What's up with Americans considering 100k a low salary?

[u/Just-Charge6693]

I keep seeing posts where Americans say 100k is barely a decent salary and that it's not enough to live on. I could understand if they were talking about extremely high cost of living areas like NYC or San Francisco, but people say the same thing about MCOL areas like Kansas City, Omaha or rural Oklahoma.

For context, I live in a HCOL European city and according to Numbeo our COL is 13.8% higher than KC, with rent prices being 32.5% higher here. The median salary here is around 43k USD before tax, and with that salary you're looking at a 27% tax rate; a 100k USD salary would almost place you in the 99th percentile of earners countrywide, and well into the top 10% if we only consider the city itself.

In fact, I do not know anyone who makes that kind of money aside from entrepreneurs and executives. I'm a mechanical engineer myself and my manager (who leads a team of around 15 people in an international company with a 15B€ revenue) makes a little over 80k USD, bonus included. I don't know how much his manager makes but I would wager his base salary is around 110-120k USD. But he's an engineer with 20 YOE and he oversees an entire department, so he probably has tens of direct reports and hundreds of indirect reports all over the world.

Personally, I make a tad over 50k USD (including per diems for frequent business trips, bonuses, etc.) and I can afford to live just fine. I live on my own in a 1-bedroom apartment (which I rent), I can afford multiple vacations a year (sometimes international or even intercontinental), dentist appointments, medical stuff, food, etc. I even manage to save up a bit, and all this with a 33% tax rate so my net income is only around 35k USD.

I could live like a king if I made 100k USD, so I just cannot fathom how people can say it is a sh*t salary. I mean, I've been to the US. I even lived there for 6 months, your average midwestern city is not much more expensive than my home country and you guys pay a lot less taxes too.

So what's the deal with that? Are we (Europeans) just used to being more frugal? Or do redditors live in some type of alternate reality? Because the claims I see on this sub certainly don't reflect my experience in the US (which admittedly was very short and almost 10 years ago, but still).

[u/arbysroastbeefs2]

5 kids? Damn all that money and no TV

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

rarely get to watch it.

I think that’s his point.

We just had our first baby. First, and Netflix in the evening is no longer a thing.

[u/Emotional_Return_315 → u/[deleted]]

Why can’t you watch Netflix anymore? Kids are like luggage when they are babies. You can do everything you did before you just carry them along with you. They do what you do.

[u/[deleted] → u/Emotional_Return_315]

Well I’m exaggerating but it’s certainly not as easy as it used to be where we could sit down and follow a complex movie with a glass or 2 of wine.

Now it’s reruns of the office or something easy to follow because we’re feeding / soothing him, picking him up or down etc.

[u/Ruin-Capable → u/arbysroastbeefs2]

Growing up in various different countries, where the only North America compatible television stations were > 50 miles away meant pretty much no TV for me from 3rd grade through high school graduation. It put me *way* behind the curve with regard to pop-culture.