How a Family of 4 on Long Island Live on $350k a Year

Alicia and I are in Cape Cod for a few days doing some planning for The Purse. We went on a hike, ate a lot of delicious food, and spent hours talking about The Purse from the beautiful back deck on my parents’ house. It feels like early fall here, and the weather has been absolutely stunning. I don’t want to go home! Except I do because I’m excited to start working on all the fun stuff we’ve been planning!

This is all to say that I’m keeping today’s intro short. This is a fun Home Economics that has a little bit of everything: parents supporting their adult children, adult children supporting their parents, student loan debt, a million-dollar mortgage, and many conversations about the hard decisions families make every day to afford their lives.

This family—who earns more than $350,000 a year—is part of what some call the “working rich,” a term I sort of hate, but that also sums up the experience of many Americans. They must work high-paying jobs in order to afford their lifestyles, and there’s not a lot left over in savings.

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Age: 37
Location: Suffolk County, Long Island, New York
Relationship status: Married
Age of partner: 35

About me: I’m a married mom of two in my late 30s, born and raised on Long Island, New York. (Yes it’s “on,” not “in.” IYKYK.) I’m currently a project manager at my family’s construction firm, but I have previous career experience working in finance in New York City.

All expenses are monthly unless otherwise noted.

Income:

Your job title/salary: I’m a project manager, and my base salary is $100,000, plus I usually get an annual bonus of about $20,000 to $35,000. This is actually a salary cut from my previous jobs at major banks when I made $120,000 and got an annual bonus.
Your monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $6,200
Partner’s job title/salary: Executive director in product development for a big bank in NYC; $250,000 base salary plus end-of-year bonus. The last two years, it’s been $100,000 distributed in a mix of cash and RSUs.
Partner’s monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $14,400
Additional monthly income:
- Rental property: $3,400
- Poshmark: $100
- Whatnot sales: ~$2,000. This is my husband’s hobby, and we don’t count it toward our budget. But it does pay for extra expenses that pop up, like when we needed to replace our fence recently.
Total monthly income: We base our monthly budget on $24,000 (both our monthly incomes + the rental property income).

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Account balances:

Checking account balance: $15,926
Savings account balance: $1. I’ve had this savings account since high school, and it earns no interest, but I’ve never gotten around to closing it.
High-yield savings account balance:
- Joint savings account: $6,633 (3% APY)
- Personal savings account #1: $57 (3.65% APY)
- Personal savings account #2: $163 (3.4% APY) I opened both these high-yield savings accounts years ago when I was single, and I never felt the need to close them.
- Husband’s personal savings account: $500 (3.65% APY)
Monthly contribution to savings account: On average, about $600 across the various HYS accounts.
Retirement account(s) balance:
- My 401(k): $104,703. I rolled it over after I left corporate, and it has been sitting there since 2021.
- My husband’s 401(k): $403,881
Monthly contribution to retirement accounts: My current job doesn’t offer 401(k), so only my husband is actively contributing to his. He invests approximately $1,086 each month with a 4% match from his employer at the end of the year.
Investment account balance: $7,561
Monthly contribution to investment accounts: ~$200
529 balance:
- Kid #1: $10,587
- Kid #2: $10,668. I opened a 529 when my first was two. A month later, after seeing a reel from Your Rich BFF on Instagram, I opened a second 529 in my name because we were hoping for/trying for a second kid, so I wanted to help “manifest” it happening, LOL. We did eventually have a second kid, and once I received their Social Security number, I rolled over the funds in my 529 to theirs. That’s why both kids have roughly the same balance.
Monthly contribution to 529: $150 to each child
Emergency fund balance: I consider $2,050 in my HYSA to be our emergency fund.
Goals-oriented savings accounts (indicate what kind of accounts and how much you’ve saved): I have “buckets” in our joint savings account for various things. Currently, we have $4,500 for Christmas spending and $2,050 for emergency savings. We recently withdrew $800 for a wedding gift. Other buckets include annual home maintenance, camp for next summer, a Portugal trip, renovations, a Disney trip, and a 10-year vow renewal, but those are currently empty. The goal is to fund some of them from end-of-year bonuses.

Total in checking, savings, and investment accounts: $560,180

Housing:

Size of your home: Our current “forever home” is 3,100 square feet with five bedrooms and two-and-half baths on 0.7 acres. We also own (and previously lived in) a 2,150-square-foot three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath condo, which we rent out now.
Mortgage:
- Condo: $2,297
- House: $8,475
Current home value: $1,351,800, according to Zillow
Current mortgage balance:
- Condo: $305,766
- House: $979,716
Year you bought your home:
- Condo: 2021
- House: 2024
Amount you paid for your home:
- Condo: $443,000
- House: $1,260,000
Mortgage interest rate:
- Condo: 2.99%
- House: 6.12%
How much was your down payment? For the condo, our down payment was $100,000, and for our forever home, it was $200,000.
How long did it take you to save for the down payment? So a (not) funny story: We were saving for about a year and a half for our wedding in Portugal, and then Covid happened. We ended up having a courthouse wedding, and we bought the condo about a year later. We had $40,000 saved for the wedding, which we pivoted to use for the down payment, and my husband covered the rest with money from his personal savings.

About a month after we closed on the condo and began renovations, we received a “wedding gift” from my dad, which came in the form of a $12,000 mortgage principal payment and another $12,000 to help with renovations. (We spent $80,000 total on renovations—$68,000 from us and $12,000 from my dad.)

For the forever home, my husband had saved $80,000 from his bonuses, and his mom loaned us $120,000. I covered the closing costs, which were around $40,000 from my bonuses.
Did you have any family help buying your home? Yes. We’re paying my mother-in-law back for the down payment on our forever home. We owe her $90,000. And as I mentioned above, my dad gave us cash as a wedding gift that we used to pay down our condo mortgage and for some of the renovations we did.
Property tax:
- Condo: $6,000 (annually)
- House: $22,000 (annually). Both of these are part of the mortgage payments.
Homeowner’s insurance: For both properties, the insurance payments are part of the mortgage payments. I’m not totally sure what we pay for the house, but for the condo, it’s $929 twice a year.

For the rest of these home-related expenses, the expenses are only related to the house where we live.

Electricity: On average $150, but in the summer it’s less than $100 because we have solar panels.
Water: We pay quarterly, but averaged over 12 months, it’s $103 a month.
Propane: ~$460 a month on average. We pay every time we need to refill the propane tank, which is approximately three times a year.
Cell phone: $170
Internet: $110
Housekeeper: $360 for two cleanings a month
Gardener: Our landscaper helps us year round with property maintenance, and the average monthly spend is $440.
Maintenance: $650 for the condo
Solar panels: $224. We have a loan for the solar panels of $24,700 with a 6.99% APR.
Pool maintenance: $80
Other: We pay annually for maintenance on things like our cesspool, sprinklers, and alarm system, and it averages out to $150 a month.

Transportation:

Monthly car payment: $740 for a three-year lease. We’re currently a one-car household—my husband works from home and I drive to my office—but we’re looking to get a second car. Ideally, we want to budget a new car payment of around $400 a month.
Car insurance payment: $265. If we get a second car, this will likely go up to approximately $360 a month based on initial quotes.
Gas: $200
Car maintenance: $0. Everything’s been covered so far by our lease agreement.
Parking: $32 annually for a town parking pass that provides access to various county parks and beaches
Monthly public transportation: N/A
Ride shares (Uber, taxi, etc.): We only use these when we travel. Last year, I only spent $50 on Lyft. I will walk an hour before calling an Uber/Lyft, LOL.

Children:

Number of children and their ages: We have a five-year-old and a two-year-old.
Day care: Until June of this year, our oldest was in a preschool program that ran five days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and it cost us $1,400 a month.
Nanny: My mom cares for my youngest full-time. She picks my oldest up from school at 2:00 p.m. every day and watches both kids until my husband and I are done with work around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. We pay her $2,000 a month for this help.
After school: N/A. We don’t have to pay for after-school care because my mom watches both kids.
School tuition: Starting this fall, we’re paying $700 for tuition for our five-year-old. Our school district offers a free half-day pre-K from 9 a.m. to noon, and then parents have an option of enrolling their child in the enrichment program that extends the day until 2:30 p.m. It’s like a more chill kindergarten. They do reading, writing, science, and math and have lunch, snack, and some time at the playground.
Camp: $1,102 for eight weeks of summer camp for our oldest, which ran from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. every weekday. My mom handled care the rest of the summer.
Babysitter: My mom will help out on the occasional date night, but since she babysits for us full-time, we don’t go on many evening dates because she needs time off.
Extracurricular activities: $70 to $140 a month for swim lessons
Other: $500 on average between clothes, diapers, toys, etc.

Debts:

Student loan total balance: $17,997. I had $50,000 in loans when I graduated in 2011, but my grandparents paid off $30,000, and I paid them back interest-free in 2018. My mom paid off my remaining loan when she downsized to a condo around 2018. The property taxes on her house were too much for her to maintain solo following the divorce from my dad. I’ve been slowly paying her back by paying for her cell phone (we have a family plan), hence the $17,000 balance.
Student loan monthly payment: $0
Credit card balance (if you carry a balance month to month): We pay off our cards in full every month.
How much do you spend on your credit card(s) each month: ~$3,000 to $4,000

Food:

Groceries: ~$1,400. This covers all groceries plus a trip to Costco every four to six weeks. It includes things like paper towels and cleaning supplies, because I don’t break out that expense. We cook almost all meals at home minus a weekly takeout/pizza night. Last year, we were averaging $1,800 a month. This year, I’ve really tried hard not to have any food waste. Some weeks are better than others, and I eat some weird combos for breakfast or lunch to reduce food waste. For example, this morning’s breakfast was leftover wild rice chicken soup because that was the quickest/easiest thing available!
Dining out: ~$250 to $300. This covers takeout roughly once a week or a Friday night pizza night and the occasional dinner out with friends, which happens maybe once or twice a month, if that. It also includes occasional trips to local coffee shops, but again, that’s limited to once or twice a month.

Socializing and Entertainment:

Subscriptions (streaming services, magazines, etc.): $150 on average for Disney+, Netflix, Spotify, a few Substack subscriptions, newspapers, Apple Care/Apple One, etc. I get some of this back as a credit on my Amex Platinum card.
Memberships (museums, etc.): N/A
Movies, concerts, other events: N/A. We probably only go to the movies twice a year with the kids being this young.
Entertaining and socializing other: Maybe $100 to $150 a month to host friends and book club. Usually, this gets absorbed into our flex spending/grocery/takeout budget.
Family flex spending: $500. This covers all kinds of miscellaneous expenses that pop up.
Hobbies: Reading and gardening. I’m so millennial coded sometimes I make myself laugh. Book purchases are part of my personal flex spending budget, but I get most of my books from the library/Libby app, so I limit book purchases to one to two books a month (so maybe like $20 a month?), if that, and only books that I love/will eventually be in my library when I get around to building one.
Travel: We usually only travel twice a year, one local trip and one international. Our Charleston trip last year was about $4,000 for everything, and our yearly Portugal trip to see family usually runs us about $8,000.

This year was a low travel year. I spent about $300 to go on my book club retreat to the Poconos in March; my husband spent approximately $1,500 going to Chicago on a boys trip; and we spent four days in Wildwood, New Jersey, this summer. That trip cost us just groceries and gas because we stayed for free with family. My husband and I both pay for our solo travel out of our personal flex spending accounts.

Miscellaneous:

Clothing: I bake this into my monthly kids’ spending, so probably around $100 a month for the kids and same for me. No idea about my husband, LOL, as that comes out of his personal flex spending account.
Home supplies: Included in our grocery or family flex spending budget
Exercise: $50 for the Peloton app
Personal and self-care (haircuts, manicures, massages, etc.): My kids and I get our hair cut quarterly, and the total is $155. The only other thing I do consistently is wax, and that’s about $150 every six weeks. I’ve had one massage this year, which was a Mother’s Day gift, and I haven’t gotten my nails done since 2020! My husband covers his haircuts from his personal flex account, so I’m not sure how much he spends.
Pet expenses: N/A
Donations: $50
Tithing: N/A
Events (birthday parties, etc.): This is baked into our family flex spend.
Other: Annual credit card fees for my Amex Platinum ($895) and Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95). TBH, I think I’m going to downground my Amex Platinum because I’m struggling to use all the benefits. Right now, it’s looking like I’ll break even, but it’s taking SO MUCH EFFORT that I kind of don’t want to deal with.

Insurance:

Life insurance: We have coverage through my husband’s employer.
Health insurance: $17,000 yearly (gets deducted from my husband’s paycheck)
FSA balance: N/A
HSA balance: N/A

Total monthly spending (includes annual expenses divided by 12): $22,134

Tell us more:

What are your top financial priorities?
Retirement/FIRE, college savings, and making sure my mom is also set in retirement. Also, I’d like us to save up an actual emergency fund, and I’m hoping to focus on that in 2027. I feel like we’re playing with fire a bit right now. I could take money out of my brokerage if necessary, but it would be better to have a cash reserve we could use for the unexpected expenses that pop up.
How is your financial situation different from 5/10/15 years ago? How has that changed the way you manage your money?
I used to carry credit card balances when I was first out of college, but I haven’t had a balance since 2018.

Growing up, my parents really emphasized saving and budgeting. But in college and right after I graduated, I went in the opposite direction. It was a lot of mindless spending, like, “Oh shit, this is the first time I have a big-girl job, and I’m gonna go out for drinks every Thursday!” and “I work in corporate now; I need all these fancy work clothes!” Swipe, swipe, swipe!

It became untenable, and I had creditors calling me. Eventually, I just cut up all my credit cards, and I paid them all off by 2018. I never want to feel like that again. It was horrible.

Now, I try to be really intentional with spending. Over the last two years, I’ve worked to change my mindset on spending to focus more on quality and repair/mending things. Also, everyone needs to watch Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy on Netflix. You will not want to buy ANYTHING after that.
How do you feel about your current financial situation?
Overall, I feel pretty good when I look back at the numbers, but day to day, it feels tight. We cook almost all our meals at home. I pack lunches for work. I drink coffee at home or get it for free at work 90% of the time. We get pizza takeout once a week on Fridays for movie nights. We don’t really travel much, but it is expensive to save up for our yearly Portugal trip. (We skipped it this year because we didn’t want to go into debt for it or pull from our current savings.)

Overall I think we’re pretty good with money, but it still feels like some months things are tight. I know that seems insane, because we are very privileged with our salaries, plus the help we get from family, etc. I realize our housing expenses and child care expenses are a very high percentage of our monthly budget, so that definitely plays a role.
What are your money stressors?
Saving for our retirement and taking care of my mom in retirement.
Do you expect to receive (or have you received) an inheritance from a family member?
I know we likely will get something small from a combination of our parents, but I am not factoring it into our retirement plans whatsoever. I might inherit property in Portugal years from now from my mom, but again, I’m not factoring it into our retirement planning.
Do you receive any financial support from your family?
Yes, I was able to pay off my debt a lot faster because my grandparents and mom paid off my student loans, and I paid them back with zero interest. We also received an interest-free loan from my mother-in-law for part of our down payment on our current home. And the fact that she was able to pay for my husband’s college in full was an insane privilege. (On a single salary, mind you, as she was divorced at the time!) We also received a big cash gift from my dad for a wedding gift.
Do you financially support any family members beyond yourself and your nuclear family?
My mom. She doesn’t have enough in retirement to support herself for what will hopefully be a very long life, so I fully expect to have to provide financial assistance in the future and have worked that into our budget. She was a stay-at-home parent, and then my dad divorced her after 20 years. She was left with no retirement savings and minimal career prospects after being out of the workforce for 20 years.

After the divorce, she sold our family home and bought a condo with all cash. She used the excess money to help my brother and me pay off our student loans. And I’m slowly paying her back interest free.
How do you and your partner split your finances? How did you decide to go that route?
Initially, we kept everything separate. But when we decided to start saving for our wedding, we opened a joint savings and checking account.

Now, a percentage of our take-home pay goes into a joint checking account that covers almost all our shared expenses (housing, car, groceries, kids’ stuff, etc.) and the rest goes into our separate flex accounts, which we use for things like personal trips, hobbies, etc. Right now, we put 90% of our salaries into the shared account and 10% into our personal accounts. We’d love to get to a point where we’re just putting 60% of our income into the shared account, 20% to savings, and 20% to keep for ourselves. At the end of the year, we review all our spending for the previous year and then decide what percentage to put into the joint account.
What is one financial goal(s) you still want to achieve?
Financial freedom. Currently, I’m projected to be financially independent in 20 years. We’re working to save what we can to make this happen sooner. As of today, it’s 23 years. (This equates to approximately $3 million invested with a 4% withdrawal rate.) I don’t plan on spending the amount of money in retirement that we do today. If I were to maintain the same spending, it would take us 33 years to reach that goal, which would be roughly the normal retirement age of 67. I really want to be able to be available for my kids the way my mom is for me.

I work for my dad, and part of the plan is for me to take over his business. I’m his retirement strategy, so at some point, I’ll also need to have my own exit strategy, whether that’s serving as an advisor while I train my successor or selling the business.
Tell us about one financial accomplishment you’re proud of.
I’m proud we were able to purchase two properties within three years.
What are you willing to sacrifice to meet financial goals?
We’ve sacrificed traveling. We didn’t take our annual trip to Portugal this year because we weren’t willing to go into debt for it.
What are you NOT willing to sacrifice to meet financial goals?
Family experiences
What do you regret spending your money on the most?
The mindless Amazon spending! I can’t even tell you what I spent money on. In 2024, our Amazon spending totaled $8,000. I was able to cut to $4,000 in 2025, and I’m happy to say we’ve only spent $1,127.50 so far in 2026.
What is one thing you spend money on that makes your life better?
Our housekeeper. She is a GODSEND! I couldn’t live without her <3. She helps us deep clean every two weeks, and I actively cut things out of my budget to be able to afford her.
What is one thing you spend money on that drives you crazy
Honestly, I’ve scrolled through my Copilot Money app, and I really can’t think of anything. I guess the purchases that drive me crazy are anything I buy on Amazon. Like, I get irrationally annoyed when I can’t find it somewhere else and have to order it on Amazon. I actively try not to spend money there, and I will even pay for shipping if it means I can avoid purchasing from Amazon.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
We live in a high-cost-of-living area, and we 100% could not make this work if we weren’t both high earners. I wish I had more flexibility to be home with my kids more often, but on the flip side, they get a lot of time with grandma, and they’re learning to speak Portuguese, which is important to me.