How the salary is made makes a big difference too.....
Family A may make $70k, have employer provided health and/or dental insurance and a retirement plan with matching funds.
Family B may make $70k through self employment, having to pay the higher self employment taxes (no company contribution), and find/pay for their own private health insurance and come up with their own retirement plans.
In this case, Family A is much better off than Family B, but it "sounds" like Family B is making good money. So many factors other than salary must be considered when looking at what's a good wage, it's a lot more than salary.
Our family is Family B in this scenario, and I have to say we were better off when my dh was teaching at 40K a year, than we are self-employed at 70k a year. At one point, our health insurance was up to $800/month before I was able to find a new policy, and the self-employment taxes are very high (we pay about ~23% federal tax rate). We have to rewrite our health insurance policy every 5 years or so to keep it affordable. This is fine as long as we have no health issues, but as soon as we have any major health problem, we'll no longer be able to rewrite our health insurance (hopefully this won't happen).
Family A may make $70k, have employer provided health and/or dental insurance and a retirement plan with matching funds.
Family B may make $70k through self employment, having to pay the higher self employment taxes (no company contribution), and find/pay for their own private health insurance and come up with their own retirement plans.
In this case, Family A is much better off than Family B, but it "sounds" like Family B is making good money. So many factors other than salary must be considered when looking at what's a good wage, it's a lot more than salary.
Our family is Family B in this scenario, and I have to say we were better off when my dh was teaching at 40K a year, than we are self-employed at 70k a year. At one point, our health insurance was up to $800/month before I was able to find a new policy, and the self-employment taxes are very high (we pay about ~23% federal tax rate). We have to rewrite our health insurance policy every 5 years or so to keep it affordable. This is fine as long as we have no health issues, but as soon as we have any major health problem, we'll no longer be able to rewrite our health insurance (hopefully this won't happen).
with you 100%. We are in the Ft. Lauderdale area and 100K would be living nicely for a whole family, but not rich, no way. We are way below that and struggle a lot to get by. I don't know how people are doing it here on 30K a year for a whole family. I don't know how we used to do it either! 
But now? NO WAY! We always talk about moving up a bit further north in FL someday, if we could find jobs, because we see the housing listings are so much dramatically cheaper.
