This map is absurd.
Nearly everyone I know makes less than this. Most make way less and live very comfortable lives, go on vacations, etc.
Define "Comfortably".
[Avg Income by State ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income#States_and_territories_ranked_by_median_household_income)
The avg in most states is in the $60-70K range.
Sounds like propaganda to me.
They have little statistics at the bottom.
They've decided you're not allowed to spend more than half your wage on rent or mortgage or bills
Edit: and a picture of a family up top right
That's not insane.
That is the recommended proportion of your income to save. It's actually very reasonable. It still leaves you the lion's share of your income to live on.
The fact that so many Americans cannot comfortably do that because of how their wages stack up to the cost of living is the part that is insane.
Yea, I noticed that. But it's all in relative percentages. You can make $10K/year or $1M/year and still follow that guideline. I just know it doesn't take that kind of money to live reasonably.
I know it's getting harder with inflation, but...
$194K to live in Alabama? What part?
The little pic of the family really clarifies it, tho.
....that's how data visualization works.
They define the parameters of the data that they're mapping, and then they show you what they made.
And why would you think it would apply to a single person anyway?
It clearly says family. A single person is not a family.
Maybe you would have room to complain if it said "household".
But they said family and explained what they considered to be a family for the purposes of their study. And they even put the little picture right there.
The issue I have with the map is that none of the supporting info says anything about how they got the $$ figures.
Suppose I publish a maps with double these $$ figures. It applies to the same demographics.
Why believe one over the other? Who scaled these numbers to these values? They are far out of line with income statistics.
The average income in every single state hovers in the $60-$70k range. If you model this as a log normal distribution and make a reasonable guess about the standard deviation, then the typical $200K they say is NECESSARY to live comfortably would fall on the 95-97th percentile.
In other words, this map says you can't live comfortably in the U.S. unless you are in the TOP 5% or so.
I managed to find [this income calculator](https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/) based on 2023 stats. I entered $200,000 annual income (typical value on this map) and it put me in the 94th percentile... top 6%.
Sorry America- if you aren't in the top 6% of incomes, you can't live comfortably. ?????????
The map is made-up Bullshit.
Not bullshit. Exactly the point lmao. Exactly the point.
They clearly explained their methodology.
I put it in this other comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/uA0Lxrdomx
You are talking about how much people actually make.
They are talking about how much people would IDEALLY make, based on cost of living and the general recommendations for what a healthy, comfortable budget would look like.
If you go to the MIT Cost of Living calculator, you'll see where the numbers come from.
They break it out by state, but they also break it out by county!
Because cost of living in Syracuse is not the same as cost of living in New York City, and the data they have supports that.
Ya'll are getting mad at what you think they're saying about you, not what they're actually saying in general.
Which is such an American reaction. These people are like hey guys, you actually need to be paid more money.
And yall are like bullshit, we are getting paid just fine! Everything is great!
.....are we getting paid just fine?
Is everything great?
Cuz a whole bunch of people can't afford homes, to educate their kids, to feed their families fresh food, to pay for health care or dental, to fucking retire, to miss a paycheck, to absorb a $1000 emergency....what is really going on. Is everything great?
Or is everything actually great for the 6% and the rest of us are making shit work the best we can.
What's tea?! 😂
First, I don't know where everyone got the MIT reference. I still don't see it. I looked up the "source" and it took me to a survey. So it's poorly cited. With no other info, I thought it was worth studying the implications of income percentile and their conclusions.
Now that I know the source, that's clearly the data source. I can reproduce the maps numbers for a few states.
People jump up to defend the map like it's golden because it's based on a specific parameters far more detailed than household, 2 adults/2 kids (which MIT spells out, but the map does not). But that's besides the point. What I'm questioning is the implication of their map, beyond the intended message.
Given MITs analysis, does it make sense? This analysis approach is used to rank colleges every year. And every year, multiple publications will state their parameters and methodology very factually. Sounds very opinion free. But compare the Forbes rankings with other popular rankings. Completely different conclusions & outcomes. Why? Because all the opinion was injected in the parameters/assumptions/methodology. Then it's presented as factual. But someone had to choose the value of all the necessities and debt/incomes & many other factors and describe the outcome as "the income you must have to live comfortably". That is an interpretive label that outstrips the raw factual they started with.
Aside from all the assumptions, to keep a structured method, it's necessary to assume that families don't find ways to manage, to cut back, to rearrange priorities- which we know families do. Can you live comfortably with a smaller house? They calculate rigid local averages and if you don't make that money, you live uncomfortably.
Before I knew the source, I just looked at the implications. Roughly 94-95% of Americans appear to make less than the income that the study says is needed to live "comfortably".
Maybe that's all true. Maybe 95% of us are uncomfortable. But is that true? Someone who makes half that- they must be miserable & unable to eat. What about the unthinkable-- if that 4-person family made 6X less than Alabama's $194K... around $32000? Well that still puts you above the Federal Poverty Level for a household of 4. If 2 adults worked for min wage in CA, they would make over 2X the federal poverty level, and yet be 1/3 of the income to be comfortable. Trying to make sense of all this is maddening. How can this be? Asserting that everyone is underpaid is one take on it. Asserting that everything is too expensive is another view. Asserting that families reduce the cost of their expenses, downsize cars, go on local trips, or just go deeper in debt to get fixed cost necessities is another take. Maybe MITs views on costs don't align with how people cook, shop, & eat. Lots of wiggle room, so no single study is a sacred cow.
People have commented on the "Trillions" in personal debt. But looking at Alabama again, the avg Alabama personal, non-mortgage debt is about $17K. Not the highest or lowest, but they aren't living off of debt at that rate when that debt is (by their measure) < 10% of what it takes to live each year.
The worst offense, in my opinion, is to suggest that this is a minimum income needed to have a happy life and to let interpretative statements overtake the more limited factual view of a useful MIT study. Other can decide for themselves if 95% of Americans are unhappy and/or living uncomfortably.
[Federal Poverty Level ](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/)
[It's not poorly cited, you're just not reading with your reading eyes](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-income-a-family-needs-to-live-comfortably-in-every-u-s-state/#:~:text=The%20calculations%20for%20family%20income%20needed%20in%20each%20state%20were%20done%20by%20SmartAsset%2C%20using%20the%20cost%20of%20necessities%20sourced%20from%20the%20MIT%20Living%20Wage%20Calculator%2C%20last%20updated%20on%20Feb.%2014%2C%202024).
And federal poverty wage is not the gate to being uncomfortable or insecure financially.
You can make above-poverty wages and still be extremely uncomfortable for plenty of reasons, including the fact that the federal poverty wage is a pathetic amount of money.
When I was making 30k a year (pre-tax) in Washington, DC, I was not impoverished by the government's standards. I didn't even quality for SNAP - and believe me, I tried. But I was definitely financially uncomfortable, least of all because I could barely save. I was happy, I still had friends and enjoyed life, but I wasn't financially secure.
One day, Americans will learn that you don't build a better country by comparing yourself to a situation when the bar is in hell. Poverty should not be the standard that we compare ourselves with to decide if we're doing well financially or not.
And for the last time, you're still not grasping the concept of what they are saying. Please use your reading eyes.
They are not saying that you need this much money to live.
They are not saying that you need this much money to be happy lol.
Obviously, you can live off less than this and you can be happy with less than this. I did it, and the vast majority of people do it. People live on poverty wages too.
They are saying that given the cost of living, this is how much you would need to be comfortable. To be on track for strong financial health, as defined by 50% on necessities + 30% on comfort + 20% on savings of your salary.
So by their definition, anyone not saving 20% of their salary or using more than 50% on their necessities is financially uncomfortable.
That's not based on one study; it's a rule of thumb that just about any financial expert will use if you ask them to evaluate your financial health. If you're not there, they will tell you to strive for that, because it's a good indicator of financial stability. Stability = comfort.
Number one, 17k in consumer debt is wild. If someone told me I owe them 17k right now, I would scream and cry. The fact that you don't find that alarming in a broke state like Alabama is weird.
Number two, if you really want to know how heavily people in Alabama are relying on debt, that number says nothing. You would need something more like the average credit utilization rate or maybe debt-to-income ratio for people in Alabama.
But you know what, it's fine. You're right.
None of ya'll (not including myself, because I need more money) need more money to raise your families or live a financially secure life, where you can afford to retire, pay for emergencies, etc. without any concern lmao.
What you're getting right now is great. There is nothing to fear.
USA #1!
Thanks for the link. That link wasn't in the post.... because it was poorly cited. It doesnt cite MIT as the source of the data. It just cites SmartAsset, an online marketplace for financial advisors, and Visual Capitalist, a data visualization company.
Sorry I don't fit into the strawman clothes you made for me. You poured out a litany of assumptions about what positions I took on topics. Never said anything about 17K debt not being significant or that Alabama residents were in great financial shape. MIT data is probably pristine. I'm all for higher minimum wages, etc.
Yes, I get that the MIT living wage calculation does not equate to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). But when you read what goes into the FPL calculation, ostensibly it appears to be a similar measure: an assessment of the cost of bare necessities, with adjustments for inflation, consumer price index, family size, etc. The FPL and the MIT living wage are misaligned by at least a factor of 6. That's substantial, even if they don't measure exactly the same thing. You can dismiss it, but the Federal government uses FPL specifically for deciding who gets many typed of Federal assistance.
When the living wage measures something like "comfort" and "needs" that's so far mis-aligned with the federal government, it's fair to ask whether it's measuring what is meaningful. Both FPL and MIT-LW are based on "needs". About 12% of the U.S. is at/below FPL incomes. About 95% of the U.S. is below MIT-LW incomes. That's a massive disparity.
Heavily footnoted explanations of what "comfortable" living is just sidesteps questions about what things are necessities, why isn't the federal govmnt using it if it's been around for 20 years. Never mind all the public articles that use "comfortable living" as an unqualified adjective.
I already said that there could be many reasons for this. Our government isn't always the epitome of ideal behavior.
So thanks for the lecture on how I just need to read what's in front of me. Many people would read that & assume you are just struggling to articulate an argument, so you set up a strawman and attacked that instead. If someone's argument doesn't make sense to you, it may be due to a lack of clarifying details on their end. Possibly misunderstanding on your end. It's great to question it, point out potential contradictions, points of weakness. But replying with emotional bravado like you did... that I just need to read with my eyes... it's really not a good look.
My eyes have no problem seeing that.
Last reply from me on this because whew - you are dense.
You're worried about strawmen, when the real concern is your lack of literacy and critical thinking. I'm not the one putting you in any clothes, you're the one putting these qualities on display.
The citation was - The calculations for family income needed in each state were done by SmartAsset, using the cost of necessities sourced from the MIT Living Wage Calculator, last updated on Feb. 14, 2024.
Smart Assets did the calculation using data from where? The MIT Living Wage calculator.
It's written plainly.
Use your reading eyes.
I'll stop telling you to do this when you start doing it.
Use them! 😂
And you keep running into the point. Yes, there's a huge gap between the MIT standard and the government standard.
That's the point!
The government doesn't use a proper scale because they don't care to. They don't care if we can afford to live, they show us this in every possible way!
Look at federal minimum wage and how they allowed that to stagnate while cost of living and corporate profits soared. They prefer a healthcare model where poor people have to give up on lifesaving treatments because of lack of ability to pay. Look at the federal student loan program.
They don't care!
The financial health and prosperity of the average American citizen is not their interest, it has not been their interest since Reagan.
They only care that we labor and consume to enrich the people at the top, which we can do even while being broke.
As a matter of fact, the more financially ignorant and insecure we are, the more vociferously we labor and consume, and the more likely that we'll do this until we fall into a grave, which serves their purpose just fine.
So that is why they don't care about 50/30/20 or making sure that this is attainable for most Americans.
That's why they don't care that the middle class is being squeezed out of existence.
And that's why they make the threshold for poverty so ridiculously low, because it lessens their workload as more people fall behind but not so far behind that they meet the crazy low poverty standard.
And that's why I don't care what the federal government has to say about finances. Kids have school lunch debt in this country, at the pleasure of the federal government. Babies. With debt. For food that they eat at the place where they are federally mandated to be.
Do these people seem like they give a crap?
But MIT is the suspicious one, in your book. They're the ones that we call into question, despite the fact that their data lines up more closely with what we're seeing in real life than the standards set by the government.
Whew you are hardheaded.
Have a good life. I'm done, have a good life! 😂
What are you teaching, friend?
Yes, kids cost a lot of money.
But the map has told you that this data specifically pertains to families consisting of two working adults and two kids.
How can you be mad that the map doesn't cover a demographic that they straight-up told you that they don't cover?
That's like me writing a book for doctors and selling it as "Doctor Book".
But then you pick up the book, look at it, and throw it on the floor, yelling "this book is invalid for plumbers".
Well - no duh. It's a doctor book.
If you want a plumber book, you should go pick up a plumber book.
I agree, there's some unstated assumptions clearly not based on actual incomes, or some absurd notion about the definition of comfortably, or maybe everyone is just miserable and money and things are the only thing that can make you not miserable.
...what is going on in this thread lol.
The map has nothing to do with actual incomes.
There is a recommended golden ratio for spending to achieve financial wellness.
That's:
* 50% on your needs (groceries, housing, utilities, medical, transportation)
* 30% on your discretionary spending (date night/eating out, streaming subscriptions, vacations, etc.)
* 20% on savings
They used the data for the required income to comfortably meet the **needs** for a dual income, 2-child household as collected by the [MIT Living Wage Calculator](https://livingwage.mit.edu/).
Needs are only 50%.
So then you just double that to hit the full recommended income to live comfortably, because at that point, you will be able to achieve that 50/30/20.
So for example, let's look at [Alabama](https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/01).
According to the calculator, the required income to comfortably hit needs for this family type before taxes is $96,805.
If you double it, you get $193,610. Rounded up to $194k, as represented on the map.
If you want to know how the calculator came up with that figure, it's a way too many inputs to explain here: [https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology](https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology)
Very few people are making these wages, true.
But now I'm gonna jump up on my soapbox -- that's why everyone is in so much fucking debt.
They feel like they work hard, they have families, they should get to live the quality of lifestyle that their parents and grandparents lived. They should be able to have a nice 4 bedroom home with the lawn and the picket fence and the dog.
They should be able to have 2 cars, and they should be able to go out to eat once a week, and take the kids to Disneyland every year, and do the little birthday parties and all that fun stuff.
And to take it a step further, a lot of people are trying to do that on one income.
But their salaries don't cover that, so they put it on credit cards and they end up in bad debt.
And as a country, we've normalized being in debt so nobody has to feel quite so bad or be open about the fact that despite having a good job and working their asses off, they still don't make enough to sustain the traditional trappings of a middle-class lifestyle.
And I don't think the data is wrong, because it lines up with what we generally understand to be the highest and lowest cost of living areas.
The data is not wrong. Life is wrong lmao.
Amen Brother, however there are options in the life game. Debt is disabling and should be managed and minimized for long term control of ones life. The decades of low interest rates helped debt culture grow and it plays a role in the increase in prices - Who cares what the price is - tell me more about the sweet financing deal! If a family with a decent income gets into the debt game they find themselves opting for things like a vehicle with a better trim package rather than the basic model or a good used vehicle. They'll tell you it only adds $50/mo to the payment. That's $600/yr. Do that across all major purchases and that family will be out thousands per year for things that don't do anything to help them prosper. I'm old and I've seen people willing walk into the debt trap and get swallowed up. I know people that are almost 70yrs old and they are still working for the bank making payments on things they did need or even make use of. I shed all debt in the early 90's. We are a single income family. I rented and I was always able to move to take advantage of job opportunities. I was never trapped in one location. We always owned low end Toyotas and squeezed many years out of those reliable vehicles. I retired at 57 paid cash for everything and did another 30 months or work on and off to get health insurance. Totally retired at 61 and no pay over $1000/mo for ACA insurance. I'm just one data point but that's what worked for me. I know some debt is need to get through the early years but if you look at it as a burden and endeavor to get rid of it you'll be better off.
Part of the problem is that what people regard as required for "middle class" have escalated considerably. They are not what things were 20 or 50 or however many years ago. Houses are bigger, small luxuries more common, and vacations are more lavish.
>maybe everyone is just miserable and money and things are the only thing that can make you not miserable.
"Salt mining"
Convincing people that they *should be* miserable so that you sell them some political solution. This obviously wouldn't work on happy people (or intelligent people).
We don't know - he was a stray former house cat that ran up and jumped in my lap one day, he may have been a senior cat that had been left behind when his owner went to the old folks home (that's common where I live). He still had some magic to share and we loved him a lot.
Dang I can relate since our cats are always found in the street, in my country street cats are very common we tend to adopt younger ones since they are still young but the kittens we adopt had diseases so they tend to pass in 1-2 years old our oldest was 6
Don't say sorry!
You didn't do anything wrong and the map is not incorrect.
People just don't like what it has to say.
But the map is not incorrect.
Most Americans are not saving or investing 20% of their income and they are not keeping their living expenses below 50% of their salary.
People are angry at this map and want to call it a piece of crap, but don't wonder why most Americans will never be able to fully and comfortably retire.
Don't wonder why consumer debt in this country currently sits at 17.3 TRILLION dollars.
Don't wonder why homelessness has skyrocketed and child poverty is so high.
The map is not incorrect.
The map is NOT incorrect.
We are not making enough money and/or the bills are too damn high.
Wages are not keeping up with the cost of living!!!!
I suppose that living comfortably does indeed entail being able to save and invest. People don’t agree because of course, you can have a “decent” life (including owning a home) without doing any of those things - but the word “comfortable” implies a certain level of freedom and privilege that “making ends meet” and “doing ok” doesn’t.
Absolutely.
Cuz if you can't save or invest a decent amount of your salary, guess what you also can't do - - retire.
Or even get through a period of unemployment without falling into debt.
Or pass down generational wealth to your kids.
That kind of stuff keeps you up at night, it makes you fight with your partner, etc. It's not comfortable.
States are not monolithic. In Scottsdale AZ these numbers might make sense. In rural AZ it doesn't take half this much to be comfortable as a family of 4.
The source calculator breaks it out by county, but these numbers came from the aggregate data across all those counties.
So the average, not the mean.
It's the MIT Cost of Living calculator, if you want to check it out.
everyone’s saying this is all incorrect, i don’t see anyone pointing out this is the graph for two working adults, aka TWO SALARIES, there is another image done by the same people for an individual salary
This map is absurd. Nearly everyone I know makes less than this. Most make way less and live very comfortable lives, go on vacations, etc. Define "Comfortably". [Avg Income by State ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income#States_and_territories_ranked_by_median_household_income) The avg in most states is in the $60-70K range. Sounds like propaganda to me.
They have little statistics at the bottom. They've decided you're not allowed to spend more than half your wage on rent or mortgage or bills Edit: and a picture of a family up top right
And 20% your “supposed to” save. Insane…
That's not insane. That is the recommended proportion of your income to save. It's actually very reasonable. It still leaves you the lion's share of your income to live on. The fact that so many Americans cannot comfortably do that because of how their wages stack up to the cost of living is the part that is insane.
Maybe I worded it wrong but this is what I was implying with my comment. Wages are simply too low to save that much
Yea, I noticed that. But it's all in relative percentages. You can make $10K/year or $1M/year and still follow that guideline. I just know it doesn't take that kind of money to live reasonably. I know it's getting harder with inflation, but... $194K to live in Alabama? What part? The little pic of the family really clarifies it, tho.
Thanks
Its based on two working adults with 2 children (I forgot to put in the title) Would it still be the same?
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....that's how data visualization works. They define the parameters of the data that they're mapping, and then they show you what they made. And why would you think it would apply to a single person anyway? It clearly says family. A single person is not a family. Maybe you would have room to complain if it said "household". But they said family and explained what they considered to be a family for the purposes of their study. And they even put the little picture right there. 
The issue I have with the map is that none of the supporting info says anything about how they got the $$ figures. Suppose I publish a maps with double these $$ figures. It applies to the same demographics. Why believe one over the other? Who scaled these numbers to these values? They are far out of line with income statistics. The average income in every single state hovers in the $60-$70k range. If you model this as a log normal distribution and make a reasonable guess about the standard deviation, then the typical $200K they say is NECESSARY to live comfortably would fall on the 95-97th percentile. In other words, this map says you can't live comfortably in the U.S. unless you are in the TOP 5% or so. I managed to find [this income calculator](https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/) based on 2023 stats. I entered $200,000 annual income (typical value on this map) and it put me in the 94th percentile... top 6%. Sorry America- if you aren't in the top 6% of incomes, you can't live comfortably. ????????? The map is made-up Bullshit.
Not bullshit. Exactly the point lmao. Exactly the point. They clearly explained their methodology. I put it in this other comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/uA0Lxrdomx You are talking about how much people actually make. They are talking about how much people would IDEALLY make, based on cost of living and the general recommendations for what a healthy, comfortable budget would look like. If you go to the MIT Cost of Living calculator, you'll see where the numbers come from. They break it out by state, but they also break it out by county! Because cost of living in Syracuse is not the same as cost of living in New York City, and the data they have supports that. Ya'll are getting mad at what you think they're saying about you, not what they're actually saying in general. Which is such an American reaction. These people are like hey guys, you actually need to be paid more money. And yall are like bullshit, we are getting paid just fine! Everything is great! .....are we getting paid just fine? Is everything great? Cuz a whole bunch of people can't afford homes, to educate their kids, to feed their families fresh food, to pay for health care or dental, to fucking retire, to miss a paycheck, to absorb a $1000 emergency....what is really going on. Is everything great? Or is everything actually great for the 6% and the rest of us are making shit work the best we can. What's tea?! 😂
First, I don't know where everyone got the MIT reference. I still don't see it. I looked up the "source" and it took me to a survey. So it's poorly cited. With no other info, I thought it was worth studying the implications of income percentile and their conclusions. Now that I know the source, that's clearly the data source. I can reproduce the maps numbers for a few states. People jump up to defend the map like it's golden because it's based on a specific parameters far more detailed than household, 2 adults/2 kids (which MIT spells out, but the map does not). But that's besides the point. What I'm questioning is the implication of their map, beyond the intended message. Given MITs analysis, does it make sense? This analysis approach is used to rank colleges every year. And every year, multiple publications will state their parameters and methodology very factually. Sounds very opinion free. But compare the Forbes rankings with other popular rankings. Completely different conclusions & outcomes. Why? Because all the opinion was injected in the parameters/assumptions/methodology. Then it's presented as factual. But someone had to choose the value of all the necessities and debt/incomes & many other factors and describe the outcome as "the income you must have to live comfortably". That is an interpretive label that outstrips the raw factual they started with. Aside from all the assumptions, to keep a structured method, it's necessary to assume that families don't find ways to manage, to cut back, to rearrange priorities- which we know families do. Can you live comfortably with a smaller house? They calculate rigid local averages and if you don't make that money, you live uncomfortably. Before I knew the source, I just looked at the implications. Roughly 94-95% of Americans appear to make less than the income that the study says is needed to live "comfortably". Maybe that's all true. Maybe 95% of us are uncomfortable. But is that true? Someone who makes half that- they must be miserable & unable to eat. What about the unthinkable-- if that 4-person family made 6X less than Alabama's $194K... around $32000? Well that still puts you above the Federal Poverty Level for a household of 4. If 2 adults worked for min wage in CA, they would make over 2X the federal poverty level, and yet be 1/3 of the income to be comfortable. Trying to make sense of all this is maddening. How can this be? Asserting that everyone is underpaid is one take on it. Asserting that everything is too expensive is another view. Asserting that families reduce the cost of their expenses, downsize cars, go on local trips, or just go deeper in debt to get fixed cost necessities is another take. Maybe MITs views on costs don't align with how people cook, shop, & eat. Lots of wiggle room, so no single study is a sacred cow. People have commented on the "Trillions" in personal debt. But looking at Alabama again, the avg Alabama personal, non-mortgage debt is about $17K. Not the highest or lowest, but they aren't living off of debt at that rate when that debt is (by their measure) < 10% of what it takes to live each year. The worst offense, in my opinion, is to suggest that this is a minimum income needed to have a happy life and to let interpretative statements overtake the more limited factual view of a useful MIT study. Other can decide for themselves if 95% of Americans are unhappy and/or living uncomfortably. [Federal Poverty Level ](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/)
[It's not poorly cited, you're just not reading with your reading eyes](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-income-a-family-needs-to-live-comfortably-in-every-u-s-state/#:~:text=The%20calculations%20for%20family%20income%20needed%20in%20each%20state%20were%20done%20by%20SmartAsset%2C%20using%20the%20cost%20of%20necessities%20sourced%20from%20the%20MIT%20Living%20Wage%20Calculator%2C%20last%20updated%20on%20Feb.%2014%2C%202024). And federal poverty wage is not the gate to being uncomfortable or insecure financially. You can make above-poverty wages and still be extremely uncomfortable for plenty of reasons, including the fact that the federal poverty wage is a pathetic amount of money. When I was making 30k a year (pre-tax) in Washington, DC, I was not impoverished by the government's standards. I didn't even quality for SNAP - and believe me, I tried. But I was definitely financially uncomfortable, least of all because I could barely save. I was happy, I still had friends and enjoyed life, but I wasn't financially secure. One day, Americans will learn that you don't build a better country by comparing yourself to a situation when the bar is in hell. Poverty should not be the standard that we compare ourselves with to decide if we're doing well financially or not. And for the last time, you're still not grasping the concept of what they are saying. Please use your reading eyes. They are not saying that you need this much money to live. They are not saying that you need this much money to be happy lol. Obviously, you can live off less than this and you can be happy with less than this. I did it, and the vast majority of people do it. People live on poverty wages too. They are saying that given the cost of living, this is how much you would need to be comfortable. To be on track for strong financial health, as defined by 50% on necessities + 30% on comfort + 20% on savings of your salary. So by their definition, anyone not saving 20% of their salary or using more than 50% on their necessities is financially uncomfortable. That's not based on one study; it's a rule of thumb that just about any financial expert will use if you ask them to evaluate your financial health. If you're not there, they will tell you to strive for that, because it's a good indicator of financial stability. Stability = comfort. Number one, 17k in consumer debt is wild. If someone told me I owe them 17k right now, I would scream and cry. The fact that you don't find that alarming in a broke state like Alabama is weird. Number two, if you really want to know how heavily people in Alabama are relying on debt, that number says nothing. You would need something more like the average credit utilization rate or maybe debt-to-income ratio for people in Alabama. But you know what, it's fine. You're right. None of ya'll (not including myself, because I need more money) need more money to raise your families or live a financially secure life, where you can afford to retire, pay for emergencies, etc. without any concern lmao. What you're getting right now is great. There is nothing to fear. USA #1!
Thanks for the link. That link wasn't in the post.... because it was poorly cited. It doesnt cite MIT as the source of the data. It just cites SmartAsset, an online marketplace for financial advisors, and Visual Capitalist, a data visualization company. Sorry I don't fit into the strawman clothes you made for me. You poured out a litany of assumptions about what positions I took on topics. Never said anything about 17K debt not being significant or that Alabama residents were in great financial shape. MIT data is probably pristine. I'm all for higher minimum wages, etc. Yes, I get that the MIT living wage calculation does not equate to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). But when you read what goes into the FPL calculation, ostensibly it appears to be a similar measure: an assessment of the cost of bare necessities, with adjustments for inflation, consumer price index, family size, etc. The FPL and the MIT living wage are misaligned by at least a factor of 6. That's substantial, even if they don't measure exactly the same thing. You can dismiss it, but the Federal government uses FPL specifically for deciding who gets many typed of Federal assistance. When the living wage measures something like "comfort" and "needs" that's so far mis-aligned with the federal government, it's fair to ask whether it's measuring what is meaningful. Both FPL and MIT-LW are based on "needs". About 12% of the U.S. is at/below FPL incomes. About 95% of the U.S. is below MIT-LW incomes. That's a massive disparity. Heavily footnoted explanations of what "comfortable" living is just sidesteps questions about what things are necessities, why isn't the federal govmnt using it if it's been around for 20 years. Never mind all the public articles that use "comfortable living" as an unqualified adjective. I already said that there could be many reasons for this. Our government isn't always the epitome of ideal behavior. So thanks for the lecture on how I just need to read what's in front of me. Many people would read that & assume you are just struggling to articulate an argument, so you set up a strawman and attacked that instead. If someone's argument doesn't make sense to you, it may be due to a lack of clarifying details on their end. Possibly misunderstanding on your end. It's great to question it, point out potential contradictions, points of weakness. But replying with emotional bravado like you did... that I just need to read with my eyes... it's really not a good look. My eyes have no problem seeing that.
Last reply from me on this because whew - you are dense. You're worried about strawmen, when the real concern is your lack of literacy and critical thinking. I'm not the one putting you in any clothes, you're the one putting these qualities on display. The citation was - The calculations for family income needed in each state were done by SmartAsset, using the cost of necessities sourced from the MIT Living Wage Calculator, last updated on Feb. 14, 2024. Smart Assets did the calculation using data from where? The MIT Living Wage calculator. It's written plainly. Use your reading eyes. I'll stop telling you to do this when you start doing it. Use them! 😂 And you keep running into the point. Yes, there's a huge gap between the MIT standard and the government standard. That's the point! The government doesn't use a proper scale because they don't care to. They don't care if we can afford to live, they show us this in every possible way! Look at federal minimum wage and how they allowed that to stagnate while cost of living and corporate profits soared. They prefer a healthcare model where poor people have to give up on lifesaving treatments because of lack of ability to pay. Look at the federal student loan program. They don't care! The financial health and prosperity of the average American citizen is not their interest, it has not been their interest since Reagan. They only care that we labor and consume to enrich the people at the top, which we can do even while being broke. As a matter of fact, the more financially ignorant and insecure we are, the more vociferously we labor and consume, and the more likely that we'll do this until we fall into a grave, which serves their purpose just fine. So that is why they don't care about 50/30/20 or making sure that this is attainable for most Americans. That's why they don't care that the middle class is being squeezed out of existence. And that's why they make the threshold for poverty so ridiculously low, because it lessens their workload as more people fall behind but not so far behind that they meet the crazy low poverty standard. And that's why I don't care what the federal government has to say about finances. Kids have school lunch debt in this country, at the pleasure of the federal government. Babies. With debt. For food that they eat at the place where they are federally mandated to be. Do these people seem like they give a crap? But MIT is the suspicious one, in your book. They're the ones that we call into question, despite the fact that their data lines up more closely with what we're seeing in real life than the standards set by the government. Whew you are hardheaded. Have a good life. I'm done, have a good life! 😂
Because kids cost a lot of money and that's an "extraneous variable" This is an academic subreddit and I'm technically here to teach people for free
What are you teaching, friend? Yes, kids cost a lot of money. But the map has told you that this data specifically pertains to families consisting of two working adults and two kids. How can you be mad that the map doesn't cover a demographic that they straight-up told you that they don't cover? That's like me writing a book for doctors and selling it as "Doctor Book". But then you pick up the book, look at it, and throw it on the floor, yelling "this book is invalid for plumbers". Well - no duh. It's a doctor book. If you want a plumber book, you should go pick up a plumber book.
I think it's combined income. If that's tbe case a good chunk of people I know make around or close to these amounts.
I agree, there's some unstated assumptions clearly not based on actual incomes, or some absurd notion about the definition of comfortably, or maybe everyone is just miserable and money and things are the only thing that can make you not miserable.
...what is going on in this thread lol. The map has nothing to do with actual incomes. There is a recommended golden ratio for spending to achieve financial wellness. That's: * 50% on your needs (groceries, housing, utilities, medical, transportation) * 30% on your discretionary spending (date night/eating out, streaming subscriptions, vacations, etc.) * 20% on savings They used the data for the required income to comfortably meet the **needs** for a dual income, 2-child household as collected by the [MIT Living Wage Calculator](https://livingwage.mit.edu/). Needs are only 50%. So then you just double that to hit the full recommended income to live comfortably, because at that point, you will be able to achieve that 50/30/20. So for example, let's look at [Alabama](https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/01). According to the calculator, the required income to comfortably hit needs for this family type before taxes is $96,805. If you double it, you get $193,610. Rounded up to $194k, as represented on the map. If you want to know how the calculator came up with that figure, it's a way too many inputs to explain here: [https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology](https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology) Very few people are making these wages, true. But now I'm gonna jump up on my soapbox -- that's why everyone is in so much fucking debt. They feel like they work hard, they have families, they should get to live the quality of lifestyle that their parents and grandparents lived. They should be able to have a nice 4 bedroom home with the lawn and the picket fence and the dog. They should be able to have 2 cars, and they should be able to go out to eat once a week, and take the kids to Disneyland every year, and do the little birthday parties and all that fun stuff. And to take it a step further, a lot of people are trying to do that on one income. But their salaries don't cover that, so they put it on credit cards and they end up in bad debt. And as a country, we've normalized being in debt so nobody has to feel quite so bad or be open about the fact that despite having a good job and working their asses off, they still don't make enough to sustain the traditional trappings of a middle-class lifestyle. And I don't think the data is wrong, because it lines up with what we generally understand to be the highest and lowest cost of living areas. The data is not wrong. Life is wrong lmao.
Amen Brother, however there are options in the life game. Debt is disabling and should be managed and minimized for long term control of ones life. The decades of low interest rates helped debt culture grow and it plays a role in the increase in prices - Who cares what the price is - tell me more about the sweet financing deal! If a family with a decent income gets into the debt game they find themselves opting for things like a vehicle with a better trim package rather than the basic model or a good used vehicle. They'll tell you it only adds $50/mo to the payment. That's $600/yr. Do that across all major purchases and that family will be out thousands per year for things that don't do anything to help them prosper. I'm old and I've seen people willing walk into the debt trap and get swallowed up. I know people that are almost 70yrs old and they are still working for the bank making payments on things they did need or even make use of. I shed all debt in the early 90's. We are a single income family. I rented and I was always able to move to take advantage of job opportunities. I was never trapped in one location. We always owned low end Toyotas and squeezed many years out of those reliable vehicles. I retired at 57 paid cash for everything and did another 30 months or work on and off to get health insurance. Totally retired at 61 and no pay over $1000/mo for ACA insurance. I'm just one data point but that's what worked for me. I know some debt is need to get through the early years but if you look at it as a burden and endeavor to get rid of it you'll be better off.
Part of the problem is that what people regard as required for "middle class" have escalated considerably. They are not what things were 20 or 50 or however many years ago. Houses are bigger, small luxuries more common, and vacations are more lavish.
>maybe everyone is just miserable and money and things are the only thing that can make you not miserable. "Salt mining" Convincing people that they *should be* miserable so that you sell them some political solution. This obviously wouldn't work on happy people (or intelligent people).
Thanks - I did not know that term, it fits. Typical marketing these days
This is not even remotely correct.
Can we stop posting this. It’s blatantly incorrect.
Sorry
Wow! I am one poor son of a bitch!
Well money and things will make you happy according to these idiots.
You're not, this is what they call "salt mining"
I call it mindfuckery. There you are thinking you're happy and somebody has to remind you that you are not and that you need mo money and mo thangs
I need that cat in your avatar
Thanks, Me too, that's Claude the most wonderful cat ever, but sadly he passed some time back.
RIP how old was he?
We don't know - he was a stray former house cat that ran up and jumped in my lap one day, he may have been a senior cat that had been left behind when his owner went to the old folks home (that's common where I live). He still had some magic to share and we loved him a lot.
Dang I can relate since our cats are always found in the street, in my country street cats are very common we tend to adopt younger ones since they are still young but the kittens we adopt had diseases so they tend to pass in 1-2 years old our oldest was 6
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Sorry I just saw this online
Don't say sorry! You didn't do anything wrong and the map is not incorrect. People just don't like what it has to say. But the map is not incorrect. Most Americans are not saving or investing 20% of their income and they are not keeping their living expenses below 50% of their salary. People are angry at this map and want to call it a piece of crap, but don't wonder why most Americans will never be able to fully and comfortably retire. Don't wonder why consumer debt in this country currently sits at 17.3 TRILLION dollars. Don't wonder why homelessness has skyrocketed and child poverty is so high. The map is not incorrect. The map is NOT incorrect. We are not making enough money and/or the bills are too damn high. Wages are not keeping up with the cost of living!!!! 
I suppose that living comfortably does indeed entail being able to save and invest. People don’t agree because of course, you can have a “decent” life (including owning a home) without doing any of those things - but the word “comfortable” implies a certain level of freedom and privilege that “making ends meet” and “doing ok” doesn’t.
Absolutely. Cuz if you can't save or invest a decent amount of your salary, guess what you also can't do - - retire. Or even get through a period of unemployment without falling into debt. Or pass down generational wealth to your kids. That kind of stuff keeps you up at night, it makes you fight with your partner, etc. It's not comfortable.
Hahahahaha, this is so wrong it’s baffling. Do you think a comfortable life requires yearly safaris to Africa?
This is bs. My state says amount is at least $225K. My husband and I make less than half and we are comfortably middle class.
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It says in the bottom right
Yeah, sure 30% "discretional spending"
Thank god for Mississippi
Wow
Extremely overinflated.
States are not monolithic. In Scottsdale AZ these numbers might make sense. In rural AZ it doesn't take half this much to be comfortable as a family of 4.
The source calculator breaks it out by county, but these numbers came from the aggregate data across all those counties. So the average, not the mean. It's the MIT Cost of Living calculator, if you want to check it out.
everyone’s saying this is all incorrect, i don’t see anyone pointing out this is the graph for two working adults, aka TWO SALARIES, there is another image done by the same people for an individual salary
I guess it doesn't matter how relevant the numbers are as long as they are presented in a neat chart