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People keep bringing up the $100,000 salary as if it's a meaningful
number. In fact, it's rather silly for someone who lives in a part of
the country where an average home costs $300,000 to use their salary as
a standard, just as it would be silly for me, in a town where $300,000
homes are luxury homes, to use my salary as a standard. I don't make
$100,000 a year. Neither does my boss. Or her boss. Or his boss. Or
*his* boss. Wouldn't it be a little more meaningful to compare our
salaries to something more universal? For example, since we seem to be
focused on the housing market... in my area, if I were to spend one year
of my annual salary on a house, it would be a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom,
less than 1500 sq ft, several decades old, in a less-than-desirable
neighborhood. Or a late model, used mobile home in good shape. The same
amount of money in my husband's home town would buy a similar house, but
a little larger, a little newer, and in a nicer neighborhood. If you
live in the Silicon Valley, your $100,000 income may seem pretty high
compared to mine, but if $100,000 buys the same type of house that one
year of my salary would buy, we're not so far off, are we?
Just a thought. It's not Friday, but it feels like it. :-)
