This past Tuesday, LV summarized the Best of Both Worlds podcast topic for the week as: hiring hella childcare. And I’m struck again by how I don’t quite know where I belong socioeconomically. I read people who seem like me, but have a quarter million dollars saved for college – for each child. I read people who seem like me, but can pay two mortgages while they renovate a new house. I read people who seem like me, but have giant houses with beautiful interiors. I read people who seem like me, but go on incredible vacations to far flung places. I read people who seem like me, but send their kids to expensive private elementary and high schools. I read people who seem like me, but can hire full time child care.
And the reality is, people who have full time child care, especially while their youngest kid is in school, are not my people. I can barely make my own finances work; the thought of providing someone with their livelihood is insane to me. We have always paid for aftercare, which works because I am a teacher and get off early enough to pick up the kids by 6pm. But we had to do all kinds of crazy shit to make mornings work over the years. When my son was a baby, my FIL watched him from 9:00am to 1pm. I taught from 7am to 12:10pm straight (no breaks) and pumped in the car on the way to pick him up. We couldn’t even afford full time care when we actually needed it.
And yes, I know how lucky we were to have someone willing to watch our baby for us (those years are SO EXPENSIVE), but no one was providing full time child care on a schedule that worked for us. I was waking up all night with a newborn, then leaving the house at 6am to teach five classes in five hours, and then pick up my baby at lunch. We were making it work with FOUR HOURS of care a day. My husband got in late to work and left late, which means I was with the baby alone (after teaching full time) from 1pm to 7pm. And I had to get my daughter around 5pm. It was nuts. Once they started school I had to ask for 1st period prep for years, so I could drop them off at 7:50am and book it down to my job. If I hit traffic I had to call a friend to cover for me. It was horrible. And I spent my prep commuting so I had not time at work to get anything done, which meant I stayed up late every night to do prep work at home. It was awful. No wonder I had no ambition during those years. I was just trying to survive.
And yet. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And we own a house in that city (or a mortgage lender owns one in our name). I suppose that is where the comparisons just seem to fall apart. Our mortgage is 2-3x that of mortgages for a similarly sized house in most other parts of the country. (And our house would probably sell for two times that now). We choose to live here for a number of reasons, and high on that list is grandparents, who do provide support (and provided more when our kids were babies). I sometimes wonder though, if being as house poor as we were is actually worth the grandparent help (it probably is, but only because of how much our house has increased in value). Paying for a full time nanny here probably costs 1.5x or 2x what it costs in other parts of the country. So maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
So yeah. I just don’t feel like I understand where I fit, who my people are. I do fit pretty well with my real-life friends, the ones I know now, which is part of why I think we get along so well. But they all live here and again, I wonder if living in the Bay Area skews things so much that you can’t really compare yourself with people elsewhere. All the metrics are off. I think many of the blogs I read have similar-ish incomes (many have much higher incomes I’m sure, but some I think are comparable), but their mortgages are so much less than mine. If your monthly mortgage payment is cut in half, that’s a big difference in disposable income.
And sure, we get to go to Hawaii this summer, for the second time, but only because a friend invited us. And they get to go because a friend invited them. We could never afford the trip on our own. We went to London last summer, to visit my sister, but only because my parents paid for the AirBnB, and a massive tax return allowed us to cover the air fare. Our other two big trips were to very cheap countries, and we rented our house out on AirBnB to help cover the expenses.
{I forgot to mention we had to rent out a portion of our house for 8 years, just to cover our mortgage – that is why we got the massive tax return, because we took a loss being landlords for so long.}
Yes, we own a house that is worth a lot, but we struggle with basic upkeep, let alone renovating parts of it that we don’t like. We’ve wanted to replace our garage door for 5 years (you have to get out and swing it open manually), but whenever we save up enough to do it, a plumbing or electrical emergency requires we divert those funds. We can’t use an entire room because of water damage from this year’s storms (the walls are COVERED in mold).
We have very little saved for our kids’ college education. We’re considering halting our contributions to our son’s 529 to pay for a house cleaner. (We only just started contributing to his 529 a couple years ago, when we started contributing to his sister’s 529. She is 3.5 years older.)
And yet, I’m assured, we are solidly upper middle class. Are the people who seem to have more, wealthy? Or is upper middle class just such a big, nebulous category that we both exist within it? Or is it again, where we live? Is upper middle class in the Bay Area just look different?
It doesn’t really matter. I’m just trying to understand why my experience seems so different sometimes. I guess I shouldn’t expect to find a lot of similarities with people in the private sector, finance, law or medicine. We are a public middle school teacher and a city employee. Of course it’s not the same.
It’s funny because generationally I feel adrift as well. I was born in 1980, so some articles declare I’m Gen X and others a Millennial. I always identified more with Gen X, but now that Millennials are getting older, much of what I read about their experience also rings true. Again, it doesn’t really matter, but I do find it frustrating that I don’t seem to fit anywhere, that it’s so hard to feel like I belong.
Even with my friends, because I had kids early (relatively, in the Bay Area having a kid at 30 is very, very early) it’s hard to find my tribe. (I think this part of me identifies as Gen X). Most moms with kids my daughter’s age are a full decade older than me. (Sometimes I’m grateful for my DOR because I’m going through perimenopause with them, even though they are 10-12 years older). I can find moms about 5 years older than me with kids in my son’s grade, but that kid is their oldest (and there aren’t many of them). My friends from college have kids 8-10 years younger than mine, if they have them at all (many don’t). And of course in my profession I feel alone, seeing as I’m the only foreign language teacher in my entire district. Even at the dojo I’m one of the only adults over 35, and one of only a small handful that has kids.
So yeah, I’ve just been noticing it lately, as my blog roll whittles to a group of people that I thought I could identify with, but that are actually living very different lives, and managing very different concerns. Maybe most people feel like this, like everyone has it different enough that it’s not really comparable. Or maybe I’m just focusing on the wrong things, because I’m burnt out and other people’s problems seem easier to manage than my own. (Surely the real issue is that I just don’t want to manage my problems, and I’m feeling salty about them.)
I actually started a post about realizing I’m burnt out today, but then I came back to finish this one first. I hope I don’t come off like an ass. It’s really not about people having more than me, because I have so much and honestly don’t need more. I probably couldn’t even manage more, or it wouldn’t make a difference. That’s probably it, because I have more now than I did 5 years ago, but I’m still coming up against the same kinds of problems, so maybe this is just how I operate. (But also, everything costs so much more than it did 5 years ago, I don’t know how much “more” I really, in effect, have. Certainly not as much more as the numbers on paper would suggest.) It’s just about feeling like I don’t really fit in, like I can’t find my people. It would be so nice to meet someone, or read someone and think, oh yes! This person is just like me!
But maybe no one ever feels that way. Maybe I’m just looking for something that no one ever truly has.
How about you? Do you feel like you look around and see people like you? Or do you always feel just different enough for it to be noticeable? Does anyone feel like they belong anywhere?
Like you have described, I feel like anyone who is upper middle class can describe their life in ways that make it appear well off or in ways that make it appear lacking. We make (what I assume) is similar amounts as your family but we live in the midwest for job reasons. I grew up in California so living in a lower cost of living place was an adjustment in good and bad ways.
We have a low mortgage, lots of disposable income, kids in (cheap) private schools and can vacation a lot. BUT, we don’t have access to any geographic amenities and live in a place that is largely not our preferred political environment (although that matters less and less as we make friends).
What I struggle with is that many of our friends and colleagues have parents with wealth and enjoy their lake houses, college help and vacation subsidies. My husband grew up in a developing country and we send support to them instead of receiving it. Double edged sword—it changes my comparison group and makes our lives feel abundant but I also get pangs of jealousy when our friends are inheriting rental empires and we are sending our rental income-purchased with raw savings and sweat equity- to the in-laws.
The struggle is real
Thank you for validating my thoughts and feelings. The struggle is real. And yes, there are always ways to see that we have so much. And also that others have more. We also don’t have super well off parents – no vacation rental empire to inherit – but I try to focus on the fact that they don’t need financial assistance or elder care help yet. That might not always be the case. It must feel very different to see others receiving from parents while you have to give to them. We may be in that situation some day.
I’m a junior academic and my husband is a civil servant, and we can scrape to wraparound care (breakfast and afterschool club), but beyond that, absolutely not… It would be slightly easier if I didn’t travel to work – but there aren’t any local jobs, so there’s me getting on a plane (thankfully inexpensive) and paying rent for a room in another city every week.
It’s not helped by huge inflation in the UK (10.4%) and electricity costs which have more than doubled. We feel skint and we’re cold all the time! Which makes it worse, like the feeling of not being able to keep your house at a tolerable temperature, makes me feel like a failure. Luckily my kid runs warm and doesn’t seem to mind/notice.
My tolerance for my in-laws complaining with no mortgage, final salary pensions, and a very warm house is nill.
We’re enormously privileged, and our son goes to a socioeconomically diverse school, so we are acutely aware of that privilege but we can’t throw money at problems the way others do.
I do find the comparisons to be really damaging, and definitely feel better curating what I read and not using social media. I read/post on this otherwise lovely forum but someone asked me how we managed to buy a house on our “tiny” salaries. Erm… it’s 3 bedrooms, we have 1 car that we barely drive…
My sister lives in London so I’ve heard a lot about the inflation and electricity/heating costs. We also have exorbitant power costs ($400 a month right now for a 1200sq ft house – though we do charge an EV in the night), so we keep our house at a very low temp too. It’s exhausting to be cold all the time and it’s certainly part of why I’m so affecting by our still very cold, weird winter/spring. I always remark, when I’m video chatting with my sister via WhatsApp, that the two of us are wearing sweatshirts and jackets and sitting on our couches. It’s not right.
CA really is another world. Someone I know posted a listing on social media for a house in the Midwest for around $400K. Her local friends were saying they couldn’t afford that neighborhood. This house would be well over a million dollars in LA. Even in a neighborhood without a great elementary school it would still probably be over $1.5 million. People just are forced to spend their money differently because of the high housing costs. That said, no matter where you live, it seems like people always think they could use more money. There are always these articles in the New York Times about New Yorkers who make $500K per year and feel like they are just getting by because their friends have second homes and send kids to fancy camps and go on major vacations. Not saying you are comparable. But this seems to be a universal condition in this country.
I ask this question in SF all the time: what are we? Rich, poor, middle class? SF/Bay Area is such an outlier. My husband is in tech and makes a large salary. I’m a musician and teacher. Since we only have one big earner and no inheritance from either side of our family, we could never afford a house in SF. We could comfortably afford an 800k house with the money we have saved but anything for a family of 4 is at least 1 million, most homes are at least 1.5 million and up. It is crazy. So we stick with our rent controlled apartment and plan to move back to the Midwest or to the Northwest when our apartment is sold and hopefully get a buy out, or the size of our place drives us crazy, whichever comes first.
LV is rich and her husband is older and so has always been rich her whole adult/parenting life and has a very flexible job which accommodates all the scheduling driving stuff easily. Teaching is the exact opposite of flexible and, of course, makes you not as much money as say, a tech bro. And SF is crazy with housing, you are for sure skewed, it’s hard to live there and feel middle class, it is a blessing you have real estate in the area. Don’t worry too much about the upkeep, the value is primarily in the land. I’m a federal employee and my husband works for a non-profit so neither of us maximized our income. We have a very nice/large house in a high cost of living area (DC suburbs) because my parents paid for half of it. But this house would easily be twice as costly in the Bay Area. But as for other people, what really has opened my eyes about spending has been the numerous people who have taken care of my special needs daughter for the past 15-16 years – we are easily up to more than 15, maybe 20 people who have helped us out. Of course, they are lower income than us, it pays about $20 an hour and it’s a part time gig (we have help from the state through a Medicaid waiver, we don’t pay that salary) – usually they have another job like a school aid or nursing assistant during the day. But I would say, they spend way more freely than I would at that income level. We have two very lovely people who help us regularly now in the last 6 months we have not left the house on vacation – but one has been to Hawaii and the Caribbean. The other has been to LA, Miami, Puerto Rico and is now flying to Texas. Both of them have newer/fancier cars than us. I also have friends who are clearly struggling on one income for a family of 4 and yet they buy the $1000 Taylor Swift ticket (out of town, so they need to get hotel and travel) and go to private school and are renovating a house which is just unbelievable and incredibly stressful to me. So you never know about how other people spend/save their money.
I think Doris Lee hit the nail on the head. You never know how other people spend/save, and you don’t know what debt tolerance they have. You also can’t assume their priorities are the same as yours or that what they consume creates a specific internal emotional state. I have a friend who travels a ton, but I think she travels because she’s unhappy and the travel doesn’t seem to be fixing it. So I’m not envious of her exotic locations.
I think I’m hearing that you are feeling really underappreciated and unsupported right now. Our country doesn’t pay teachers enough, we don’t have enough affordable childcare, and specifically right now it sounds like your family is (over)scheduled and you’re stretched too thin. In the end, it’s really about that feeling of security, respect, and ease–I think money certainly can help with that, but it doesn’t make that happen automatically. I hope you are able to find the rest and support you deserve.
I do think different debt tolerance and ways people spend can account for some differences, but not some of them. You can’t save a half million dollars for college with a different debt tolerance. Or pay for full time child care. But yes, I do think you’re right about me feeling under appreciate and unsupported. That probably has a lot to do with it, and I’ll be exploring that more. Thank you.
Glad you are exploring it your underlying feelings on this subject.
From where I sit you and your family are doing extremely well financially and with both you and your spouse working in fields where you will have pensions on retirement….. Having seen some VERY Highly Paid Top Employees in the SF area need to ask for salary advances for consequences of their spending …. Don’t judge your finances by the externals of others. And, yes, there can be lots of family money behind some people that is invisible…..but that can have strings attached too.
Listen to Spare.
Halfway through your post I was thinking, “Of course she feels like she can’t do the things other solidly upper-middle-class people do, her cost of living is insane.” So I’m glad you got to that point in the next paragraph. 🙂 You’ve definitely given up a lot of disposable income by continuing to live where you do. That’s not right or wrong – it’s just your choice right now, and maybe you’ll stay there forever & it will keep getting easier as your kids get older, or maybe you’ll hit a wall where you want your dollar to go farther and you’ll move to somewhere where your kids can walk to after school activities and you’ll have disposable income for more travels or whatever you want.
On that note, STOP THE 529 account and get the cleaner. 1000%. A few years ago we had the change to refi to a 15 year fixed mortgage for a lower interest rate that would ultimately save us a ton in interest. However, we needed to come up with an extra $300/month. We were contributing $150 to each of the kids’ 529 accounts, and I talked to my sister (who works in university systems) and she said to ditch the 529 immediately. In her experience, any kid who applies for a scholarship and is up against another kid whose parents saved into a 529 for them, the scholarship goes to the kid who DOESN’T have money in a 529 cuz the ultimate goal is to get both to come to the college. And the reality is that college is going to be so insanely expensive, will the 529 even make that much of a difference? Will your kids even go to college? Will they go to a trade school? Will they go straight into the workforce? So many unknowns, it’s not like when we were kids and it was expected that you’d do a 4 year education to “be anything” in the world. Get the cleaner, take that load off your plate, and use the extra breathing room to enjoy the time with your kids while they’re still at home with you!
In terms of generational stuff, I hear ya on being Gen X but now more Millenial. I was born Jan ’82, and wholeheartedly embrace Xennial because we really are the cusper geneartion of the before/after of technology changing the world. I also think that women in the 37-43 year old time of life tend to be going through major life changes physically/mentally/career wise/etc. so it’s just a bizarre adrift time for us anyway! You’re not alone 🙂
As an ancient…… JJ is right. Get the cleaner. Children can have loans and summer and part time jobs. And, you can help them pay off the loans IF YOU SO CHOOSE.
Kids that have gotten jobs and helped pay for college LEARN A PILE about money and work and why they want to go for more education. They tend to become less entitled…… and it makes a difference in interviewing for post school jobs if they have worked before …. especially if they got their job on their own versus working for parent’s company or at parent’s friend’s place……
I often feel like a fish out of water with regard to matching up to folks too. I don’t know where you see me in your blog reading in terms of comparison but I feel these same sorts of ??? more when I look around our local people. Less so with blogs because I think you’re my only relative neighbor, all my other blog reads are all over the country / world and so I’m not drawn into a comparison because our home bases are vastly different.
I can’t afford anything in your first paragraph except our one low interest mortgage and now full time daycare. That’s after two years of barely keeping it together working and parenting full time without any help and it still feels incredibly luxurious to choose to pay a second mortgage in childcare. But we wouldn’t be able to keep our jobs without that full time care since we have zero help. It’s just the two of us here.
But I know I say “can’t” because I can’t in *my* value system. Maybe I could if I didn’t care about savings and didn’t mind taking on debt. We’ll never know though because I’m not giving up my money hangups! I’m deeply risk averse financially, because of my family financial history, so I continue to highly prioritize saving. With my uncertain health, we would be foolish to assume I’ll be able to work and earn as long as we need. At the very least, we’re going to have to keep spending on mental health and other health services to keep me functional if I’m still working. So we save first, pay our bills, then have some left over. And I acknowledge we’re incredibly fortunate to have anything left over after paying the bills, here in the Bay Area! To make that happen, among other choices, we still drive old ass cars and keep the heat off during the week because I cannot justify heating the entire house for one human and one dog. My fingers are frozen during the week. 😝 And yet our past three bills have been through the roof!
Meanwhile it feels like everyone in PiC’s company makes 2-3x what he does based on what the daycare parents spend on (all kinds of things I say we can’t afford): new cars, new homes, renos, many vacations. We *have* done Hawaii a few times because we travel on points or get BOGO deals or found alternative ways to make it affordable. Our older kid is classmates with people going on THREE vacations over the summer. I mostly shrug and say well, we don’t know. We could do that stuff too if I was willing to spend our savings or take on debt. Maybe they do that, or maybe they truly have that kind of disposable income, or maybe they’re also really good at travel hacking. We can’t know. And everyone has different priorities.
I do wonder if everyone’s life and money balancing act feels weird compared to their peers or friend group or social circles. We balance making the most of the money we choose to spend with trying to live in the present and being generous with our friends and people in need. It’s probably a balancing act that looks different to many. Our closest local friends probably make less than we do. I assume they do because they’re younger and earlier in their careers and don’t work in the big tech industries, but they also don’t have kids or a mortgage so they’re having way more fun. They go on vacation more and do a lot more fun stuff. They have a totally different lifestyle and we enjoy their company the most. I think as long as folks are low key, whether they’re on the same financial footing as us or not, I feel a kinship.
I don’t think you sound ungrateful or entitled or whatever it is you’re not wanting to come across as. I think living where we are, when the 1% here is mind bogglingly wealthy and we’re still making choices between things we can afford on our budgets or not, these questions naturally come up! It makes sense to me, anyway. Even if I’ll never have real answers, I ponder this now and again. I also worry about how long we have before our home values are nothing because of sea level rise or other climate issues. But that’s an impossible headache to ponder.
Also, the mold problem here is unbelievable! We’re constantly dehumidifying and scraping mold off the walls. This was not something I foresaw to be a big part of my home maintenance life. 🙄
I do think that money balancing compared to peers probably feels weird for most of us! In the last 10 years my husband and I have definitely gone from probably being the brokest of our friend/acquaintance group to one of the most affluent, but we still think it’s bizarre how differently we all spend and save and FEEL broke or comfortable. We have zero in savings and haven’t since we drained our account 12 years ago for fertility treatments. 11 years ago my husband started his own concrete company, and we have poured every extra cent into that, which just finally started paying off the last couple of years. For us, we are MUCH more set financially now than we would have been if we’d have worried about having 6 months of bills in savings like they recommend – but of course that’s different for everyone. We definitely all have different risk tolerances for savings, credit card debts, etc.
I wholeheartedly agree that the friends we have the most fun with definitely don’t have to been in the same money bracket as us (we are in the middle of our closest friends in that sense). It’s all about the connection and the view on life. We are pretty stingy on some things that ppl spend money on without a thought, and I’m sure people think we blow money on items they’d never spend money on. 🙂
I’ve been reading your blog for a lot of years (over a decade I think) and I have a general idea of who you follow and I think you may be underestimating the salaries of doctors, professors, tech people, and consultants, etc.; people in the US all think they’re middle class but a lot of these bloggers are actually upper class, often with just the 1 salary alone. As a librarian married to a copy editor, we’re solidly middle-class, likely upper middle-class for the our LCOL area, but I don’t have those kinds of funds. We use travel hacking to take a fair amount of trips, and prioritize those. I’m lucky to have bought a house before prices rose to what they are now. So you aren’t alone is what I guess I’m saying. Happy to talk this out more via email or whatnot if you want 🙂
I think you guys made a really unusual and really difficult decision to buy and live in such an expensive area on the salaries you make with two kids. It’s not right or wrong but most people don’t do it because it’s really hard. But beyond those broad generalizations you really never know what other people have going on so comparisons aren’t helpful.
My husband and I chose to live fairly far out from the city we are near because we both were in grad school for a long time and started earning real salaries (i.e. not grad school stipends) later than even peers with masters degrees or comparable. I was terrified of have a huge mortgage and had some school loans still. I would guess we out earn you and your husband significantly but have a mortgage that is half yours. We also have not taken an international trip since our oldest was born, have our kids in public school and really don’t purchase luxury items of any kind.
For a while these decisions was by choice but now we have two children with chronic medical conditions and despite having great insurance we pay thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket each year and will for the foreseeable future. My main financial goal is to ensure we will always be able to pay for the absolute best care for each of them, and sickeningly that is not super easy even with a fairly high HHI. Our country is so incredibly messed up- I am nearly broken sometimes thinking of the kids whose parents can’t throw $$$$ at private pay providers and top of the line devices/care. Just last week we found out our insurance will cover literally $0 of a new multi thousand dollar cost we have coming up (in addition to the costs we already knew about for existing care). I have also had to take extended unpaid leave a few times when things were out of control and having the ability to do that again if I needed to helps my sanity. It’s a huge privilege to do all of those things and I’m grateful for it, if disgusted by our country’s health care system.
All that to say very very few people have an accurate since of either our HHI or how we spend our money. I don’t regret anything, not in the slightest and we still have a great lifestyle, I wouldn’t pretend we don’t. But if you played the comparison game with me you’d be missing a lot of information about what our situation was really like.