It’s fucked honestly. I live in a townhouse with 2.5% mortgage and no other debt, 2 paid off cars with my wife. No kids yet
PITI: $2235
Car insurance/gas/tolls (2 cars): $504
Internet, phone, natural gas, water, electric: $394
Subscriptions (gym membership, her Pilates classes, streaming, life insurance): $413
Groceries, consumables, personal care products: $620
Sinking fund contributions (travel, home/car repair, phone upgrade/computer upgrade every 3yrs): $1180
Total: $5347
Then add random stuff like gifts, concert tickets, restaurants, other bullshit that pops up and you bring it to low/mid $6000’s. So I pretty much need to make $100k before taxes to break even.
Once the kids come I expect this to increase by at least $4000 a month so I’ll need to bring home $10k a month post tax just to tread water. This means we will need to earn about $170k pre tax to have all of our bills paid.
If we cut back a lot by having no vacations, no eating out, only doing free or cheap actives, upgrading devices every 5-6 years instead of 3, and maybe sell a car we could get it down to $130-40k pretax but that would be a significant lifestyle cut.
Life is so fucking expensive if you want to have a woman in your life and kids. I know broke 21 year old fags here will laugh at me because they live in a shitbox with bills under 1k a month but when you become a fully grown adult in a 1st world country life gets expensive FAST.