Are you financially better off than your parents were at your age?

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by El Jefe

Mid 50's is a lot in my area. Where do you live?

Southern Johnson County Kansas. It's nice for a second income, but she'll never make what I do, and she won't ever come close to earning what my mom did at her peak (neither will I, for that matter).

Then again, she makes double what her mom made while raising 4 kids without the help of her deadbeat dad, so it's all relative. The studies I've seen indicate that you need roughly 75k a year to reach optimum happiness. After that, you pretty much have to double your income in order to have it make a significant impact. I think that seems awfully low, but I have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns. An extra $50k a year wouldn't change my day to day life any. I might stay at nicer hotels when I take vacations, and I would certainly retire a little earlier, but it wouldn't have near the impact on my life today that $10k would have had ten or fifteen years ago.