well, statistically, my salary is higher than nearly everyone else's here, and if I had to take a 30% pay cut I'd be unable to pay my bills. Simply because you make a "lot" of money by conventional standards does not make you rich.
Word on the street is that Kulongoski wants teachers to work for free for a few days. I'm not sure if we'll have a choice or how that would go down. I'd probably have to with the risk of just flat out losing my job since I'm still probationary. As for a paycut, I'd take a very small one considering that teachers don't make much to begin with.
Actually, it does. At least if you manage it properly. The problem is that lifestyle always seems to expand to income. Nearly everybody who is employed thinks that if they could double their current income they'd be happy, but if/when they eventually do, the spending has expanded at the same pace. So they aren't "rich." However, lifestyle can also contract to income. If the economy goes further down the crapper and we all lose 30% of our income due to spiraling inflation, it'd be tough for a while but most of us would get by. We'd drive more Hondas and fewer Mercedes. Maybe take public transportation. We'd buy less Xboxes and ditch the Netflix subscription and maybe the land line. We'd tell our kids to wait a few years for college, driving down enrollment and forcing universities to finally do something to contain costs. We'd move to cheaper houses, renting more. For the working poor it'd absolutely suck, but for much of the middle and upper class it'd just be something we'd deal with, and probably come out the better on the other side.
That being said, you live in Idaho. Your cost of living is dramatically different than someone who lives in NY, LA or San Francisco.
But, should he need to look for a job, so are his employment possibilities. To the original question, it would depend on what the company's plans for the future were. I could certainly live on 30% less; I currently save around that much. If it happens this Monday, my choice would most likely be to retire. But, again, it depends on the specifics. Edit: I guess my math was a little imprecise. I saved 41% of my gross salary last year. So if I took a 30% salary cut, I'd still be able to save something at my current standard of living. But, I'm obviously an exception, most people don't have as large a gap between earnings and spending as I do. Being a cheap bastard does have its advantages. barfo
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to managing your finances. Really, $100,000 is not very much money--especially if you have a family. If I was making "only" $100,000, I don't know how I'd get by--and I'm not trying to be snobbish. I watch every expense, cut coupons, and spend almost nothing on entertainment. I don't drive a Mercedes. However, I do make enough for my wife to leave her job to pursue a phd, and for my kids to go to private school (which is almost a necessity in Florida). Those are the choices you make. If you have a family, the cost of food and monthly utilities can be very high, and there isn't much you can do about it.
There is something you can do about it. I'm not sure what that something is, but since the majority of families in this country make less than $100K, it is obviously possible to get by in that circumstance. In fact the median household income is only around $50k. barfo
my point is just that I've made choices to spend my money the way I do, and I don't have a lavish lifestyle by any means. I couldn't take a paycut without significantly affecting my family. I couldn't even reduce my contributions to my 401k plan until next January! There's really nothing magical about making a six-figure salary--really!
"Not to sound snobby, but I don't wipe my ass with less than $100,000" I'd take a voluntary cut in pay, if it meant I didn't taken an involuntary loss of my job.
Again, my point is simply that it is naive to assume that anyone earning over $100,000 can absorb the loss of 30% of their salary without any repercussions. I'm making no indication regarding whether I would accept such an offer. Thanks for being rude, though. For a minute there I had forgotten that I was on the Blazers OT forum.
It's all the same, relatively speaking. Cost of living is proportionate to the salaries available. The difference is if there were no incomes at all, Idahoans would live off the land and share with their neighbors to survive, while NYer's, LAer's and Bayfolks would rob and pillage each other to survive. One more reason I love life in Beautiful Central Oregon.
I'm self-employed so I make what I'm worth. When times are hard, I have to work harder, smarter, and longer to make what I'm worth, but I pretty much control my own destiny. I've worked for companies huge and tiny, and public and private, but I'm by far the most qualified boss I've ever had.
It's easier for someone making 100K a year vs someone making 35K a year in similar scenarios (children, house, car, etc). If you want to act like that was being rude, so be it. But it just comes off as someone who makes more money than the average person on here (I would guess) acting like they're struggling pay-check to pay-check. Yes, a 30K loss in pay would hurt, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would love to have that struggle on their hands instead of that of someone losing 10% of their pay (or their job).
I'm not saying you wouldn't feel any repercussions. Just that you'd adapt your lifestyle pretty damned quickly and within several months you'd be surprised that you thought you couldn't live with less. For example, you'd probably ditch the private school for the kids. I know you say it's "required" in Florida, but the public school in Idaho isn't any great shakes either. But I came out all right, and my best friend did better with his Idaho public education than almost any privately educated kid in the state. You'd probably just look at moving to a school district that was better and find a cheaper house to live in. My parents were oddballs. Always lived a $50k/year lifestyle, even though my dad owned his own law firm (with 15 associates). He drove a 25 year old beater Mercedes diesel with 300k on it, and when the engine blew he had the mechanic drop in a replacement used engine. We used to joke that his receptionist showed up to work in a better car than he did. And it trickled down to me, somewhat. Nobody in my family has ever bought a car that was newer than 5 years old. I doubt there are more than a couple of people in my neighborhood (beside my wife and me) with a college education. My neighbor works at Albertsons. The kids who rent across the street throw a party every friday night.... But even with my spendthrift upbringing, I have a 42" plasma and 5 computers in my house and I eat out 2 nights a week. I don't owe a penny to anybody but the mortgage on my house, but I often feel guilty that as cheap as I am I have less than $40k in savings. I really think my family needs to tighten the belt up more. The coming couple of years are only going to get worse, and I think there's going to be in for a run on inflation that'll make us nostalgic for the 1970's. I wish I'd saved more during the fat years....
I'm so upset about 97.1. It was my favorite station. Leykis and John/Jeff are wrong on so many issues in my opinion but they were also fun to listen to.
This would be true if the $35K earner and $100K earner both owned $100K homes. More likely, the $100K earner owns a $600K or $1M home, and those get foreclosed on when the owner can't make his $4K/mo mortgage payments just as a $100K home would be when the owner can't make his $600/mo mortgage payments.
