What is an average mean of income in the United States that one can live off of without being on the poverty line/living lavishly. I look at a lot of Admin jobs at a lot of Universities and I see the majority of them range from $30,000 - $42,000 or so. Is that enough money for someone to rent/pay for bills/still manage to live a life? I note that Sydney has now surpassed a lot of cities in cost of living - but for doing that type of job in Sydney you're salary would be around 55K.
Depends on the area of the country. The cost of living can vary a lot. In Houston you could make it okay as a single person making $35k. Not a lot of luxuries in that budget though.
Yeah I was meaning Texas. Would a place outside of a major district vary much between say the heart of Houston?
Don't understand your question. Inside the loop in Houston has become kind of trendy and its changed a lot the last few years. The city is kind of splitting into in loopers and out of loopers. Not sure what rents are like inside the loop but I would guess its become more expensive than outside the loop in a lot of areas.
The average mean, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, is 14. See their paper: "Average Mean and the Cost of Life Living"
If you were single making 40k in Houston, living near work where you didn't have to burn a lot of gas, you could be just fine. So long as you don't go out and get a used BMW or do something stupid, you can be comfortable. Rents are going up though so whatever living arrangements you make initially could be much more expensive in a couple years.
My first job out of college I was making $45k, and I thought it was lavish. (since I was making around $12k in college, it nearly quadrupled my income) I mean, you probably can't buy a house, but you can certainly live a normal life.
Exactly. I don't know why people are saying $40k you'd be barely getting by. You would get by fine. You'd have a safe place to life. A care to drive. And be able to go out every once in a while. Can you party all the time? Own a house? Drive a luxury car? Take European vacations? No. But you'd still live a very nice life.
Agreed. As long as you have a safe place to life and a care to drive, what else matters? I drive my care often, and my place to life is very safe.
Some people say they could care less. But that's not right. They must be driving luxury cares. But if they lived on $40k a year they couldn't care less.
