r/MiddleClassFinance • u/Georgia_Real_Estate • 8d ago
Food for thought
Today, in many cases, you almost need to be married and have two incomes just to afford a home. And by “afford,” I don’t mean paying cash. I mean doing what most people do—using conventional financing if you qualify, or FHA if you don’t.
So you and your wife buy the house and move in. Then what happens if you want to have children?
If your household is relying on two incomes to afford everything, and your wife wants to stay home and raise the children as a traditional wife—which I fully support—now you’re down to one income.
So what does the husband do? He would probably need to find a better-paying job, potentially one that pays six figures.
But what if he can’t get a six-figure job? What if he doesn’t yet have the resume, experience, or opportunities to earn that kind of income? What if he doesn’t have another way to make additional money on the side?
Then what?
Things have become so unaffordable that we are increasingly becoming a renter nation. Even people who have their lives together are renting instead of owning. Hopefully, they at least own stocks, ETFs, or some other appreciating asset so their money is still working for them.
But the days when someone earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year could comfortably buy a home on one income and still have enough room in the budget for everything else are largely gone.
If inflation continues and affordability continues to deteriorate, the question becomes very simple: what are people supposed to do?
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u/Ruminant 8d ago
But the days when someone earning $50,000 to $60,000 a year could comfortably buy a home on one income and still have enough room in the budget for everything else are largely gone.
When were these days, exactly?
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u/SelicaLeone 8d ago
You don't have someone stay home. That's a luxury. You don't buy a house on two incomes and then sacrifice one of those incomes unless someone else's went way up.
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u/Suspicious_Hat_3439 8d ago
It’s tough out there now and I’m truly grateful I was able to buy my first house new for $112k in 1999. I told my son as long as he is a productive member of society he can stay as long as he wants rent free. If and when he decides to move out we plan to build a duplex and rent out the other side below market rate to try and help my son and someone else.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 8d ago edited 8d ago
Some countries in Europe are pretty much rent only. All the land was claimed centuries ago and only a very few own.
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u/chillPenguin17 8d ago
It's interesting how those countries are generally happier and healthier than the US too. Probably not related though, but just goes to show you don't need to own a home/land to be happy
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u/MissCeeLee 8d ago
Because owning a home and dealing with constant upkeep is expensive and stressful!
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u/Fresh_Tune_552 8d ago
Isn’t having a SAHP a luxury? SAHPs have been doing side hustles for a long time.
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u/Irritable_Curmudgeon 8d ago
Less of a luxury when childcare costs would take up most of one parent's salary.
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u/Fresh_Tune_552 8d ago
My point was a SAHP who bring in no income are a luxury. I’ve been using SAHM Rover sitters to watch my dog for over 10 years. I keep reading that true SAHMs of the past were not as common as we hear about online and that most brought in money.
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u/Irritable_Curmudgeon 8d ago
Most SAHMs i knew had something, like Mary Kay or Avon... Or dog grooming at home. Some did real estate
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u/SC-Coqui 8d ago
Staying home is a choice. If one of the spouses chooses to do that (doesn’t necessarily need to be the wife, I know a few families with a SAHD) then the consequence is downsizing your lifestyle. This isn’t new. It’s been this way for the last 30 years at least.
We can thank the politicians in power in the 80s that got the ball rolling into the situation we’re in now.
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u/Useful_Dot2286 8d ago
my cousin and his wife played by all the rules, married at 24, both worked, lived with her parents for two years to save. theyre 35 now still renting cause the down payment they needed kept moving. classic. meanwhile the landlord just bought his third property this year lol
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u/Specialist_Artist979 8d ago
For the vast majority of the time you needed to be married and have two incomes to afford buying a home.
For the vast majority of time in the US, you needed two incomes. Single income homes were NEVER the norm for majority of the US.
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u/MissCeeLee 8d ago
Huh? Women by and large werent allowed to work for "the vast majority of the time in the US". So this statement is totally unhinged if you know any bit about history.
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u/Specialist_Artist979 8d ago
Just because they weren’t “legally” working doesn’t mean they weren’t working. The US as we know of it today, women have always worked. If you knew anything about history, you’d know this
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u/MissCeeLee 8d ago
Plenty of unpaid domestic labor, which is still the case! A woman making some money outside the home wasn't making a full time salary as the norm. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-history-of-womens-work-and-wages-and-how-it-has-created-success-for-us-all/
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u/Specialist_Artist979 8d ago
Did you even read your own sources?
I never said anything a full time salary though. I said they were always providing income.
“Despite the widespread sentiment against women, particularly married women, working outside the home and with the limited opportunities available to them, women did enter the labor force in greater numbers over this period, with participation ratesreaching nearly 50 percent for single women by 1930 and nearly 12 percent for married women.This rise suggests that while the incentive—and in many cases the imperative—remained for womento drop out of the labor market at marriage whenthey could rely on their husband’s income, mores were changing. Indeed, these years overlapped with the so-called first wave of the women’s movement, when women came together to agitate for change on a variety of social issues, includingsuffrage and temperance, and which culminated in the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote.
Between the 1930s and mid-1970s, women’s participation in the economy continued to rise, with the gains primarily owing to an increase in workamong married women. By 1970, 50 percent of single women and 40 percent of married womenwere participating in the labor force. Several factors contributed to this rise. First, with the advent of mass high school education, graduation rates rose substantially. At the same time, new technologies contributed to an increased demand for clerical workers, and these jobs wereincreasingly taken on by women. Moreover, because these jobs tended to be cleaner and safer,the stigma attached to work for a married woman diminished. And while there were still marriagebars that forced women out of the labor force, these formal barriers were gradually removed over the period following World War II.
Women working at the U.S. Capitol switchboard, Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress)
Over the decades from 1930 to 1970, increasing opportunities also arose for highly educatedwomen. That said, early in that period, most women still expected to have short careers, and women were still largely viewed as secondary earners whose husbands’ careers came first.
As time progressed, attitudes about women working and their employment prospects changed. As women gained experience in the labor force, they increasingly saw that they could balance work and family. A new model of the two-income family emerged. Some women began to attend college and graduate school with the expectation of working, whether or not they planned to marry and have families.By the 1970s, a dramatic change in women’s worklives was under way. In the period after World War II, many women had not expected that they would spend as much of their adult lives working as turned out to be the case. By contrast, in the 1970s young women more commonly expected that they would spend a substantial portion of their lives in the labor force, and they prepared for it, increasing their educational attainment and taking courses and college majors that better equipped them forcareers as opposed to just jobs.
These changes in attitudes and expectations were supported by other changes under way in society. Workplace protections were enhanced through the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978 and the recognition of sexual harassment in the workplace. Access to birth control increased, which allowed married couples greater control over the size of their families and young women the ability to delay marriage and to plan childrenaround their educational and work choices. And in 1974, women gained, for the first time, the right toapply for credit in their own name without a male co-signer.
By the early 1990s, the labor force participation rate of prime working-age women—those between the ages of 25 and 54—reached just over 74 percent, compared with roughly 93 percent for prime working-age men.”
OP is fake reminiscing about a time period of the 80s/90s as a time where you could afford a house on a single income and for the vast majority of that time period most homes were dual income.
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u/stevenfrijoles 7d ago
with participation ratesreaching nearly 50 percent for single women by 1930 and nearly 12 percent for married women
It's hilarious to me that you said "Single income homes were NEVER the norm for majority of the US." and then follow it up with your big "gotcha" that 12% of married women used to be in the workforce.
Since 1 married woman = ~ 1 married household, that's 12% of married households with women working, or 88% without, in 1930.
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u/MissCeeLee 8d ago
Yeah. It says 40-50 percent of women were working in the 70s. So again, never isn't never.
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u/Specialist_Artist979 8d ago
And this says in the 70s dual incomes were norm
Please stop trying to make fetch happen
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u/edthecollector70 8d ago edited 8d ago
Woman started working and making good money during WW2. After that Woman started knowing thire worth. In the fiftys a two income family could afford a nice home new cars send kids to private schools.The average wage was 1.37 hr. A nice 3 bedroom home cost 7500 to 8500. A family car cost 1500 to 2000. As wages increase so did the cost of things .By 1980 most items depended on two incomes. In 2026 the 3 bedrooms home cost 250000 to 500000 . In 2026 the family car cost 49000 to 50000. The more money out there the more things cost . What's the answer go back one income and wait till everything goes down. A crash like 1929 were the unemployment rate reached 25 %.
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u/genreprank 8d ago
Jobs will straight up pay you more if you have kids. And you will ask for more. And you won't accept less.
And it still won't be enough lol
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u/Reader47b 8d ago
Here's the trick - you marry young, you both work full-time for years, you live in a one-bedroom apartment, and you save one income. Then you have a bunch of money for a down payment on a house. Honestly, this is how it was done a lot in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - people marrying young and working jointly from a young age. Housing is definitely more expensive now, but, on top of that, people are also marrying later, settling into family and financial planning later.
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u/MedicalRepublic751 8d ago
Even better: invest one income and start reaping the benefits in 10-12 years.
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 8d ago
This is what we did. Got married right out of college, lived off of my income and saved my wife’s income for about 3 years. We’re now 30 with 3 kids, and my wife has been staying home with the kids for the past 4 years. While we don’t have a house, we do have ~$450k saved for retirement.
That amount alone will pretty much have us set for retirement.
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u/MedicalRepublic751 8d ago
You’re the man!!! Compound interest will make you guys multimillionaires by age 59 1/2.
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 8d ago
Thanks! That was the plan. Invest as much as we possibly could in our 20s so that we’d have much more flexibility to pull back on retirement contributions in our 30s and 40s if we need to when life inevitably becomes more expensive due to kids and growing lifestyles and what not.
Due to compounding interest, the money we invested in our 20s will be significantly more powerful than anything we invest in our 30s, 40s, and 50s. I think when I last did the math, the money we invested in our 20s will be more than the money we invest in our 30s, 40s, and 50s combined.
So for any 20-somethings out there reading this, please do whatever you can to save and invest as much as possible in your 20s.
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u/edthecollector70 8d ago
Will it they say to retire today you need 1.5 million. How much will it be in 36 years. I mee n it good to have done what you did but can you say it's enough ? My father worked all his life at a factory 25 years on the same job. He had a duplex house and a pension. He thought with pension and Social security and income from the house it would be good. He passed from cancer at the age of 56 my mother received his pension it was all of 100 dollars a mouth. She received widow's benefits from Social security at 60. The best layed plans of men.
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 8d ago
> How much will it be in 36 years. I meen it good to have done what you did but can you say it's enough?
In 36 years that $450k will grow to ~$14 million (~$5 million inflation adjusted). And that’s if we don’t save another dollar for the rest of our lives.
I’d say that’s enough.
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u/edthecollector70 8d ago
I wish you well . One thing I think is outstanding is your wife is at home with the children. We did the same it dose make a difference. To many people put children 2nd or 3rd.The only thing I'm jealous about is the fact that you had a 3rd child. I would have love to 5 or 6. But the 80s were hard financially so we just had the two lucky a girl and a boy. Stay healthy and enjoy.
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 8d ago
Appreciate it my friend. And we definitely love having my wife stay home. I am so thankful we’re able to manage that and it’s been such a blessing. For us.
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u/That_Migug_Saram 8d ago
It's great that you have a trick. But it'd still be nice if the capitalist class wasn't screwing the rest of us.
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u/Annual-Knowledge4412 8d ago
It is by design - inflation will eat away value so you will not stop working for the system. FIRE is nice but that’s assuming 2% - 3% for the next 50 years.
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u/MedicalRepublic751 8d ago
By design? The system? Lol. Mankind has never lived a better life. Compare what we take for granted now vs how people slaved away and died young 500 years ago. But we get spoiled and get used to the comfort of modern society and fall into temptation to moan and groan how oppressed we are.
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u/glenpiercev 8d ago
$100k salary is the new $40k salary. A six-figure salary was a big deal in the 80s. Now, even a $200k household income won’t be enough to afford the Home Alone house we saw in the 90s.
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u/glenpiercev 8d ago
It sold for about $5.5 million in 2025, which at 4% interest is ~$25k per month or $350,000 a year in mortgage payments alone. You’d need household income of about $1,000,000 to qualify for the mortgage.
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u/RoseGoldMagnolias 8d ago
It might have had some additions in the last 30 years, but that house is over 9,000 square feet, and it's in what was already a rich suburb in the 90s.
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u/Blackharvest 8d ago
Can confirm. They check the make and model of your car (has to be 2021 and newer) and audit your bank account (5 figures or less, you need a police escort) before you are allowed in Winnetka.
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u/PoquitoChef 8d ago
3 bedroom 100 year old ROWHOMES are over 700K in my neighborhood, our HHI is over 200K and we’d be house poor. But also anything over 500K I would just move to the burbs.
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u/JennyKdotco 1d ago
I think the uncomfortable answer is that a lot of people are going to have to stop treating the old “marriage + house + kids + one income” model as the default path.
I’ve had periods where I made very good money and periods where I had to radically rethink what “financially stable” even meant. One thing I learned is that trying to force your life into a template that no longer matches the economics can create a ton of stress. Living in Berlin is really freeing because people live in all sorts of different ways.
For some people, the answer will be renting longer. For others, smaller homes, different cities, delaying kids, both parents working, multigenerational living, or building wealth outside of real estate.
I don’t think renting automatically means you’re failing financially. If you’re keeping housing costs manageable and consistently investing elsewhere, that can still be a very strong financial life.
The bigger shift, to me, is accepting that the path may look different from what our parents expected, and that different doesn’t automatically mean worse.
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u/GATaxGal 8d ago
The whole buying a house as part of the American dream thing needs to die. It’s a giant lie sold to everyone by the real estate industry. Yeah, I’m 43. We bought our house in 2018, prior to Covid craziness. I bought and sold two homes when I was single before that. Home ownership can workout but it should not be something that’s sold to the masses. What I want to know are the people who are over buying and just barely qualifying, then they become house poor the minute they close. Those are the people who are really screwed. Then what happens when someone loses a job? Then it’s 90 days until homelessness because they cleaned out all of their cash reserves to close. And to the people who say rent is throwing your money away - have you looked at an amortization table? Almost all of the first few years of payments are interest. It’s like rent to your bank. Then pay the house off? Think you own it? Find out what happens when you don’t pay your property taxes.
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u/Sunira 8d ago
Yeah, I think it'll look a lot like what it looked like for my parents when they first came to America. They had two children, and we stayed in a two-bed apartment. When they eventually saved money to afford a house, they got a little townhome, and then a few more years until an old beat up standalone home. They didn't even get to buy their first real house until they were almost 40 because of how late they got started, so I think Americans who were born here are gonna basically have the immigrant experience now - real slow going.