According to this New York Times article, an American family of four–dad, mom, two kids under age 8–cannot keep above water with a household income of $130,000. In 2024 they had a small cushion that has now trickled away. I was a little skeptical–for example, I don’t doubt that the claim would hold in Manhattan, but how about in Manhattan, Kansas? It also seems like the lack of line-item expenses in the article is a weakness, but of course one can try and do that on one’s own, and now that I’ve done it my skepticism is leaking. In what follows, I’m tweaking my own numbers to make them perhaps more “normie,” and in cases where I have no idea what’s normal (which is most of them), I’ve accepted the calculations of AI for questions typed into Google, such as “Average grocery bill for family of four.” Here we go:
Housing (mortgage, homeowner’s insurance, and property taxes): $26,000
Childcare for the kids, one of whom is assumed to be in elementary school, the other a full-timer at the day care: $25,000
Health insurance: $23,000 (source for this estimate is KFF’s Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator)
Groceries: $17,000
Own and operate two cars: $22,000
Federal income tax: $7500
Okay, so now they have less than $10,000 left, and no one has been to the dentist or gotten a new pair of shoes (or clothes of any kind). Nothing for a plumber, either. Nothing for state taxes. Save for college or retirement? LOL!
It’s no wonder that opinion surveys detect a sour mood in the land. I suspect $130,000 was chosen because it’s the nearest figure divisible by 10,000 that’s above the median household income for a family of four, which means more than half the families earn less than that.* I recently stumbled upon an essay in which a conservative intellectual was wringing his hands over the high percentage of young Americans who express a favorable view of socialism. I’m not sure what the definition of “socialism” is–almost certainly includes any effort by the government to help people to afford health insurance and day care. If he thinks they shouldn’t have to pay $7500 more in taxes than Elon Musk, that’s something we could agree about. Meanwhile, the president won’t stop blathering about the golden ballroom he’s building on the White House grounds.
*At the school where I work there’s a teacher who I’d be elated to learn was going to have my kid in her class next year–she’s really, really good at her vital job. Since I’ve always worked in the public sector, I know you can find online the salary of any public employee in Minnesota, so I looked her up: $46,000. She’s young, and if she stays at it, gets her master’s degree, marries a colleague, and has two kids, the above financial scenario would likely be a pretty close fit.
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