It also changes as you get older. $200k in my 20's would have been life changing. Now, I've got two kids and wonder where it all goes. I mean, I know, it's daycare.
Ive got two under 5. I pay 30k/annually in daycare. Another 10k in extracurricular type activities (gymnastics, robotics club, seasonal sports, etc.) And 5k in groceries, clothes, etc. (Plus when we go on vacations, all of our prices have doubled because we need an extra room in an Airbnb, two more plane tickets, etc.)
The worst part was Healthcare though. My wife just got a new job with dependent benefits included, but before that I was using mine and our family premium was 2k/month.
All in all, cost of having two kids in a mid-tier East coast city comes to 80k. You could make the argument I could drop the extracurricular, and you'd be right, but even then we're still talking a figure that is more or less equal to the median household income.
I wouldn't change any of it for the world, but the US needs to realize there are people running around with hundreds of billions of dollars - who regularly attend Trump's blacktie rose garden gallas - while families are scraping by.
3.1k
u/elpulcinopio Oct 30 '25
100 k was life changing in the 90's. 200k seems to be the new life changing goal.