Income a family of four need to live comfortably by state in the U.S.

[GON]

Dow and S&P continue to set all time highs, fueled in large part by tech.

I often wonder if the market continually hitting highs is simply the result of inflation. The change in the value of the USD might negate the market holistically hitting all time highs. Insert the decades long acceptable practice of having pensions funds and retired folks monies in the market, instead of safe investments adds even more fuel to the equity markets.

 

[Brons2]

5 days, 16 pages. My option is that, in my adult lifetime, say 1990 to today, the costs increases in so many things have outstripped the stated cost of inflation.

Take higher education as a start. I went to college for 5.5 years, some at juco, some at UT-Austin, and my tuition was never more than $700 a semester. I graduated in May 1995. If that cost is indexed to the government published inflation figures, then $700 in 1995 now is $1440.18 per usinflationcaledar dot com. But the cost of tutition at UT-Austin is now something like $7000 per semester. That's just one example.

I bought my first house in the summer of 1995. It was the former model home in the neighborhood and it was pretty nice comparatively, 1650 sq ft 3/2 for $97,500. If housing costs were only based on inflation, that house today would be $200,596.65. Yet looking on Zillow, I see the Zillow Zestimate for this property is now $367,100. And that's probably low end inflation compared to some other parts of town, over the years my former neighborhood has declined in quality. In parts of town that haven't declined, houses that cost in the low $100s in the late 90s/early 00s are now in the 5s and 6s.

You could make many, many examples of this. Cars. Groceries. Milk and Eggs is about the only thing that isn't so much more expensive.

Yet salaries have not kept pace with inflation in this same 34 year period. Is it any wonder people are getting squeezed?

 

[Pew]

I haven't checked all 15 pages, in case these have already been posted, so sorry if that's the case... But it sure is interesting how these numbers compare to Comfortable Living numbers...

The Living Wage For a Family of Four in All 50 States
1 Mississippi $73,381
2 Oklahoma $74,253
3 Alabama $75,724
4 Kansas $75,924
5 Arkansas $76,456
6 West Virginia $76,905
7 Missouri $77,197
8 Kentucky $77,842
9 Iowa $78,025
10 Georgia $78,448
11 Nebraska $79,007
12 Tennessee $79,054
13 Wyoming $79,879
14 Illinois $79,899
15 Indiana $80,144
16 Louisiana $80,451
17 Michigan $80,998
18 Ohio $81,006
19 Texas $81,374
20 Minnesota $81,931
21 New Mexico $82,047
22 South Dakota $83,708
23 North Dakota $83,852
24 South Carolina $84,062
25 Wisconsin $84,156
26 North Carolina $84,957
27 Pennsylvania $87,500
28 Utah $89,936
29 Delaware $91,293
30 Virginia $91,955
31 Florida $92,271
32 Montana $92,367
33 Idaho $94,874
34 Colorado $95,563
35 Nevada $95,755
36 Rhode Island $95,929
37 Arizona $97,345
38 Maine $99,158
39 New Hampshire $100,436
40 Connecticut $101,030
41 New Jersey $104,770
42 Washington $105,080
43 Vermont $106,692
44 Oregon $106,779
45 Maryland $110,244
46 Alaska $113,079
47 New York $118,127
48 California $130,239
49 Massachusetts $142,341
50 Hawaii $182,900

I don't know about the other states but 80k/year/family of 4 in IL would be near impossible if they're fresh families that still have house, car, and school payments.

 

[JeffKeryk]

I often wonder if the market continually hitting highs is simply the result of inflation. The change in the value of the USD might negate the market holistically hitting all time highs. Insert the decades long acceptable practice of having pensions funds and retired folks monies in the market, instead of safe investments adds even more fuel to the equity markets.

Yes and no.
Yes because inflation affects just about everything from a macro standpoint.
No because only a small amount of the population own the market. Most people are invested in 401K, etc and don't even know what they own.

And a big no because tech is an emerging powerhouse; go back prior to the 1990s and tech was a small player. Here's the tech heavy NASDAQ. Snap a Linear Regression line and the slope looks pretty darn good.

 

[GR_CoB]

What is the definition of a living wage?

A rental in the slum and no food stamps?

A car?

Savings?

How old is this data?

I don't have answers to those questions. But I will say that I know multiple NC families that make less than the Mississippi living wage number...

As long as I can afford a van down by the river I'm good... although I'd like to pass on the government cheese if I could.

Amen. I'm a simple man and would be just fine in a fancy class "A" or "C" RV rather than a stripped down apartment or falling apart house... Heck, imagine the monthly savings?! But wife and kids don't agree with that, so slave away for a house I will...

 

[GR_CoB]

I don't know about the other states but 80k/year/family of 4 in IL would be near impossible if they're fresh families that still have house, car, and school payments.

Agreed. Idk how people do it. Thankfully government does throw them a bone and breadcrumbs here and there, I believe.

 

[JohnnyG]

Were you a kid once? Just curious.....

Nope, never.

 

[CKN]

Nope, never.

How did that work?

 

[JohnnyG]

How did that work?

Apparently, not so bad.

 

[SC Maintenance]

How old is this data?

Wife is a teacher. She knows lots of teachers that struggle. Starting teacher pay just increased to $40K. It was $36K last year. They can make a little more doing after school and summer school, etc. Not sure if they go get in the food line or whatever. It doesn't go up all that fast.

Teachers married to teachers is not uncommon, so two teachers with maybe 10 years experience would barely be over the SC Living wage listed.

 

[JHZR2]

Market Cap. Dominated by tech.

Precisely my point. Just silly.

 

[Dave Hess]

Yes, $75K is a realistic income of a household in the USA.

*** Correction ***

I meant each spouse has to make $75K each to have a realistic household income to make it in 2024.

Let’s face it, prices will not be coming down.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Precisely my point. Just silly.

Fair enough, but I would be curious as to why you think this? IMO, Tech, via the rise of data, will be the key differentiator in business going forward. Just like Finance and MRP solutions were in the 90's forward, not to mention engineering...

Today, IoT, AI, Quantum Computers and Smart Mfg are on the Critical Path.
Quantum Computing will be used to solve problems that traditional binary computers are not suited for.

My guess is you may understand this better than I... From Microsoft:
"The idea of a quantum computer was born out of the difficulty of simulating quantum systems on a classical computer. In the 1980s, Richard Feynman and Yuri Manin independently suggested that hardware based on quantum phenomena might be more efficient for the simulation of quantum systems than conventional computers.

There are many ways to understand why quantum mechanics is hard to simulate. The simplest is to see that matter, at a quantum level, is in a multitude of possible configurations (known as states).

Consider a system of electrons where there are 40 possible locations. The system therefore might be in any of 2^40 configurations (since each location can either have or not have an electron). To store the quantum state of the electrons in a conventional computer memory would require in excess of 130 GB of memory! If we allowed the particles to be in any of 41 positions, there would be twice as many configurations at 2^41 which in turn would require more than 260 GB of memory to store the quantum state.

This game of increasing the number of locations can't be played indefinitely. If we want to store the state conventionally, we would quickly exceed the memory capacities of the world's most powerful machines. At a few hundred electrons the memory required to store the system exceeds the number of particles in the universe; thus there is no hope with our conventional computers to ever simulate their quantum dynamics."

 

[tbm5690]

*** Correction ***

I meant each spouse has to make $75K each to have a realistic household income to make it in 2024.

Let’s face it, prices will not be coming down.

Living where? People are doing it wrong if they need 150k a year most places in the US to get by.

 

[Dave Hess]

Living where? People are doing it wrong if they need 150k a year most places in the US to get by.

Any major city / region of the USA where the jobs are.

Not everyone can work from home and not a lot of jobs in small cities.

I mentioned before kids are very expensive.

 

[CKN]

Living where? People are doing it wrong if they need 150k a year most places in the US to get by.

There is "get by" and then a standard of living one anticipates after walking away from college with a 4 year degree. If you graduate from college-drive two beaters and live in a shed you are just getting by. But guess what? It's not a great existence. Little league, soccer, cheer-it all adds up.
Very few just wants
to "get by".
My apologies to anybody on here this applies too......getting by.

 

[supton]

Not everyone can work from home and not a lot of jobs in small cities.

It took a bit to adjust to, as forced by the pandemic, but it's very nice. But I suspect it was only doable as I was part of a team with good connections at work, that then could teleconference at will, to keep at a job that we were dedicated to.

But yeah, I was reluctant to live near the city, been a long distance commuter almost all of my career. Has its upsides and downsides. What I save on housing I spend on cars.

 

[eljefino]

^ yeah this is it, established workers were allowed to WFH because they had the social capital to convince their bosses to let them do so.

My town FB page has a bunch of whiners looking for WFH jobs but they have no skills and are either just starting out or just getting back into the workforce. Sorry, they've got to grind for a few years like most everybody already has.

 

[Dave Hess]

It took a bit to adjust to, as forced by the pandemic, but it's very nice. But I suspect it was only doable as I was part of a team with good connections at work, that then could teleconference at will, to keep at a job that we were dedicated to.

But yeah, I was reluctant to live near the city, been a long distance commuter almost all of my career. Has its upsides and downsides. What I save on housing I spend on cars.

I’m fortunate to work from home and have company car.
I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to office if my boss told me to return to office or no job.

I don’t want to be working at Starbucks drive thru window or collecting shopping carts at Walmart.

 

[supton]

I’m fortunate to work from home and have company car.
I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to office if my boss told me to return to office or no job.

I don’t want to be working at Starbucks drive thru window or collecting shopping carts at Walmart.

I'd be bummed, I get more done at home--less people interrupting me. Less chit-chat with coworkers. Would probably find myself going home and plugging back in--the problem with "exceeds expectations" is that, every time you rise above the bar, you reset where the bar is. And if you want to rise up a bit and earn that bonus, you have to figure out how to be productive.

But I did the commute thing for years. As I mull over job options for the future, I do not look forward to the commute being the norm again. Is what it is though, that's the downside of job hopping now.