Grumpy , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

120K lands you at 86th percentile [1]. So… relatively, you are sorta well off.

Sure, you can’t buy a house with that income in a big city. But that merely shows how fucked up the real estate bubble is. Just think, the top 86th percentile earning person is no where near enough to even buy a home. Houses are about 1m in my neighborhood. So you need to earn about 250k/yr to realistically afford a home. That lands you at 97th percentile. So just top 3% of the people can actually afford a home on a single person’s salary. That’s how fucked we are.

The median income for a non-family household (i.e. single) is 45k, and family household is 95k (possibly dual income) according to 2023 census [2]. So, you’re doing relatively quite well in comparison.

Who is “wealthy” is a subjective term. So a median person might see someone making 120k as wealthy. But the person earning 120k might see themselves as poor since they can’t even own a home. Historically, the single income middle class could afford homes.

• Source 1: dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
• Source 2: www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/…/p60-279.pdf