My wife (32F) and I (34M) have a household income of about $300K/yr in a MCOL area. We have two small kids both in daycare 4 days a week, 2 dogs, a mortgage of about $2K a month (~150K in equity), put 10% of our income in to a 401K, minimal student loans, and I drive a Tesla model Y and she drives a Tesla Model 3.

I wouldn’t call us frugal (I think that’s clear by the teslas but hey we really enjoy our cars) but we also don’t live a lavish lifestyle. We order food maybe once a week, shop at a regular grocery store, clothes are mostly target or old navy, and spend about $100-$200 a month on hobbies. We do have some medical debt that is around $300 a month (yay American health insurance…) but that will fall off soon. Given how small our kids are we take very few “vacations” so I would say that’s less than $2k/yr. Other than that our expenses are pretty normal - utilities, house upkeep, some activities for the kids, insurance, etc…

Despite our income and what I think is a reasonable lifestyle with a few luxuries, it feels like money is tight and not because I’m saving a huge amount of money every month. When we talk about big expenses like doing some renovations on our house, private school for the kids, or looking at buying a bigger home, it just feels like there is no way we can afford it with out feeling cash strapped. I understand this is the definition of first world problems since we live a comfortable life by almost every standard, but am I crazy to be expecting $300K to be going so much further in a MCOL area? We both work pretty demanding jobs and it’s just demoralizing to still feel like we can’t do all the things we thought we could with our level of income.

Update:

Wow, I appreciate all the responses! Sorry I went to sleep after I posted this only expecting a few replies overnight.

People seem to be saying I’m not giving enough detail, I thought I was just giving the main expenses that affected my income so here is more. We don’t keep a strict budget (I acknowledge probably not a great thing) but I do track everything very closely. So here is some more detail for spending this year so far on average per month.

Mortgage: $2000/month

Daycare: $2000/month

Groceries: $700/month

Cars and insurance: $1400/month (one is a lease the other is financed but almost fully owned at this point, Internet rate was 1% how could I not?)

Utilities (including phone and internet): $700/month

Food (not groceries): $200/ month

Medical debt: $300/month

Kids activities: $100-$200/month

Dogs: $175/month

Personal care: $300/month (I forgot wife is getting laser hair removal so it temp very high compared to normal)

Hobbies: $100-$200/month

I will say just writing this out gave me some perspective and maybe I’ve had some lifestyle creep I didn’t really notice, but still feels like I don’t have as much financial flexibility as I was hoping.

To that one person who said my wife should stay home with the kids, I would ask you think about your comment more next time before posting. My wife actually makes more than I do, $160k vs my $140k so if anything I would stay home. Additionally either of us staying home doesn’t come any where near balancing that expense, it would badly hurt that stay at home parents long term career plan to take a 5 years break, and as much as we love our kids we both enjoy having some time being productive being only raising kids. Also kids really benefit from having that time to learn to socialize at a young age with other kids, exposure to diversity beyond what we could give them everyday being at home with them and it’s a chance for them to learn how to learn BEFORE real school starts. But this isn’t about parenting styles so I’ll leave it there…

Update 2:

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion in my take home, I live in a very high tax state so my take home after tax, FSA, life insurance etc… is about $12.5K and around $4k in tax return.