A married couple I know, both wonderful teachers, relocated to the SF Bay Area awhile back. I happened to see a picture of their cute little house & wondered how much it cost (hey, just how my wandering mind works). I looked it up online & was flabbergasted. So then I looked up their salaries, which are public record. Their salaries are much higher than they were here in the Midwest, but they would be living in their car if they earned what they do here. Salaries without context tell us very little.
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Our neighbor is a HS teacher and makes over $130k. He teaches in a suburb about 25 minutes outside of Philly. They bought their house 15 years ago for $420k. He spends his summers shirtless, mowing the lawn and swimming in his pool. A see it as a nice gig.
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There is a very cool company that was featured on NPR that helps certain essential workers in SF (and a few other high cost cities) with the down-payment for home purchases. Of course, it’s a reflection of the market-wage gap, but it also means there may be options you and I would not have.
Seemed like a pretty brilliant, and valuable, concept!
My sister and her husband lived and taught in one of the highest paying school districts in the country, they’re retired now. Yes, the cost of living was high, but their salaries were high too. They are also good with their money and don’t live beyond their means. That said, they still took nice vacations, drove nice cars, etc. I do think a couple of things might have helped them: they don’t have kids which frees up a lot of extra money. And my BIL comes from a fairly wealthy family, and only had one much older cousin, so he inherited a good amount of money when his grandmother died…
The private school I work at pays pretty well and offers good benefits. We are in a high cost of living area. We all got huge raises about 20 years ago, when the administration and the board realized they were under-paying us.
Inheriting alot of money and having no kids certainly can help build wealth.
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Teacher salaries in our district in Washington (NOT near Seattle) start at $66,800 for teachers with a bachelor degree only. The median is $88,000.
Two teachers married to each other can earn a decent living.
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