I work with a broad range of people. Most all of the professionals on my engineering staff and on other staffs my team works with are on par with people that post here. They are 6 figure income people, very bright, and not in much debt at all. Definitely no credit card debt or what many of us would call excess consumption debt. Many of them have paid off the homes they lived in as they doubled up on payments in the 90’s and beyond.
I also strongly agree with AN who said that even a low to mid 6 figure income is not alot after fully stuffing 401k, flex plans, and then if you have a family with kids on top of that, wowsers, no way can you (with good common sense) finance more then 4-5 hundred k.
In my real estate business however I do run across more of a broad spectrum of incomes and intelligence levels. I am amazed at how many listing appointments I have been to where the people just bought something they should have never bought. These appointments usually deteriorate to me pointing out to the seller how they need to talk to the lender as they are now under water.
Now on the other hand I also have gone to listing appointments where the sellers are quite bright, well educated and have done the proper homework, and do very well. These transactions pretty much are the most sucessful ones. The sellers didn’t pull out HELOCs and they didn’t overextend themselves when they bought, and they see that selling now and waiting what the market will do is a prudent move.
