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Hi Fishes,
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How is Issaquah Highlands? Good neighborhood?
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I just bought a $1.4M house in Bellevue and my salary is around $70k so that should be enough I think unless you want REALLY fancy places.
How do you afford that on a 70K salary?
If you don't have kids and live with a roommate/significant other ($1k/mo), use public transportation (no car payments). You can live pretty comfortably on 25k/yr.
I'd recommend closer to 70k so that you can invest the remaining 45k and retire early, or buy a house someday.
If you have kids, add another 30k/yr per kid for private school so you don't have them raised by Seattle school district...
90-100k
Me reading these comments while making over six figures thinking I’m scraping by bc I have to live with my parents bc these housing prices are outrageous 👁️👄👁️
Yeah the gap between rent and buy is higher than ever before. Probably 2x
$70-100k is a solid base to be able to make ends meet and still save a little or handle something unexpected
What do you define as livable? My wife and I are DINKS and make $380-450 depending on the year. Go on 10+ vacations a year and eat out maybe 3/4 times a week, max out retirement accounts and don’t really think about spending. Our rent is $3600 and have one car with $700 per month. So we have a comfortable life. I think once we have kids and if we buy a house we’ll feel less comfortable
“There are plenty of other rich folks just like me!”
I think, as long as you leverage public transit and don't drive/park (high gas/parking prices), you can easily get by with 40-50k, with cash left over.
But I think about 60-70k is a good sweet spot
Seattle’s minimum wage for salaried, “exempt” full-time workers is $67,724.80 (different from the minimum wage for hourly workers and “non-exempt” employees). It raises each year and there are thresholds for employers of 1-50 employees vs 51+ employees. Google “Washington State salary threshold implementation schedule” for more info if you’re making less as an exempt employee.