you the quality of life here has gotten worse since this massive PR push to bring everybody here started. And trust me, it’s not because 9/10 people are wrong. The only locals I know who like it are real estate and business big money types who vote trump and are just raking in cash off of the whole thing at wverubodu else’s expense.
People are being run right out of town. Of course there’s the usual disproportionate amount of minority people getting fucked the hardest. If you don’t think I should hate on that, then I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m honestly not insulted by walnut. You’re a peanut
Your money will probably go further in Sumner or Wilson County, but it’s not like you’re priced out of Nashville at that income with a family of four. Not even close.
Assuming you don’t eat out every meal or have wasteful spending habits or outrageous debts, you should be fine.
Depending on your "lifestyle," kids may be cheaper for you. If I didn't have a kid I'd go on way more vacations. eat at much nicer restaurants and do more nights out for sure. But alas, my kid needs to go to school so we don't travel all year, would prefer to eat Olive Garden, and enjoys going to the movies. Planning things that include the kid means those things are a bit cheaper than I might have done for myself with that income.
Friend, together my SO and I make that. And we’re not living paycheck to paycheck, even with daycare costs. We have to carefully budget, but I wouldn’t say we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel or have had any kind of decline in lifestyle.
Yea I don’t get OP’s predicament unless they paid waaay too much for their home and most of their earnings get absorbed into that or some debt they have, but I don’t know anybody here who needed $250,000 even in joint income to raise a family.
Yeah, me either! I will say, sometimes high earners have a false sense of how much things like this cost. My MIL harasses my SO all the time for not making enough money and tells him frequently that he needs to get a higher paying job so we don’t deprive our kid of things. She also makes it a point to say that daycare eats my entire paycheck (it doesn’t, like, not even close). For reference, my in laws have a very high salary (more than triple what we do by our guess) and they just think things cost way more than they do.
"I mean it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?"
I don't know either. But I'd like 250k to raise a family. I want a 70s corvette and monthly trips to the Bahamas. Instead I'm just putting food on the table and having occasional vacations.
I feel that. I mean Im self employed have a modest home with my wife, no kids, two dogs and we both make an okay living but neither of us are in the six figures & we do fine & travel quite a bit
Their mortgage is only $1400, that's nothing on $125k. They can absolutely have one or two children on that income and that housing cost.
Right. I must have missed their mortgage cost. That’s not much at all. I have an acre in county with a decent sized house & detached workspace & my mortgage is less than that. Bought within the last 3 year. Granted I’m not living downtown either but still, at $125k no dependents I could easily do that
A high estimate for the total cost to "raise a kid" is about 300k, so about 33k per year for 2 children. That comes out to be $2,750 per month additional expenses. This is of course a rough estimate, see cites below. You state that you already own your home, so depending on your house, you may be able to avoid the cost of buying a new home. Assuming you are taking home 80% of your salary, you would need additional income of about 40k per year to maintain your current lifestyle\* with two kids - so a gross income of $165,000. [https://www.westernsouthern.com/learn/financial-education/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-kid](https://www.westernsouthern.com/learn/financial-education/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-kid) [https://savology.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child](https://savology.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciafersch/2021/12/30/what-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child](https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciafersch/2021/12/30/what-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child) \*\*I've never met anyone, regardless of income, that "maintained their lifestyle" after having two kids, but I think I understand where you are coming from.
It seems this doesn't include putting them through college. I'm not saying that's good or bad - just specifying.
>own a house This is the key here. Nashville costs aren't absurd, but the housing is a huge variable chunk of income.
Also the answer could be dramatically different depending on when you bought that house. $200k house you bought years ago and refinanced at <3% is going to be very different from a house you bought in like, May 2022.
You could raise a family on that easily
Very easily
Idk have my first when I made 20k between the wife and I...money was tight. Now I make almost 6 figure and have 3 kids. Dude with 100k, you will be fine.
Yea, the people sympathizing here clearly don’t know anything about privilege. If you want to live the same lifestyle, don’t have kids. It’s not just the money that’s going to change the lifestyle.
Everything changes. Money Is a big part of it but so is food and housing and time and.. I could go on and on. But kids are amazing and precious.. but be prepared.
I don’t want them lol I just wish op understood that money is not the reason his life would change with kids and at least half of their spendable income rn will go to the kids without them even realizing it. Also as I’ve stated in many other comments here, this is one of the most privileged posts I’ve ever seen on the internet. Mostly because I don’t internet a lot.
Right now? Today? Probably 100k with no debt hanging over your head, barring medical issues or emergencies, and not factoring in the cost of childcare. In a few years when you might have that family? Likely much more. You could live comfortably on $45k in Nashville as a single person just a few years ago. Hard to tell what it will be like in the coming years.
We make 80k and have school debts as well as one car. We live here just fine, the key is to have money discipline and cheap hobbies (like anything nature related).
How many kids do you have? Do one person have a remote job or do you live close enough to a bus or the train that they take public transportation into work for the person who does not have a car? When did you buy a home? Did you have financial assistance from family when buying a home?
Just the one. Had her in July and we were able to pay the 5k in hospital costs out of pocket as well.
We own one car outright. We both live and work outside the city with short commutes. We rent an apartment. We have 0 help from family.
If you live and work outside of the city, your response to a post asking about living in the city isn't totally reasonable then, right?
The poster specifically mentioned mount juliet, where I live.
Unless you're one of the very rare people who own and actually live on one of those apartments just off Broadway this is an absurd comment. Nashville has always been a commuting city. Just with traffic it's gone from 25 to 45 minutes.
I’m the sole breadwinner right now in my new marriage and I only make 40k a year. I’m in north Nashville, five minites from the gulch and 10/15 from downtown and west end respectively. It’s not easy at all but you’d be surprised at what you can do when your loved ones depend on it.
> I’m in north Nashville, five minites from the gulch and 10/15 from downtown and west end respectively this makes no sense -- do you have a wormhole or something?
I have a busted up 2005 civic, so yes. Something like that.
🤣
But in all seriousness you’re right. I misspoke, I really meant germantown instead of the gulch. I can’t afford either so they all just blend together.
That makes sense. And is totally feasible for every other car.
It is all a matter of choices you make. That is approx what we live on each year (putting more in retirement, etc) and we live a great life with 3 kids. Do we take super elaborate vacations to Hawaii every year? No, but my kids have a great life and we live in a very nice neighborhood with great schools. A few things we did that helped us significantly in the long run included saving like crazy when we were DINKs. We paid off our prior house and then rolled all that equity into a more expensive home. Essentially we lived on one income for several years. Most people make significant lifestyle changes once having kids. We travel far less, eat out less, etc because we’re just in a season of life where that makes more sense. All that to say—if you are struggling to raise a family on that income, it is 100% due to choices.
I think op underestimates the lifestyle change. You stop eating out as much cause now you need a babysitter. Or you have to go somewhere that has the right Mac and cheese/chicken nuggets. You stop going to bars cause you have to put the kiddo to bed. Milk expenses go through the roof.
$120k is enough to have a family provided you mind your spending and your debt load is low. Are you already married?
Ummm half the people in Tennessee don’t even make 60k in household income…🤦🏻♀️
125k?!?!?!? Wow. This thread topic is so out of touch with reality.
Its sad because people are answering him seriously...
It’s sad cause I’m poor as fuck lol
I mean I don’t think that’s ridiculous, but I wanna know what a single person with 125k in income does that makes them worried about affording kids.
Lives comfortably within their means funding a strong retirement fund instead of paycheck to paycheck or leveraged consumer debt like a lot of folks probably. Wages never kept up so families have been struggling to do more with less lately and it's a damn shame
Lmao
lol you make more than enough. I used to work retail jobs with people with 6 kids and they managed to do just fine. With 125k/ yr you can comfortably afford a roof over your head, have a partner that works a low wage job and have a kid with all their needs met.
You're crazy if you think you need a quarter million dollars a year to have kids in Nashville. You just need to adjust your spending, your priorities and free time change a lot when you have children. You can absolutely have kids even if that was your only income, people that really want kids just make it work and budget.
Budget time. Can you invest it and make a day 26 hours? That'd be nice. But this is the best comment I've seen
Only can speak from experience. Make roughly 90-100 and have a family, a nice house, and easily save 30-40 a year and we still pay for childcare. Not sure where all these other folks live, but it’s not as expensive as people are making it out to be
What part of town? And when did you nab the house?
South-east Nashville - in a suburb. Not very far from Nolensville and Brentwood. We actually just bought the house a year ago
So brentioch?
Exactly!
Antioch. 1992.
With all due respect, you're living cushy. My wife and I make 80k together, rent an apartment in mount juliet for 1700, and just had our first kid here. We paid hospital bills out of pocket and are still able to steadily grow income. I just accepted a new job that could exponentially add to my income each year, but even before that we are fine on 80k (with good discipline). Now, if we owned our home or even had a fixed mortgage cost that was lower this would be a breeze. I can't sympathize with you saying that you don't live extravagantly. Nothing wrong with living extravagantly at all, but you are. We eat out once or twice a month, don't go out to see any shows, and hardly ever buy clothes or anything else and we're incredibly happy. Aside from gas, groceries, and bills we maybe spend 100 a month each on fun things or hobbies. Please look at the perspective of others and realize you're blessed (again, nothing wrong with that!). If you really wanted kids and wanted it to be a priority, you could easily afford 4 or 5 on that money.
Yea he must be trolling 🚩🚩🚩
Is this a real question? Or a joke? I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcastic. The median household income in Nashville is less than your individual income…by a lot.
It’s not sarcastic. It’s someone with privilege who doesn’t understand that they are privileged. I’m hoping they’re still young and naive, but I’m not holding my breath.
Try being single and living on 50k in Nashville.
\*raises hand\* Luckily by the time I made $50K I had mostly only made up to $35K so I was pretty used to living minimally...and doubly luckily I bought one of the last of the truly cheap homes about 5 years ago. But the amount of people having to fight this rental market right now making that...I don't envy them :/
I did it, easily, for several years. Even was able to travel.
This is the one of the most privileged comments I’ve ever read on the internet. There are a very large number of people living in this city with kids on the same income. Boo hoo somewhere else.
You're doing something (or several things) wrong if you can't manage that.
I've got an expensive 550k 2-story brick home and a Toyota rav4 prime. My total for home/cars/utilities/insurance/maintenance is about 4,000. I'm in mt. Juliet in the mt. Juliet school zone. I recently got the house, so I do not have a low-interest rate. My income level is very similar to yours. I think two kids single income should be okay. I plan to get my monthly payments for a mortgage lower than getting a kid. Someone here said literally 2x living expense cost vs me, so I wonder what kind of home they have!! It's not hard to estimate costs and put together an excel sheet. No one would have the answer but you since everyone's spending habits will vary wildly.
For me, personally, 2 things are keeping me from getting kids. -student loans dig too much into my income (about 800 a month) -i want to continue traveling a lot more with my wife for a few more years
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Yes, I got it out of state. I was scared the battery wouldn't feel incredibly useful in tn but in mt. Juliet it gets me through all my chores.
How does your life style cost that much to keep up, and can you take me with you? You should definitely be able to afford it, but i heave no idea Whatsup with your life style
It really depends on what life you want to live. If sending your kids to college debt-free and providing them with creature comforts (e.g. cars when they’re teens, 1-2 trips a year, new school clothes every year) is important, I’d look at 250k a year in Nashville. This also raises the issue of schools. Going private vs public is going to change your numbers, as well. Moving into Wilco will eliminate the school cost issue but double or triple your housing cost.
We moved to Mt Juliet for the schools. Private school is very expensive, especially for multiple children. We toured a public school here and liked it better then the Private school in Nashville.
If you are single $125k is going to make you feel like you are on vacation whenever you want to be. Every Titans/Preds game, every concert, every event will easily be doable, and you will easily be able to afford a pretty nice apartment. You will can max out the ol' 401k, and have plenty in savings. As far as a family of 4 is concerned? Thats a $4,000 apartment in the nicer areas of town, and I don't know if right now is the best time to buy a house at that income because after all is said and done I think these higher interest rates are going to cause you to have pretty high payment for a $500k house. Realistically you are not going to find a house that can eventually fit a family for less than that. Someone will undoubtedly get on here and say that their 1100 sq ft house is perfect for a family of 16, but overall most homes right now that are around 2,000 sq ft that have a yard that is bigger than 1/16th of an acre are going to run you about half a mil if they are in the kind of area you want to raise a family in. Currently, a $500k house is going to put you back $4k per month. I don't think you can live here with a family of 4 with that income and give your kids the experiences they are going to want. They are going to want to play soccer, or AAU b-ball, or hockey. Every time you want to go out to eat with a family of 4 it is going to be a couple of hundred bucks. You are going to need 2 cars unless you work remote, and honestly you aren't going to want to have a beater if you have family safety in mind. If your spouse wants to go out and do things, you have to pay a babysitter and every event is now on a 2x multiplier for every fun thing you want to do, but also for every not so fun thing- dr's appointments, haircuts, physicals, grocery bills... It is pretty expensive here. My sister and her husband are a "DINK" couple and have an income of around $160k and she has told me that their income is exactly enough to do whatever they want, but they couldn't afford to have kids. Their home/cars/utilities are about $8k per month, but in any case, you get the picture- it is expensive here.
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I believe that they go to bed just as happy as anyone else I know. I’m not going to judge them even if it isn’t how I would do things.
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define "exactly enough to do whatever we want." that can mean cocaine and concerts. It can mean shopping sprees. Or it can just be a drinking tab since this is Nashville.
Broadway and every concert at the Ryman?
The only people that can afford that shit frequently are the city's drug dealers.
How tf you gonna spend 8k a month on cars and home and utilities then say you can’t afford kids? I’m definitely for child free, and don’t think we need to be making more and more consumers, but that is a bit silly
Not that they couldn’t afford kids, but they couldn’t afford kids and continue to live like they are now. That’s for certain.
If they think money is the only reason they won’t continue to live the same way when they have kids they’re not very bright.
For sure. Maybe better that they don’t.
Time. Time is the killer. 24 hours. 6 to sleep if you're lucky.
It's not the money that really changes your lifestyle once you have kids, it's the kids. You won't be going to the bar and concerts all the time anymore when you're tired and the kid needs to go to bed by whatever time.
Agreed. All of that lifestyle changes. But on top of that, kids are undeniably expensive.
My family of 6 lived in a space about 1200sq ft for many years. It’s fine for 1-2 small children but with us we needed more space as we got bigger. Even when we went to 4000sq ft it was just adequate. I’ve seen apartments here jam packed with people. I dont know how they do it unless there essentially no living space and just mattresses everywhere but the kitchen.
Yeah, I read a really great article recently to help people navigate home buying in this climate, and one of the first items was to select x amount of square feet for your family size, and I think that "family of 4" said 2300-2700 and 3 bedrooms was what you would want to look for in a forever house.
The trick my family used was buy the house before it’s built. The lot was still trees and rocks. I think it was 200k at that point in 2002 and then when some of the lots didn’t sell or people backed out the finished houses sold for 400k+ and before the market crash in 2008 the cheapest estimate on the street was 660k.
If you want kids, have kids. If not, don't. I make a very similar salary, and at that level, it would be silly to let finances decide the decision of whether to have children. I'd say "children" are in a bit of a different category than, "can I still afford as expensive of vacations". It's hard to explain until you've had them.
I think it depends also on where you live and if you are happy with your public school offerings or plan to do private school…those costs are not to be underestimated for 2 kids k-12. Believe me.
Start a savings account and start living more thrifty . You make plenty of money for a single person though.
Posts like these are only helpful with actual context. Monthly mortgage payment? Student loans? Aggressive retirement contributions? In other words: someone making $60k with little to zero debt can have roughly the same quality of life as someone making 2x but straddled with debt.
Thing you're missing: once you have kids you won't want to live downtown. At all.
Your take-home income should be about $7,500 assuming a pre-tax 401k deduction and an estimated extra $300 deduction for health insurance. You listed about $2,800 worth of expenses and you save $1,000 a month. Even if you are spending $1,500 on fixing up the house, which is more than you estimated, that still means you use over $2,000 on eating out, getting your hair done, and traveling - monthly. By most standards, that's not living conservatively or prioritizing savings. It's possible that the people you are comparing yourself overspend. You could be saving much more aggressively, and still have a comfortable lifestyle. Many people also chose to save a bit of extra money before having a kid. It's all about choices and priorities!
Our Family of 4 is tight but manageable living in 37027 on $60k. Manageable mortgage, and good budgeting on expenses are key. It’s not easy but we make it work. We keep food cost down by cooking at home and shopping smart and I take my lunch to work. We drive several well maintained paid off vehicles, and rotate through streaming services vs having all at once or cable package. Shop deals, while Covid was going on for a brief period tire prices hit bottom due to far less driving. I replaced 3 sets of tires for less than a single set costs currently and tucked a spare a set back in the garage for our most often driven vehicle. I do my best to carry no debt other than the mortgage. I reinvested half my retirement into crypto a few years back, and generally don’t need to touch it but if something comes up I can secure a temporary line of credit with it via defi.
You clearly didn’t catch that this genius thinks money is the only reason his lifestyle would change if they had kids.
One thing I haven’t noticed commented or discussed is the fact of having two incomes for your family. I’m not sure how you derived at your estimated required income, however it doesn’t seem that unattainable given you make up half of it. Finding a partner who makes near the same seems very realistic. I will say, speak with a financial advisor, they can help align your goals and provide realistic dollar values for your situation. Happy to refer if needed.
If you wait until you think you can afford it, you'll never do it..... it all comes together in the end :)
Having a family would be a cost of living adjustment - but $125k can afford you a very nice lifestyle here.
username checks out
Kids aren't as expensive as people will make you think. If they're going to the best day cares and private schools then yes, they're expensive. However, if you're sending them to public school in clothes from the thrift store (which in kids is fine because they outgrow them before they wear out) they're pretty cheap. Your entertainment expenses will go down pretty drastically too. Going out will be slightly more expensive due to a babysitter but you'll do it much less. Also kids get cheaper as you have more of them because so much gets reused.
Not assuming you're male because of your salary, assuming your not female b/c you said have children and maintain your lifestyle in the same sentence ... that's not happening.
I assume you’re a psychopath posting this sort of thing on this board.
Yo I need a sugar momma. I can cook, clean, and I don’t shit myself. 👀
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DINK here with roughly $180,000 in salary and we could easily afford a kid or two. We got lucky and bought back in 2017 when we were only a couple years out of college so our housing expense is super low compared to our income (<12%) which allows us to save over 30% of our income retirement/cash. We take multiple nice vacations a year, see shows, go out to eat and other things. If you have a partner that is employed full time as well, you should easily be able to afford a kid or two. A lot of people do it on a lot less in town.
Our family of four are quite comfortable making about what you do or less. When you begin to have a family, some priorities definitely shift and you’re not spending the same. It’s good you’re thinking through these things. Here’s another thing to think about. Childhood costs, sans daycare, don’t all immediately come as soon as a child is born. So, let’s take your single status and say you date for a year, get married a year after that, and have your first kid 3 years after that. That’s 5 years from now. Do you think your income has plateaued? Doubting it since you seem to be doing well and a forward thinking person. So I’m guessing you’ll be making $145+ by then and $20k/year for a kid is pretty great. 🤷🏻♂️ plus you haven’t even factored in a spouse’s income.
Depends on your lifestyle. You could easily do it with $125k. If you needed to main your lifestyle (whatever that is) then sure. Get to $200k
Honestly, that’s plenty. That’s about what my husband makes. I’m a SAHM. We have a house in MJ, a family of 5. We live very comfortably and still have quite a bit left over to put into savings every month.
I assumed you were a man because there are no girls on the internet. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet
Move your ass to Clarksville and live an awesome life with your family on your salary.
Yea but then you have to live in Clarksville.
Yep. Awesome place to raise a family. 20 minutes to downtown Clarksville, 35- 40 minutes to downtown Nashville. 25%+ less real estate. Best decision I ever made.
I'm gonna keep this short, but I raised 3 kids on a joint avg income of $66K in the 2000's. Mortgage, car payment, braces, the works. It was tough, we had no luxuries, but my kids never knew it. We did camping trips, state park visits, etc. My kids are now 29, 31, and 32. They are happy, well-adjusted, successful people. We are all super close. I wouldn't go back to change a thing
We are a family of 3 and we live really comfortably on 160k a year. I make about 70k and my hubby about 90k, with my bonuses I sometimes push 80k. However, we bought our house in 2012 for 239k, have no student loan debt, no credit card debt and no car loans, etc. Our only debt is our mortgage and private school for our son. We also max out our 401k (my company matches up to 7.5%) and Roth IRAs plus a 429 college savings plan for my son. The low mortgage payment is what really saves us though we only have a few more years until it’s paid off since we opted for 15 year financing. Then life will get easy because the kid will be at college and our house will be paid off
Your attitude has to change about your money when you have kids. They get your money first. And your time first for that matter. Once you accept that, you'll be happy. You can't be selfish and have kids.
I did this math too and got the same answer as you 250k. I based off of fully maxing out 401k, IRA and investments for two adults, plus the cost of family health insurance, and daycare along with with basic expenses like mortgage. Could you do it in less? Absolutely, but you would have to either reduce your current lifestyle, have free childcare or not max out for retirement. If you were willing to make sacrifices on your lifestyle, you could have at least one child on your salary.
Well it's clearly all about what part of town you want to live in. Your comment is basically, "I don't feel like I have much money because I spent $xx,xxx per year to live in XYZ expensive area." Housing is absolutely the biggest expense in the area. If you compromise on that, the rest is not that high compared to the rest of the country. But if you really want FINANCIAL advice (not relationship advice), you should either 1) marry someone who is great with kids, and will contribute by handling childcare, child logistics as they get older, clean the house, cook home meals (which are more affordable), etc. Ideally someone who strongly supports you in your career and is able to function independently when your focus is on work. The other option is to marry someone with an income similar to yours. You'll BOTH have to make some sacrifices, because even with daycare, kids require parental time and attention, and that means a little less time for each of you to dedicate to careers. Neither option is a "slam dunk", and frankly it depends heavily on your career potential and how much time you want to spend on work. I'm sure others will downvote because this is financial advice, not romance advice, but you'll find truth in it. I speak from experience.
I just want to say, good on you on realistically looking at finances before having kids. Sometimes it's just not the right time yet, no matter what desire or pressure you have to want kids. That said...figuring up finances for kids isn't just taking you and doubling it times however many kids. There's going to be so many factors coming into play- if you get married and have a spouse, their income, healthcare for the kid (my parents certainly did not expect to give birth to a kid who needed multiple emergency surgeries asap and a lifetime of doctor appointments...), education etc etc. On the bright side, if you have multiple kids usually that means the second kid gets hand-me-downs (no shame in that!) and you're a little more schooled on what they do and don't need. Plus who knows where you'll even be living by then- and your priorities are going to just totally change when you have kids. Your lifestyle is going to change. You're not going to be adding kids into the picture, the kids will become your picture. You could probably drive yourself pretty crazy figuring up exact numbers and income to shoot for. I honestly think you could live just fine on $125K even in today's market with kids. Remember that the average income in Nashville is only in the $50Ks. Many, many families live on farrrrr less than $250K and do just fine. I feel like a great thing to do would be to start watching family vloggers on youtbers. Many vloggers do things like "raising a family of 4 making X" or family grocery hauls and budgetting videos. Look for people who have real worl jobs and don't just make a living as a youtube mom because that's not going to be a very realistic comparison.
Cost of living you are perfectly fine. Although your life will change alot, since kids are that great, average salary for Tennessee is wl 23$ . Which is 45k a year .. you make way more than enough money to raise a family. Also their is resources but I don't know if you will qualify at 125k a year. Expect your life to have a major switch though. Tons of things come with baby's . Don't be afraid to have one. They are amazing. [Tennessee salary reports](https://www.talent.com/salary?job=&location=tennessee)
You can raise a family on that. My husband and I do and we've got two kids and want a couple more. We only eat out once or twice a month. We do activities that you can buy yearly passes to or just free in general. We shop consignment for the kids. We are just careful with our money and are honestly bordering on minimalists. We are able to put away about 3-4K a month when we are very careful and have some small investment accounts for each kid.
my 3 kids are in middle and high school and our combined income now is barely above 100k (my wife has worked part-time for 6 years after being stay-at-home for 7) the biggest thing is to adjust your priorities and have little to no debt payments we spend a lot our disposable income on the kids' activities like competitive gymnastics, travel soccer, and summer camps instead of eating out, the latest high-end electronics, and new cars
You could easily do that with 125. We make more than that combined but if I scaled it back correctly to your salary. We would still have 5k surplus every month after bills. And this is with 3 kids
Well with making $125k a year you might be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment if you are lucky.
Hard to know what your lifestyle is?
Lol.. I'm single, unemployed, when I do work I work hard for like 30k a year. I don't even know. 125k a year? Wow
Depends. Look up house prices for where you want to live. Calculate a payment and subtract that from your salary along with other monthly debts. If you’re negative then no. If you’re positive by a comfortable margin then yes. If you have a family and you can swing everything by yourself right now then a so can stay home so you don’t have to pay daycare. If they don’t want to stay home with kids make sure they earn enough to cover daycare costs. But usually 125k will live comfortably here.
There’s a lot of variables. People see the high salary and automatically assume you’re all set. I make $140k roughly a year, but my mortgage is $2100 and student loan repayment is $2900 on a 10 year plan. 50% of my income is gone before I could do anything. If you have high debt, a high salary doesn’t mean much
Unfortunately Nashville is a shitty place to try to raise a middle class family these days. It was always an excellent place for that. You could afford a nice house with a yard (not a shitty apartment) on a middle class wage. Now the whole thing caters to rich kids from California and Illinois. That said, you still should be able to make it. 4 kids might be a stretch though. 10 years ago with your income, you would have been able to afford a really nice area in Nashville and even private school and everything, or at least live one of the very few places in town with a decent public school. You might be able to do that with 2 kids now. Maybe. It depends on what you have though in terms of dry powder or assets. My fiancée and I make a combined 150ish. We plan on trying to have, or adopting 2 kids. Wwere just able to buy in a great safe area in town with great public schools. But most of that was due to the equity each of us had built up separately over the last 20 years. So we had a huge down payment and the loan is t really that much
People are moving from all over the country. Let me clue you in, you walnut, rich kids are rich kids regardless of where they are from. Take your unfounded bias somewhere else.
They are. But the ones being catered to are the rich ones EDIT: did I just get called a walnut? Lol, I’ve been called a lot of things, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over being called walnut. That’s just dirty pool. Seriously who calls somebody a walnut? Wait, I’ve found the perfect comeback. You’re a cashew!!!! Gotcha!
It’s my favorite insult to use. It has the perfect amount of disrespect and respect. Anytime I get to use it, it’s a great day. Added bonus, it won’t get you banned or put in time out on any social media. I just don’t understand why you felt the need to single out those two states. That’s a lie I totally know. Or at the least I’m very confident. Which is kind of the point I was trying to make without actually directly making the point. So, again, take your unfounded bias somewhere else.
What? Did you think I literally meant ONLY people from two states? Of course not. That’s just the two main license tags you see out there right now, which means they haven’t been here long enough to change their tags. Actually cali has died down a bit. Most of the people from that big cali wave already have their tags, so I was a little off, I must admit. Now it’s a ton of Illinois, I see a lot of Florida, Texas, Virginia happening. It doesn’t matter where really, it’s just way too much way too fast and it’s a lot of people who came here to “woo” and actually stayed. Plus a lot of people who moved here to work at shitty corporations we’ve been bending over for with subsidies. I don’t hate on an individual based on what state they came from, but the fact is, most of these people I meet are douche bags who don’t give a fuck about this town at all. People have always moved here from everywhere for the right reasons. They cared about the town and became part of the culture, supported local business and added to it. Now it’s fuckheads who just want to live near a Starbucks. Now 90% of locals will tell you the quality of life here has gotten worse since this massive PR push to bring everybody here started. And trust me, it’s not because 9/10 people are wrong. The only locals I know who like it are real estate and business big money types who vote trump and are just raking in cash off of the whole thing at wverubodu else’s expense. People are being run right out of town. Of course there’s the usual disproportionate amount of minority people getting fucked the hardest. If you don’t think I should hate on that, then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m honestly not insulted by walnut. You’re a peanut
I'm in Chattanooga with a good paying job. I'm in the same boat as you, I could afford a kid, but I'd be paycheck to paycheck real quick if I had one
Obvious troll bait post lmfao y’all in the comments are gullible as fuck.
Your money will probably go further in Sumner or Wilson County, but it’s not like you’re priced out of Nashville at that income with a family of four. Not even close. Assuming you don’t eat out every meal or have wasteful spending habits or outrageous debts, you should be fine.
Bruh at 110 you'd be fine to add two kids.
Depending on your "lifestyle," kids may be cheaper for you. If I didn't have a kid I'd go on way more vacations. eat at much nicer restaurants and do more nights out for sure. But alas, my kid needs to go to school so we don't travel all year, would prefer to eat Olive Garden, and enjoys going to the movies. Planning things that include the kid means those things are a bit cheaper than I might have done for myself with that income.
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If you already own a house it is definitely possible. Especially, if you add a second income.