Living in the Midwest on a Midwest salary ($85k/yr), currently 30 years old, have 3 kids, a stay at home wife, and a net worth that just peeked over $250k.
Also, our work health insurance is shit, so $200 gets taken out of my paycheck each week for that, which puts it right around the $12k you mentioned.
Daycare is stupid expensive. Healthcare is stupid expensive. We handle the former by having my wife stay home. The latter is just an unfortunate fact of life.
I really don't know how much it costs to live on the coasts, but on a developer salary you can live very comfortably in the Midwest (Ames, Iowa here).
A single-income family with children and a stay-at-home parent isn't an unfortunate fact of life, it's a stable economic and social arrangement that promotes health and welfare of children, giving them a strong prospect for future success.
So you are saying if you have a non-fatal health incident then you are in serious financial trouble?
My wife and I are in the same position. We pay $209 a month for “healthcare” coverage that has a $700 yearly deductible. If either of us got sick or injuries we would be totally screwed. The US system is broken. We have massive wealth inequality, an educational system in crisis, and a toxic political system.
I assume by $700 you mean $7000? Also wondering if your $209 / month figure was accurate. What your comment currently describes is 1/4 the premium and 1/10th the deductible that my family has.
I agree that healthcare in the US is completely broken. It is in fact one of my favorite things to gripe about to anyone who will listen or who happens to be in my vicinity at the wrong moment.
I think our current "out of pocket max" is somewhere around $6k/year. The bill for having twins blew through that pretty well. When we had our first child, our deductible was roughly twice as much and I think we maybe just scratched the out of pocket max. Those insurance premiums were only a third of what we pay now though, which was a better trade off in my opinion.
Would we be financially ruined by running into something like that again? No. Would we be majorly inconvenienced? Yes.
Also, our work health insurance is shit, so $200 gets taken out of my paycheck each week for that, which puts it right around the $12k you mentioned.
Daycare is stupid expensive. Healthcare is stupid expensive. We handle the former by having my wife stay home. The latter is just an unfortunate fact of life.
I really don't know how much it costs to live on the coasts, but on a developer salary you can live very comfortably in the Midwest (Ames, Iowa here).