News, Your salary is $46,075? You can't afford to live in Seattle. (transplants, sales)

[CityGirl72]

My first thing that popped in my head is :What do you consider RICH?

I have friends who make in the 200s and 300s, and I'd still consider them just Upper Middle Class, but when I start seeing 500K and above that's when I think "rich"

We make about 150K - and we still consider ourselves smack in the middle of middle class.

[70Ford]

That's a good catch. I had a pen pal in the Philipines, way back in '91.. She made less than a dollar a day, working an 8 hour day. If you made 15 dollars an hour, to her, you were insanely wealthy.

The area I originally grew up in Georgia was mostly agriculturally based. Most workers made minimum wage, or there abouts. Factory work tops out there now (2008) at ~ 15 bucks an hour. People are glad to have it. 15 bucks an hour in Seattle would be hard to live on....depending on how you want to live.....

So hrmm...

According to that chart, CityGirl72, you're in the top 7.9 percent of wage earners in Seattle.

[CityGirl72]

HMMMM - and yet out of my husband's circle of friends we make the least and have the least assets (we prefer family outings and travel to nice cars) Memories are more important

NOW if we got to move back to Sac and still made 150K (which I doubt) - we'd be living quite well to do.

(and the way I look at the scale I see us in the 100K to 150K, not the 150K to 250K)

[Jennibc]

Originally Posted by CityGirl72

We make about 150K - and we still consider ourselves smack in the middle of middle class.

Lots of people that are upper middle to upper class consider themselves "middle class" For those of us who are really in the middle class to read that people making six figures think of themselves as part of the middle class, in a little unnerving. Please note this isn't a personal criticism against you city girl, it's just an observation that everyone in this country likes to think of themselves as middle class, including people that live in trailer parks that would be more accurately characterized as the working poor.

That said, in Seattle, I think 150 buys you a traditional middle class lifestyle. That people in other parts of the country can have if they are making 60K

[wannabeaTexan]

$150K is rich to me. I'm leaving because that is, unfortunately, how much you need to make to be able to live here unless you are super poor and qualify for Section 8 and food stamps and all of that.

Until recently, I thought I had a choice on if I could move or stay. But I realize now that I am being pushed out. Just can't do it anymore. I'm single with 6 kids (1 hasn't lived with me for the past 9 months), make $43.5K a year (not including about $1.5K in bonuses). It is just not working out anymore. Even last year, there were 2 or 3 times my kids had to eat Ramen noodles every night for dinner and I had to use my Target credit card to get food for a week until payday. Now, this is happening twice a month.

My lease is up in July...$1200 for a 3 bedroom townhouse...and they want to raise my rent to $1370. I already knew I could barely afford living here, but that put the nail in the coffin.

Thankfully, I'm not sad at all about leaving this weather behind and I'm looking for a new adventure anyway. But it would be sad if my native self really wanted to keep living where I was born and coudn't. I wonder how many folks around here are in that boat.

[sean98125]

You can certainly make it here on $3000 a month take home if you were single, which would be in the $45,000 range. You may not be able to own your own home, but you could certainly live a decent, comfortable life. Just pay cash for stuff, don't bother with car payments, and really think about whether or not you need a cell phone with internet access and a camera.

Of course, if you have six kids you wouldn't be able to make it here on that kind of money.

[wannabeaTexan]

And now that I read the article, and saw the question "Does a single person living in Seattle and earning $46,705 need housing relief?", my obvious answer is (without kids) heck no.

But if $1115 a month for a studio is considered "relief", that totally changes my answer.

[wannabeaTexan]

Originally Posted by sean98125

You can certainly make it here on $3000 a month take home if you were single, which would be in the $45,000 range. You may not be able to own your own home, but you could certainly live a decent, comfortable life. Just pay cash for stuff, don't bother with car payments, and really think about whether or not you need a cell phone with internet access and a camera.

Of course, if you have six kids you wouldn't be able to make it here on that kind of money.

Yeah, but $45K a year for a single childless person shouldn't be chump change. I don't think one should have to not have a car payment, decide not to have what are now commom household items/services and have to be a coupon clipper in that scenario.

[70Ford]

For example, the median home price in Seattle, the most expensive of the four, was $370,000 in February. And about a quarter of all homes sold there during the last three months of 2007 were affordable to families earning the area's median household income of nearly $76,000, according to the Housing Opportunity Index from Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and the National Association of Home Builders.

Once bulletproof housing markets lose some luster - May. 6, 2008

There's a neat chart on this page. You can see if you are "median" or not.......

Income limits (http://www.seattlehousing.org/Housing/income.html - broken link)

[seahawksweetie]

With today's economy, I am glad I am renting. It is a much more fluid situation, (which can be a good thing and a bad thing). But my thought is with rent, I always have the luxury to downsize if need be. If I were to lose my job or my husband lose his, we could always move to a smaller home and pay less per month. It wouldn't be preferred, but it would be an option.

With a mortgage, we would be stuck paying a set amount (probably much larger than my rent) and not be able to do much about it.

Not to mention, I don't have any property taxes or large maintenance issues. Now, on the downside, I can't paint my walls whatever color I want to, or rip up the flooring and change it on a moment's notice, etc.