My combined household income is more than 150k per year and I have not changed my spending habits since I was in college.... caveat being I own a house but my mortgage may only be twice what I was paying in rent. Also I now have healthcare.

Still living paycheck to paycheck. I guess I'd be ok if I missed one or both my wife and I missed one. Though, my marriage would start to be in jeopardy after 2 or 3 I'd guess. Not that she would leave me because I'm not making enough but the added stress would quickly become unmanageable.

If you are living in an area with a high cost of living, $150k won't feel like $150k.

From Bungalow, 10 Mist Expensive Cities in the US,

1. San Francisco, CA The cost of living in San Francisco is the highest in the country. Jobs in the City by the Bay pay well, with average annual incomes of over $100,000. In 2019, the city had an unemployment rate as low as 1.8%. But a good chunk of each check goes toward the nation’s highest housing costs. As of January 2020, the average rent for an apartment in San Francisco was $3,700, and the median home purchase price was $1.35 million. Prices are sky-high because of limited housing stock and lack of new construction.

If you are making $100k and renting at the average rental price of $3,700, in one year the cost your housing is $44,400 which is almost 45% of your income. The goal is to spend 30% of your income on housing. If people with would be normally considered to have a good income are struggling then the poor are completely fucked.

There is a small group of people who are making money off this system and ain't us.

This is out of touch. There is a huge number of factors that dictate what amount of money is enough to live a fulfilled live. A bachelor can live a fulfilled life on 30k a year and still save money, but a family of 5 can definitely be living paycheck to paycheck on 150k, especially if they live in an expensive area.

I think location definitely plays into this. 150k in some places is nothing.

I'm almost there.

I also live in the Bay Area. My rent is locally cheap but nationally very high. My wife has a chronic illness and an unrelated acute issue that recently required surgery. She can barely work. Until this most recent surgery I was keeping ahead, but expenses are up and income is down and that's not true anymore.

I have good health insurance but there's a lot more to medical costs than just doctors, and to partially manage her daily quality of life it's not weird to cook her three different dinners and she can only stomach one. This explodes our meal budget.

We're childfree but one of our dogs recently also got diagnosed with chronic illness. They are our kids, full stop.

Shit happens. Don't be a dick about it.

Nope. If people having been living the exact same without changing many of their habits then it is absolutely fair that they would also be struggling paycheck to paycheck. They're effected just as the rest are. We need to focus on the jackass causing us to turn on eachother. We shouldn't be comparing ourselves because there are people who consider 30k/y as living lavish and think they also shouldn't be complaining.

Wholely agree. I live in the most expensive region in the US on $160k base salary. My total annual expenses (including vacations, wants, gifts) don't exceed $50k, and of that $20k is rent.

They use the median instead of mean here for a reason... Can you guess it?

I think the point is, they are living paycheck to paycheck unless they choose to decrease the quality of living.

On one hand we can say these people are way better off than they deserve and laugh at their stupidity.

On the other hand, that's not a great sign for the economy. The "every day" kind of rich person isn't even that rich anymore. And lowering the ceiling pushes you into the floor.

If society were healthier and functioning, relative costs would be going down for everybody. But enshitification is the new big thing to earn another buck.