I was working through my personal budget the other day and I was surprised how much the our cost of living was. Family of four living in a modest house and by no means an extravagant life style, with yearly expenses of over $70,000 (state is NJ). The biggest chunk of that being property taxes, mortgage, childcare, and groceries - those 4 amounting to over $40,000 per year.And that is before all the other taxes - all the federal taxes, states taxes, and healthcare expenses. So for a family of four living in NJ in particularly those owning a home you essentially need a combined salary of about $100,000 per year. That would amount to a Living/Minimum wage of about $50/hour if there is only one wage earner or $25/hour for two wage earners.
Our total NJ SALT burden is about $20,000/year.
I’m curious on others experiences. Thanks.
PS - This does not even include the cost of college!
I live in NJ too. I am high school educated but I am lucky to have had all good jobs along with marrying well. I plow snow and work road maintenance and am almost at 80k this year so far. My base pay is around 65k without OT or holidays. My wife used to make almost double that before she retired. The expenses in NJ are ridiculous and that’s why we live in an 1800 sq ft colonial. I’m not paying 20k+ taxes for any house whether I can afford it or not.
I feel sorry for any family in NJ making 100k a year and have 4 kids. Because over 40% of that income is going just on taxes and benefits. Then you have other expenses.
The $20,000 figure is my estimated total taxes (property tax, state tax, sales taxes, gas taxes, etc.) so not just property tax. My property taxes are $10,000. Our total tax burden (fed/state/etc.) and cost of living expenses is well over $200,000 per year (that’s on a combined income of under $200,000). So all these people talking about this notion of a living wage don’t seem to grasp the cost of living in particularly in liberal states.
That’s because if you are poor the cost of your child is covered by everyone else. This is a growing trend in the US and a very concerning statistic:
A bunch of State and federal officials living off of the churn as they pass other people’s money around or just plain fritter it away on progressivism.
Everyone’s so outraged by the “invasion” at the border when the real invasion is happening in real estate by people who are trying to expand (or hide) their wealth.
