Nope! We live very conservatively. Turns out life is expensive.

I'm guessing you live in a high COL area?

I don't think they're saying $150-300K will be easy, but it should be doable in raising 3 kids if you make sacrifices:

1. Seriously cut down on vacations. As an example, in the first 19 years of my life I slept in a hotel for perhaps 10 nights total (over 3 separate vacations). We did not feel at all deprived. Those who do are definitely "keeping up with the Joneses".

2. Don't buy new (or even recent) cars. Once your kids are old enough to ditch the booster seat, a Camry or Accord sized car is plenty.

3. Eliminate most subscriptions and streaming services.

4. No private schools.

5. Birthday parties for kids: Keep the budget low. It's OK not to offer a meal. Cake and snacks is fine. Limited/no decoration. Just get a good cake and stuff for them to play with.

6. Eat out only on special occasions. When I was a kid, we'd get junk food once a week, and everything else was home cooked. Actual dine-in "proper" restaurants? Perhaps oncea year. Learn recipes that can be cooked quickly.

7. Don't live in SV or Boston.

8. No, you don't need to get furniture for every room in the house (if you have a decent sized house). Have a 5 (or even 10) year plan for adding furniture and other niceties to the house.

9. If the yard is expensive to maintain, stop maintaining it if you can get away with it.

10. Don't pay more than $400 for a phone, and keep it for at least 3 years (my last one was bought for less and lasted 7 years). Only buy used phones.

The part that probably craters all of the above is medical issues (high premiums + deductibles). I offer no solution for you.

(I break a lot of these rules, but I also don't complain - I know where my problem lies).

Keep in mind that there are those for whom conservatively means living with other family members or grandparents etc etc in other words there's immigrants and there's people who grew up in America with certain Suburban expectations. There are always levels. I say this to someone who myself would struggle not living that version of America we imagined when we were growing up. Um but there is a world in which you essentially live tenemens style, it's just something fairly unthinkable... one path could be to change the culture and make this less unappealing

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