Is that 200k per person or does per family count?
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
161 points (98.8% liked)
Economics
969 readers
119 users here now
founded 2 years ago
Depends on if that money is assets or income. Also depends if you have any outstanding debts.
Yeah, I make well over $200k but between general COL, family medical things, a lot of past debts, and zero investments - I'm basically check to check right now. I'm also the only one in the house bringing in any money.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck on a $200k household income, it sounds like you might want to rethink your budget.
If they live in the US, medical debt and/or student loans will eat away at anything they'd try to set aside swiftly.
Even in the screwed up US system there's something wrong if you're struggling to break even with a 200k income. That's a household income in the 84th percentile for the US, or the top 2% globally (adjusting for PPP).
Long story short I had to liquidate my retirement and go another half a mil into debt. Is what it is. Life happens.
Yeah, that's rough for you now, but once you pay those things off you're going to be well off
My friend has a family of 6 in SF bay area (one kid in college) and he spends ~120K per year. That's not abnormal when he has nothing to pay off anymore.
That's the goal! Unfortunately it's quite a few years off even if I can keep it up. I'd argue maybe by the time I'm 45-50 and I still have retirement to rebuild.
Per person
Those poor dual income no kids families who only make $190K each
those portfolios about to shrink, when the AI round tripping scheme of the major market players collapses
Smart investors aren't all in and use the drop to gobble up shares.
Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered. Usually it's retail investors who end up getting slaughtered.
Even people going deeply into risky bets usually have a "barbell" strategy where they'll rebalance from the high risk high growth to low risk low growth so they can see growth but in a downturn they aren't facing huge losses.
Correction: The only people who feel good about the economy are earning over 200k.
I can feel good about other things including my wife, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my music, films, tv etc without a stock portfolio, thank you very much.