A Week In Greater Boston Area On A $246,000 Joint Income

Occupation: Mechanical engineer
Industry: Medical devices
Age: 32
Location: Greater Boston Area
Salary: $136,000, plus a yearly bonus up to 10%.
Household Income/Finances Setup: My husband C. earns $110,000, putting us at a joint income of $246,000. We completely combined finances when we got married. Our personal accounts are there more as a backup in case something were to ever happen that locks us out of the joint accounts.
Assets: Personal checking: $2,200; C.’s checking: $9,000; joint checking: $3,000; joint HYSA: $17,000; joint brokerage: $64,700; personal 401(k): $293,000; C.’s 401(k): $10,000; kids’ 529s: $2,700; HSA: $2,500; house $775,000; car #1: $8,000; car #2: $12,000.
Debt: Mortgage: $612,990; car #2: $1356
Paycheck Amount (Every two weeks): $3315.17
Pronouns: She/her

Monthly Expenses

Housing Costs: Mortgage: $4,630
Loan Payments: Car #2 payment: $339
Daycare: $5,383
Health/Vision/Dental Insurance: $543.64 (paycheck deduction).
C.’s 401(k): $458.34 (paycheck deduction).
My 401(k): $418.80 (paycheck deduction).
Dependent Care FSA: $416 (paycheck deduction).
Utilities: $413 (averaged over the year).
HSA: $312 (paycheck deduction).
My Work Parking: $280 (reimbursed).
Car Insurance: $171.88 (both cars).
Cell Phone: $144.92
Home Insurance: $143.81
Kids’ 529 Accounts: $100
Life & LTD Insurance: $65.62 (paycheck deduction)
C.’s Bus Pass: $55 (reimbursed)
Internet: $54.99
Disney/Hulu Bundle: $19.99 ($7 reimbursed by Amex).
Spotify: $19.99
C.’s Life Insurance: $6 (paycheck deduction).
NYT: $4

Annual Expenses

Chase Sapphire Reserve: $550
Parking: $500 for parking near the bus stop ($100 reimbursed by C.’s work).
Discovery Museum Membership: $145
Amazon Prime: $139
Costco Executive Membership: $130
Amex BlueCash Rewards: $95

Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
I don’t think I realized university was optional schooling until freshman year of college. There were at least two summers where I went to SAT camp, and pretty much all of teenage self-worth was tied to my GPA. I got into MIT though, so that part paid off — but I was burnt out when I got there and struggled. My parents paid my tuition and living expenses while I got my bachelor’s, so I was lucky not to have that stress weighing on me as well. Then a few years ago I got my master’s while working. My work covered a portion, and I paid the remaining $20,000 out of savings.

Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent(s)/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
There weren’t any conversations about financial planning or how to budget while I was growing up. My parents have always avoided discussing how much money they have. I remember my mom working late into the night with QuickBooks, so I had this nebulous sense of it taking a lot of time and effort to do “money things”. But I had no idea what those things were! After I got my first job out of college, my dad would sporadically drop knowledge about why I needed an IRA or how owning a home could help with taxes, but a lot of my learning was through the internet.

What was your first job and why did you get it?
In high school I was an assistant for an after-school tennis program for younger kids. Honestly, I think I got it as a way to beef up my college applications.

Did you worry about money growing up?
No, I grew up as an expat kid in western Europe. Our housing and school was covered by the company, and my dad had a great salary plus income from renting out our home back in the US. I have vague memories of my mom trying to be cost conscious every once in a while, but my dad has always had a “just buy it” mindset.

Do you worry about money now?
Before having a second child, my husband C. and I acknowledged that we’d need to burn savings while they were both in daycare and still decided we wanted to do it. But living it has been more stressful than I anticipated. Our monthly housing costs jumped up by $2,000 between me getting pregnant and actually having the baby, and then we had a lot of costly repairs to our heat system last year. Before buying a house, I really didn’t understand how much home maintenance actually costs, and thinking about the cost of some needed repairs stresses me out. Based on last year’s spend, my countdown clock has us running out of cash (not including our retirement accounts) in 38 months, and we’ve got 30 months until the older child is out of daycare. So this year I’m making a bigger effort to course correct (but at the same time, I’m not worried enough to stop contributing to our 401(k)s and lose the employer match?). We’ll see how 2025 goes.

At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I was financially independent from 22 until 28. Then we started renting a house from my parents for $2,550 a month. They’d bought it for $550,000 and at something like 3% interest, so we were getting a discount because our rent covered their expenses but didn’t make any profit. A little over a year ago they needed to sell the house. I was seven months pregnant with kid #2 at the time and really, really didn’t want to move. My parents offered to help with the down payment if we bought from them, which I’m grateful for, since we didn’t have enough to hit 20% down by ourselves unless we moved a lot further out. So we bought the house from them, and now we’re back to supporting ourselves. That being said, in the back of my mind my parents are our safety net. Especially now that we have kids, I’m confident they’d loan us whatever we needed if it came down to it.

Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
My parents gave us a $100,000 gift of equity towards our down payment. Also, they covered all of my undergrad expenses (about $220,000), and gave me and C. $30,000 to pay for our wedding.

4 a.m. — Our one-year-old, M., wakes up and I shuffle out of bed to give him a bottle. Luckily that sends him back to sleep, but then I have weird half-awake dreams for the next three hours as a lingering side effect of having two (!!) whole beers the previous night.

7:30 a.m. — Our almost three-year-old, D., has been playing nicely in his room until this point, but the baby wakes up crying again and D. realizes he can start yelling, too. Very fun. Everybody is up now! In between tossing together the kids’ breakfasts, I have some Greek yoghurt and a chocolate carrot zucchini muffin. And some leftover onion rings. They’re Guy Fieri onion rings, you can’t just waste them.

9 a.m. — My husband, C., takes D. to get the car washed and then to the Discovery Museum (unlimited free visits are included in our membership). M. crawls around and we play blocks for a bit before I put him down for a nap. I get some meal prep done for the week with leftover pork and rice, then clean the kitchen. $12

11:30 a.m. — I have been blessed by the nap gods. M. doesn’t wake up until 12 p.m., which is just as C. and D. get home after stopping for groceries. They picked up two baguettes, oranges, onions, and some frozen lunches for C. Our floor goes from clean to abstract art piece as the kids eat their veggie pouches, granola bars, naan, and bananas. I eat some baguette and start on French onion soup for dinner. Our recipe is from Heroes’ Feast (the D&D cookbook) and takes four hours of babysitting, but please believe me when I say it’s worth it. $21.58

3:30 p.m. — The kids wake up from their afternoon naps and I take them to the library while C. continues working on dinner. I pick up Leviathan Wakes and the kids play for a bit. Then when we get back, it’s time for French onion soup!

6:30 p.m. — The kids are old enough to bathe together which results in an overload of splashes and giggles and water on the floor. I am psyched they’re starting to entertain each other instead of needing constant parental input. After putting M. to sleep I become a snack gremlin and finish off the leftover cookies and peanut butter crackers from the kids’ dinners.

8 p.m. — I read Frog and Toad Are Friends for D.’s bedtime story. Then I spend an hour on the recumbent bike playing Hades. With Hades II coming out I wanted to replay it, but have committed to only allowing myself to play on the bike. It’s worked pretty well as motivation! I’ve oscillated between overweight and obese since middle school and my AA1C was prediabetic at my last physical a few months back, so I want to feed this habit. Pun not intended. Quick shower, then bed at 9:30 p.m.

3 a.m. — M. wakes up and I groggily ask C. to take care of it. Turns out that he was already up with the baby around midnight and I just slept through it. Oops. Still, he takes one for the team and gets the baby back to sleep.

5:30 a.m. — My two alarms go off and I manage to roll out of bed and shower. My hair is getting way too long, blergh. I get the kids’ lunches and clothes and sheets together and grab one of my meal-prepped lunches. The kids sleep in today so I’m pretty efficient. When C. finishes in the shower at 6:40 a.m. I’m out the door.

7:30 a.m. — I try to enjoy my yoghurt, veggie muffin, and tea while planning for the week and blocking out my schedule for the day. To stop from jumping back and forth between things on my to-do list, I find I work best with a calendar reminder of what I plan to focus on during each chunk of time. First order of business is to finish my documentation about some newly installed equipment — it’s something I should be able to knock out before meetings start at 9 a.m.

10 a.m. — A morning of meetings. First it was a build status check-in, then a discussion about some new equipment for bonding really small components together. This is followed up by an hour with the system integration team that, luckily, is more of a monthly learning session than something I need to provide input for. But their stuff is so technical I’m absolutely fried by the end of it. Also at some point earlier, C. got tea from a café. I will later find out he ran into his great grandboss (basically his boss’ boss’ boss) at the coffee shop and had an uncomfortable 20-minute conversation about the boss’ pet project. $4.28

12:30 p.m. — During lunch with my coworkers, we discuss what food we would bring to one of those “we fry anything” stands at a county fair. We then debate on whether the little mozzarella balls from our cafeteria salad bar would just be the same as mozzarella sticks if fried, and then repeat the argument for string cheese. Lunch is one of my meal-prep rice bowls with pork, spinach, pickled onions, and avocado.

2:30 p.m. — I emerge a desiccated husk from another meeting — this time about designing a flexible circuit. Normally I don’t have this many, especially on a Monday! It was fun though. It turns out the project isn’t as far along as I thought, so there’s gonna be a lot of chances to try new things on this project.

4 p.m. — I bundle up for the walk back to my car and head out to pick up the kids from daycare. I call my parents to catch up, but D. keeps stealing the phone and screaming in my ear, so we don’t actually talk much. I enjoy some leftover soup for dinner.

8 p.m. — All my meetings really left me wiped, so C. puts both kids down. We watch Jetlagged: The Game while folding and sorting laundry. Then I wash out the kids’ tupperware for their lunch tomorrow before heading to bed at 10:30 p.m.

5:30 a.m. — There were no middle of the night wakeups! I convince C. to shower first so I get an extra 20 minutes in bed and still make it out the door by 6:40 a.m.

7:30 a.m. — Another yogurt and veggie muffin while I look at process data for different samples and try to figure out why some are failing. After that I head into the clean room to meet a technician so we can build some different samples using a piece of automated equipment I’m not super familiar with. It breaks after the first sample and I kind of helplessly read through the manual for clues while he troubleshoots.

11 a.m. — I leave the clean room for a previously scheduled meeting and the equipment comes back online 10 minutes after. Lol, it just hates me. Get through the meeting and then meet up with another engineer to review a procedure on testing some parts to failure. I get caught up snapping parts in half so I don’t get to lunch until almost 1 p.m. and I’m starving! Also everyone already ate so I missed all the gossip. Pork bowl again, this time followed up with a chocolate chip cookie from the pop-up lunch vendor that gets covered by my office’s $5 lunch subsidy. $3.50 (Expensed)

2:30 p.m. — I take a quick break to schedule M.’s first dentist appointment. They had a lot of cancellations this week so I’m able to snag an appointment on Thursday. Amazing. After that it’s back to the clean room to diffusion bond some test samples and then use the laser to cut a different set of samples into shapes that our alignment robot can handle. Out the door at 4 p.m. again.

6 p.m. — After I pick up the kids I realize we didn’t defrost anything for dinner and are almost out of baby food and milk. C. is a bit early getting home so we agree on Market Basket dinner. First we grab some bananas, apples, grapes, blueberries, oranges, frozen spinach, sweet Italian sausage, milk, baby food, yoghurt, eggs, and tea for our groceries. Then we grab a roast beef sub for C., a salmon avocado roll for me, and a baguette for the kids to munch on along with their fruit and yoghurt. Last second I grab a Hershey assorted bag for the candy bowl at work — I think the last time I contributed was Halloween. We all eat together in the cafe area and D. gets a kick out of alerting us to every car that drives by. Our Market Basket is the best Market Basket. $104.34

8 p.m. — After I put the kids to bed, C. and I play Roll for the Galaxy. It’s one of my absolute favorites. For the first time ever we tie on victory points and it comes down to the “money and dice” tiebreak. I lose, but it’s a ton of fun. Afterwards I play Hades on the bike for 45 minutes, then wash the kids’ tupperware for tomorrow. Finally in bed at 10:45 p.m.

11:30 p.m. — Just kidding, I’ve been doomscrolling the news since I got in bed. Finally I pull out of it by diverting to Amazon to buy some Aquaphor for the kids (Market Basket was out and we buy in bulk), as well as a scooper for our salt bucket. M. wakes up juuuuuuust as I’m falling asleep, and I guiltily lay there pretending to be asleep until C. goes to soothe him. $50.76

5:30 a.m. — M. is sort of awake, crying for a minute, then quiet for a few minutes. I’m a bit slow getting out of bed but I sneak into the shower before he can really work himself up. By the time I’m out, D. is up as well, so I get breakfast for the both of them and then pack our lunches. I saw it snowing a bit last night but didn’t think to wake up early and shovel. C. takes care of it after his shower, but it means I don’t get out the door until 7 a.m.

8 a.m. — Another yoghurt and veggie muffin breakfast. It’s a good low-calorie combo that keeps me full until lunch. My hips and knees are killing me so I decide to stick to desk work, like prepping for a later meeting and cleaning up my lab notebook for the morning. C. gets a snack at Wendy’s on his way to work. $3.73

10 a.m. — Had a one-on-one with my manager that ended up being my year end review, and it went really well! Considering I was on maternity leave for three months last year, it feels good. I call a vendor about a part quote, finally ending a week long game of phone tag when he picks up. The rest of the morning is spent prepping a list of risks, experiments to get rid of those risks, and money I need to run those experiments for one of my projects. Sure, I won’t get funding for most of those experiments, but at least I can prioritize.

12 p.m. — Another pork bowl from the meal-prep pile, but no avocado :( Today’s pop-up lunch vendor has dumplings though, so that helps fill the hole in my heart and stomach. One of the other engineers tells us about how he wants to do the 9-9-9-9 challenge (I had no idea what this was until he explained it — it’s nine ski runs, nine holes of golf, nine innings of baseball, and nine beers in 24 hours) and we strategize. My vote is golf, baseball, and drinking in the afternoon, then a red-eye or a train overnight to a place to ski. $4.49 (Expensed)

2 p.m. — I get out of a meeting and finally go do some lab work for the day — this time it’s some three-point bend tests to check if a trend we’re seeing between two different manufacturing methods of a part is consistent between different lots. I snag some cookies left over from someone else’s meeting and then leave at 4:15 p.m. to get the kids.

5:30 p.m. — Quick stop at Costco with the kids to grab spinach, Ritz crackers, and fruit/veggie pouches. The receipt checker is a nice woman who recognizes us every time we come by and draws a bunch of smiley faces on the receipt for the kids. Once we’re home, I get the kids set up with their dinner while starting the sausage, onions, and spinach for myself and C. $24.27

8 p.m. — After cleaning up the bath night flooding and the remnants of dinner, I get a rematch in Roll for the Galaxy. This time my economic engine absolutely crushes C. under an avalanche of trade goods and settlers. We head up to bed and pass out around 10 p.m.

5:30 a.m. — Today is a work from home day so I was hoping to sleep in, but nope, M. is up early again. He’s got two molars coming in and I’m really hoping that he’ll go back to sleeping later, once they’re done.

7:30 a.m. — C. and I drop kids at daycare then head to our “secret” diner for breakfast. Secret just means that we never go here with anyone else, including our kids. It’s a “just us” space. We chat for a bit with the owner, G., who’s got a daughter about D.’s age. I enjoy my standard: a croissant breakfast sandwich with egg, smoked salmon, and avocado. C. gets his usual steak and eggs. $35

9 a.m. — I dash out between meetings for a super-quick haircut. My barber has me sorted out in less than 15 minutes so that I can make it back in time for a meeting about bend testing. I love short hair. $36.95

11 a.m. — It’s time to pick up M. for his dentist appointment. I’m in awe that the hygienist is able to brush his teeth through the crying. No copay today, and I think with our new insurance this is completely covered. Fingers crossed. Drop him back off at daycare then quickly eat a yoghurt and veggie muffin for lunch.

1 p.m. — Time for a big meeting about a project where a new part isn’t fitting properly now that it’s out of R&D and is getting made at production levels. It’s a super cheap part, so adding 100% inspection to catch stuff would be way too expensive, but it’s gonna be a few months until the vendor can switch to better tooling. I always have a really hard time knowing when I’m clear to start talking during meetings, and Teams just makes it worse. I get embarrassed by accidentally cutting people off a few times.

3:45 p.m. — I’m just wrapping up my last meeting of the day when I get a call from the daycare that M. has a fever and I need to come get him. This month has been SO BAD — this makes the third week this month that at least one kid has been sick enough they need to come home. And the only week that didn’t happen was the week they had unrelated doctor appointments three out of five days.

6 p.m. — The fever hasn’t made a reappearance since I got the kids from daycare, but M. is still fussy, so I put him to bed early. It doesn’t seem like D. has any symptoms, but he doesn’t want to read or play and has been crying for C. since we got home. I decide to spoil both of us a bit by putting on a few episodes of Bluey. Eventually he calms down enough that I’m able to get into the kitchen and cook some chicken. C. gets home just in time to handle bedtime and I get to eat my salad.

8:30 p.m. — Tonight I’m only on the bike for 30 minutes. Tomorrow we have a passport appointment for M., so I get the form filled out and make the necessary copies. It’s late, but I’m already in my office and I got our last tax form today, so I can’t help but work on them a bit. Between parental leave, a new job for C., and our first full year in the house, there was a lot to take into account with the IRS withholding calculator and I want to see how close I got. I think we’ll only owe $70! I want to double check it when I’m fresh, so I don’t submit it tonight. I “celebrate” by watching two episodes of Zenshu and then passing out just before midnight.

3:30 a.m. — C. has already been up with the baby for an hour. Deeply regretting going to bed so late last night, I take over and get M. back down a bit after 4 a.m.

7:15 a.m. — C. is shaking my leg to wake me up because — oh wow — I slept through both my alarms. He wanted to let me sleep as much as I could. We rush to get D. to daycare before our 8:15 a.m. passport appointment. C. has way more sick days than I do so he’s staying home with the baby today and I head to work after the appointment. $150

9 a.m. — Get to work and go straight to the clean room to start some parts on our high-speed diamond saw. I’ve got a few parts to get through and they each take an hour and change, so I don’t want to be waiting for one to finish when it’s time to leave.

12:30 p.m. — Get out of my meeting kind of frustrated. We’ve gathered a lot of useful data for this project, but we reviewed it with a manager and manufacturing engineer and the feedback was that we’re not making progress quickly enough and should consider changing our success criteria. The project started small and then recently got a lot more attention. I was (am?) the technical lead, but another more senior engineer was assigned to help, and after this meeting I’m really struggling with insecurity that I’m doing it wrong. I eat my pork bowl and try to reset.

3 p.m. — Update from husband that even though M.’s fever hasn’t returned, he’s been fussy all day. They go out for some Burger King. I’m sending some emails and trying to update the project notebook, but I’m jumping between tasks too much, my focus is shot. Might be the lack of sleep. $12.19

5 p.m. — I was supposed to meet a friend, A., for dinner downtown at 6 p.m., but she’s having a bad reaction to her new meds and has to cancel last minute. Huge bummer to an already not-great day. I pack up and shuffle through the rain back to my car.

6:30 p.m. — I eat some leftover salad from yesterday while trying to cajole D. to eat some chicken nuggets. Even though he had a really rough day with the baby, C. is trying to cheer me up, but I’m just a sad lump. I put M. down for the night and then go lay in bed under all my heaviest blankets. I watch an episode of I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time. Fun premise but I don’t really like the main character, so I switch to listening to No Such Thing as a Fish and conk out.

12:30 a.m. — For some variety, D. wakes up instead of M. I change his diaper and then sit next to him for a bit to help him fall back asleep.

6:30 a.m. — I guess being fussy all day tired him out, because M. sleeps through the night. But he’s crying now so I get up with him and we just chill for a bit in the playroom doing some crinkle book reading and crawling around until it seems like he’s hungry.

8:45 a.m. — Off to the kids museum again! This time with both kids. Even though M. has been symptom-free for a day now he’s quarantined to the stroller as a precaution, so he just has to watch his brother having fun. This visit is also included in our membership. My friend A. is feeling better so we make plans to meet up somewhere kid-friendly for a snack.

11 a.m. — I meet my friend A. at a local brewery that has coffee and pastry options in the morning. I get a tea for myself and a chocolate croissant ($7.96) for the toddler… Except he then decides he doesn’t want it. More for me! The pastry is nice and flaky and they were super generous with the filling, to the point where it kind of feels like eating a bar of chocolate. So good. When A. arrives we get burritos from the Mexican/Italian fusion food truck outside — it’s kind of like a cheesesteak in a tortilla? And super expensive for a burrito ($20). Bummer. $27.96

12 p.m. — A friend of mine comes in with her daughter and some friends! I haven’t seen them in a while but D. remembers my friend’s daughter and is super excited to see her. I get D. a bag of chips for him to share and keep catching up with A. until it’s time for her to head out. $2

3:30 p.m. — M. is up from his nap and D. never actually fell asleep, so I take them on a Target run. I take the long way so the toddler can get a mini-nap in the car. We do most of our bulk shopping at Costco, but when Target has sales it’s usually cheaper than baseline Costco. There’s a “spend $40, get $10” deal on personal care so I load up on bandaids, toothpaste, and deodorant. There’s also a $15 gift card for buying two of the 144 packs of diapers. I throw in some avocados and more veggie muffins. $121.53

5:30 p.m. — Quickly drop the kids off at home and then I’m off to tennis. First match we dominate 8-0 — one of the opposing players has some wicked power but my partner and I place our shots really well to avoid her. Second match is a tie when we run out of time, 6-6. Thanks to some decade-old rugby injuries, I have incredibly light serves and the guy on the other team was able to take full advantage during my serve. I venmo my captain my share of the court fees. $22

9 p.m. — Get home and shower. Cook some salmon in the pan and make a rice bowl with one of the avocados from Target. To make up for yesterday’s poor anime choices, I rewatch Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense with dinner and then crash at 10:30 p.m.