<p>I don’t think the median American family has $150k of student loan debt either. And the average American family certainly doesn’t live in downtown New York.</p>
<p>At $60k, you’re making about $3200/month net of taxes. Take out student loan payments of $1000, you’re down to $2,200. You can’t get a decent apartment in a large city for less than $1k, so let’s put housing at $1200. You’ve already ****ed away $2200 of your $3200 a year. You still haven’t bought clothes (say about $200-$300 a month, AVERAGED), paid utilities ($250-$350 a month) or eaten ($400+ a month). So before you sock away anything for retirement, you’re on credit card debt. And that’s BEFORE you have kids. The picture looks a lot more bleak for an ADA with kids in a large city.</p>
<p>It’s not difficult to consume $3200 a month by yourself unless you’re a traveling consultant who’s not home 48 weeks out of the year.</p>
<p>Since large cities like NYC have a MUCH higher cost of living, you need to take that into account and adjust it accordingly. $60,000 in New York is equal to about $27,000 in other places according to cost of living calculators. Therefore on $160k a year at biglaw, you’re not living THAT much better than someone who makes the median. In fact, the median adjusted for cost of living is somewhere around $125k-$135k in New York. It can be just as high if not higher in other cities too.</p>