Your chosen lifestyle doesn't have to involve sea voyages in Southeast Asia or weeklong ski excursions. It could also be living in a medium-sized town in Flyover Country, U.S.A., working 40 hour weeks on interesting problems and spending lots of time with your spouse and children. If you've ever looked around at your Logan's Run coworkers and wondered what happens when you turn 30, here's one of your answers.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm - you realize this is just "median American lifestyle," right?
The idea that you can afford a house and a boat and time with your kids on a single upper middle class income in, say, Missouri is called "normal" outside of SF/NYC.
I've always heard "Lifestyle Business" as a contrast to a "Startup." Startups being, huge growth, VCs, and an "exit." Lifestyle business being more like a traditional business, slow growth, minimal outside investment, etc. This article paints it more of a digital nomad, which I haven't seen much of.
The difference between running a lifestyle business and just "median American lifestyle" is owning the business (although, effectively you are living a median American lifestyle). I've always likened it to building a successful contracting business, car dealership, or chain of donut shops. Ideally letting you live upper-middle class, fairly steady (businesses rarely are long-term), and possibly something you could sell off when you retire.
Can confirm it's possible. Iowa/Illinois/Wisconsin tri-state area for me. My wife stays at home with our two sons. I bring home the bacon. Bought a modest house out of college for $100K (with only 5% down) in 2010 and will have it paid off before 2020. I paid my own way through public university - $12k/yr for 4 years - left with $22k debt which is long gone.
A lifestyle business is the next goal. I've been doing part-time contract work for almost 5 years now in addition to a 9-5, and I'm really just dying to be my own boss and not have to commute (a whopping 10 minutes) to the office 5 days a week, as well as not have to deal with startup bureaucracy and artificial feel-goodery.
Yes, but you have to compromise sometimes and you need to be willing to live somewhere with a lower cost of living (ie: probably not in a big city). Get your family out of debt as much as possible first then reduce your monthly costs as much as you can. Be sure you have a reasonable amount of savings in the bank to cover some unexpecteds and be sure you and your partner/family/kids are all on board for making this kind of life change.
You probably don't really need the fastest Internet connection at home, cable/satellite TV, an unlimited cell phone plan, a new(er) car, to eat out more than once a month, to buy local/organic all the time, the newer technology things, or pretty much any monthly subscription services.
Go play outside and run around with your kids. Go to the library (they probably have lots of books, movies, music, and even video games to borrow for free!). Cook all your own food. Fix your own car/bike. Borrow things from friends/neighbors when you need a special tool. You can do it!
> Yes, but you have to compromise sometimes and you need to be willing to live somewhere with a lower cost of living (ie: probably not in a big city).
I think this is trading off too much for cost of living vs income. As I said in a sibling thread, our family is on one (software engineer) income in central Austin. We walk to most things, we own a big home and a yard, but I don't optimize for cost of living, I guess. Austin pays well enough, and we live with all the amenities on a single income.
In reply to your comment, we also have a super fast internet connection, unlimited cell phone plans, and go out to eat often. None of these things add up to even close to the difference in salary we get in Austin vs being in the middle of nowhere. I am all for reducing the time you spend working so you can be around family, but if you are working ~40 hours for a low salary and making up for it by cutting corners -- I'd much rather work my 40 in Austin and have it all.
If you're working 15-20 hours in the middle of nowhere and cutting corners, then that's another thing altogether.
My family lives in Portland, OR, which isn't nearly as expensive as (say) SF or NYC but has seen significant housing cost increases in the last 5-10 years. My wife works as a transportation consultant, which is a solidly white-collar/"knowledge" gig but pays far below what most tech gigs do. We could probably afford our essential costs (mortgage, taxes, car, insurance, etc.) on her income but we wouldn't have been able to buy a house here without the down payment that my technical work allowed us to pay, or the cash gift her parents gave us for our first (USDA-backed, 3.5%-down) home purchase.
My strong feeling is that most places with a robust employment market price most single-income households out b/c the expectation is now that you at _least_ have two earners. Kids take another chunk out of your "competitiveness" because of childcare, cost-of-living, and increased demands on your time (making it harder to really "excel" at work).
I have to agree - I was reading Ha-Joon Chang who was saying this is why salaries have been flat since the 70s - basically household incomes have grown as one income became two. And of course the washing machine and other household goods have enabled so much time saving that women could go out to work
But it does not quite balance out - households rarely have two good incomes, and the time costs still hurt.
Yes, it still exists in the US. Suburbs of Texas, and middle America. If you have a decent education and are willing to forego urban amenities and public transportation, you can do it. You'll need to work at a large corporation to have good health insurance though.
This lifestyle isn't for everyone though, myself included, but definitely seen many European families move to suburbs of Houston for energy jobs and they seem to enjoy the different lifestyle (pool in backyard, heat, etc)
I live in (very) central Austin with my wife and kids on one income. I escaped the suburbs of my childhood, too, (and wouldn't recommend them to anyone) but I don't understand how a software engineer income doesn't support a family in an urban area between the coasts.
It's funny; I'm thinking of moving back to TX. I'be been living cheap in the SF Bay Area, saving a bunch, planning on starting a tech business of my own someday. But it's so expensive out here. My savings would go so much farther back in Austin.
I spent so much time and effort getting out of TX, and now I'm going right back. Ironic.
True that, as a person who grew up outside of Houston, I have only been to Austin a handful of times, and hated every time I went. Its too "weird" for me. I love the Texas History Museum, and Barton Springs, though, and made a point to visit both every time (if I could find parking).
Yikes. That marketing campaign is so overblown. If you really found Austin weird I'm curious what your day to day is like.
> if I could find parking
Urban vs suburban. I'm willing to walk and want my kids to feel the same way. I remember suburban life well, and don't miss the superficial need for parking within 30 seconds (or 2 minutes) of your destination.
None of these were in protest, just typical Austoninan's from around 2003-2011
A procession of people crossing the upper level I-35 in wheelchairs... is weird.
Non-homeless and non-drunk people just sitting/laying down in the middle of the sidewalk on 6th Street, S Congress... is weird. I get it, it is too hot to walk in the summer, go inside, or to the springs.
Semi-Jokingly: Republicans in Austin... is weird.
But more than these specific things, its a lot of little oddities that didn't occur in more traditional places like Houston.
That said, I moved to NYC in 2015, so I can't claim Austin was THAT weird compared to what I saw every day for a couple of years before moving upstate.
Just don't live in London. Here in Newcastle a friend of mine bought a brand new house 3 years ago for 120k and he's paying it off and raising two kids on a salary of about ~40k/year. That's not unthinkable.
The US median income is about $37,000 currently. Among the highest in the world. You can earn that in just about every state in routine jobs that millions of people work (thus median). It also means you can very likely earn that income without a four year degree (since after all only 33.4% [1] of Americans now have bachelor degrees and their median income is around $60,000 now per the BLS).
Now combine two median incomes. You can very easily earn $80,000+ in a household, doing routine jobs without a bachelor's degree (a high school diploma is required), in thousands of typical mid-size locations in the US that are dramatically less expensive to live than the coastal cities.
Meanwhile, job openings have jumped to an all-time high.[2] While the supply of labor is at a very low level.
Pairing two median incomes delivers an upper middle class life, and does so easily given just a few years of continued improvement after reaching the median. That enables you to buy a good house in those other parts of the country (99% of the nation that is) and it enables you to live quite well if you're at all prudent. So there's your target: figure out how to get into the top 50% among the employed, not exactly a high bar.
It may not seem high to you, but to those in the bottom quartile, it may seem impossibly high, with no clear path in anything approaching the right direction.
That statistic seems kind of random. I have a bachelor degree and was definitely not pulling upper middle class on it (liberal arts degree) until I went to a bootcamp and switched careers into web dev.
I think the "32% of Americans have bachelor degrees" factoid is not meant to say that "everyone who gets a degree is upper-middle class" but that "a bachelor degree is _usually_ a gate/hoop you have to get through in order to have a good chance of being upper-middle class, and only 32% of Americans get through that filter."
It doesn't even need to be a lifestyle business, nor in flyover country. I live on the Maine coast working for a large company. We even have a big office here! I'm mid 30's, wife, kid, and we have a nice balance. Yeah sometimes I work a bit more than I'd like, but 40 hours per week is normal, and for the times I work more than that, it's more than offset by my 20 minute traffic-doesnt-exist commute. I feel very fortunate to live somewhere that other people visit on vacation, but getting here isn't really that challenging.
Portland (the original!) has a small but growing startup scene if that's your thing. It also has some of the best food and beer in the country, which is a distraction I admit.
I just visited Portland for the first time and found it to be a surprisingly vibrant city. Despite being less than half the population of my home town, it has a lot going on. I suspect that changes quite a bit during the winter months.
Hot Suppa was an especially delicious place to eat.
It'll surprise you like that. I moved up here 5 or so years ago because I liked visiting so much. There's a lot going on specifically on the Portland peninsula if you're into food and beer (making or consuming), or generally interested in just making things. The greater portland area has the outdoors and beaches, which are excellent for year round activities.
The winter is harsh, which is probably the only reason for our low population density. It's really not that bad once you get used to it, though, because the roads are pretty well cleared and maintained, you find things like skiiing/skating to do, and employers generally have common sense about when to tell folks to stay home.
I grew up in a much larger mid-Atlantic suburb that didn't have nearly the character or variety of things to do that we have around Portland. My wife's biggest complaint is the lack of shopping, particularly "nice" stores, but Boston isn't that far.
Different strokes for different folks. You don't need to convince me about the benefits of a digital nomad lifestyle - I travel extensively and spend 30+ days skiing/riding every year.
At the same time I can also see the appeal of a stable income and family, raising your kids in some nice suburbs, going to their soccer games or whatever. It was the life I had growing up and I'd like to give that to my kids someday.
Your comment seems pretty closed-minded, and also belittles the op for no reason.
