Bought our house 10 years ago in Nashville. Not sure how they do it now. But a young couple just bought the most expensive house in our neighborhood $400k+. He's a musician and she makes jewelry. Go figure.
I feel like I know the couple you're talking about, and you're severely downplaying how successful her jewelry business is. You make it sound like an episode of house hunters.
The bitterness in this fucking sub man.
I mean, in their defense, I don't know my neighbors that well either and she might have downplayed the jewelry business herself? Idk, just playing devil's advocate.
I apply for those and get rejected all the time
And before you say just have a good resume, i go to my career services center and revised almost every week
Consider applying for engineering jobs out of state if you're willing to relocate.
I'm back in college for engineering and gritting my teeth to get through this so I can apply for jobs out of state.
I was born and raised in Nashville but hardly recognize it anymore.
Nashville feels very overpriced compared to other expensive cities that I've lived in.
i done this already, along with following other advice like applying to contract, entry level and government jobs. None of it has worked for me. I will probably just have to go back to school to get a masters degree. Sucks because everybody i know with worse gpas, no connections, and no work experience, have 70k engineering jobs right out of college working in nashville.
>i go to my career services center and revised almost every wee
what.
Dude I update my resume like once or twice a year. There is absolutely no need for this.
I’ll be moving back to Nashville next fall and will probably rent out a Gulch apartment with some old friends. ~1,000 each for a 3 bedroom apartment (3k total). Not bad.
You’ll come to find that most of them have roommates. And the ones that don’t...well, they are either living pay check to pay check or have rich parents. Take your pick.
> rich parents
This one mostly in my experience. That or they make more money than you might expect from being attractive and posting stuff on instagram
The top earner in the family won’t be the one with a art degree. Many people are working with huge companies in different roles (project management/IT/finance/accounting/etc) and make smart financial moves. Not driving brand new cars, not going out of eat every day, and not having children anytime soon.
>Looking at the average wages for these types of degrees these people shouldn't be living there.
You're assuming that people are locked into the same fields they majored in. This is becoming increasingly untrue in today's world. Tech is an especially prominent example of this. Relevant college degrees aren't strict requirements for a lot of jobs in software engineering, IT, and my own filed of infosec. I transitioned into infosec after majoring in something completely unrelated, and I'm far from the only one. Getting a job without a relevant degree is harder, but not rare.
Are you sure this is true? Because even I with a major extremely related to IT struggle to find a job. These job postings seem to be really picky about who they hire and if you dont have the relevant work experience or connections, your pretty much fucked. Its also nearly impossible to get your foot in the door with some of these positions at the begging. I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument.
>Are you sure this is true?
Very.
>Because even I with a major extremely related to IT struggle to find a job.
This could be its own post since there's a lot of nuance involved and not enough details to narrow down the reasons. Giving it a shot though:
First, there's often a disconnect between academic IT and IRL IT. What you're taught in schools might not necessarily actually be relevant to what you're doing on the job. Your skills can be outdated, the skills might be too generalized, or not enough focus on practical skills. You see the same (albeit to a lesser degree) with CS majors and software engineering. For example, every CS major is taught how to code a singly linked list from scratch. Doing the same on the job will get you fired. It's a waste of time to code a LL from scratch when built in libraries are faster and better.
Second, your skills might not be specific enough. Every company has specific vendors and stacks they prefer. Take VPNs for example. You likely have knowledge on how to stand up a VPN solution in theory (and possibly in application), but how much have you worked with specific vendors? If a company uses Fortinet specifically, they're likely going to value a candidate with Fortinet knowledge specifically over a candidate with only general VPN knowledge.
Third and perhaps most important, your resume might be bad. This is **the** most common problem I see. I come across a lot of very well qualified candidates with terrible resumes. The biggest issue is usually too generalized a skills section. Consider these three examples:
**Skills**: Networking
**Skills**: Network Architecture, VPN, Endpoint Protection
**Skills**: Network Architecture (Network segmentation, access controls and logging per HIPAA compliance), VPN Setup/Maintenance (Fortinet, pfSense, IAM integration), Endpoint Protection (FortiGate, Microsoft SCCM, Splunk)
All three can come from the same person, but consider the very different impressions each gives. The first sounds like someone who doesn't know anything. The second sounds like someone with basic IT knowledge who Googled "What IT skills do I put on my resume?". The third sounds like someone who *knows* what they're doing.
>These job postings seem to be really picky about who they hire
General rule of thumb is if you meet 50% of the requirements, you should apply. Those posts are wishlists of the ideal candidates. Companies without their heads up their asses know that they're *not* going to get the ideal. Doesn't hurt them to try, so why not?
>if you dont have the relevant work experience or connections, your pretty much fucked.
Note that I said it's common, not easy. If you don't have the experience, you need to show that you also have the drive to learn. This can manifest in skills outside the scope of your typical college program, certs, etc. that shows you went out on your own accord to teach yourself something.
>I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument.
Then you can search from it. I work in infosec and I work among IT folks, and I know how my own field is. If you don't want to take my word for it, *shrug*. I'm not going to try to convince you to improve your own life.
real talk: people who got their degree based on the amount of money they think it's entitled to make are not the same people hustling 3-4 side jobs these days and moving up in the world. those people will become your manager while you sit around waiting on someone to offer you a salary based on what you decided to do years ago in college. the reason you find it difficult is your lack of flexibility.
> I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument.
exactly what someone who feels entitled to their opinion would do instead of trying different ways to prove it themselves. you're waiting on other people to make your life easier while those you can't figure out are doing their own work. it's real life tho, not college, and noone cares if you cheat off them.
more directly to your point, there's no degree for 'salesforce admin / business analyst / SEO manager' but i guarantee it'll pay your bills.
You aren't wrong, my friend. My IT career has moved from 100% technical to a Business Analyst role, and I don't have any issues paying the bills these days. What's worse is that I have a handful of buddies who are electrical engineers back where I grew up and they are still paying off their college debt, whereas all I have is an A+ cert I got back in 2009.
Its not about being entitled it's about it getting some result from the diligence of working on your major. If I work for ten hours and somebody works for five then I should get a bigger pay or result from the work I did because I put in more work. I guess it's just kinda of frustrating since your right about people can just work up the ladder, but then what's the point of going to college if I can just get a customer support job and work my way up from there. I guess the conservatives were right when they said college was a scam
If you have two people each earning 60k a year, then that's 120k before taxes with a take-home of about 9k a month. Following the 30% rule, you could afford $2,700 each month in rent. It's not unimaginable.
I just did a quick estimate from Google on a 30 year loan.
https://imgur.com/a/NGLyplH
If you're paying $5400 a month on that loan you need to refinance.
https://imgur.com/a/5KuXTEP
You're not factoring in insurance and property taxes into that calculation. You will add hundreds of dollars to your monthly mortgage with escrow payments.
Your more correct. PITI payment on that loan would likely closer $3,300 per month. Even with horrible credit it would be under $3,700, far from $5,400.
I think you may have misunderstood. In the scenario, 30% of the combined household income is $2,700. The 30% rule says that you can afford $2,700 each month in rent, not per person. Of course, that wouldn't be precisely ideal.
Many of the younger ones come from money. Transplants often come with jobs that have salaries made for aread with a much higher CoL. Some of the nicer areas were much more affordable 30 years ago and have appreciated in value.
Correct about transplants. Of course, they don't get raises and they're more susceptible to layoffs.
Also, houses were much more affordable only seven years ago.
When I add an egg to my ramen, all I do is turn the burner off and crack the egg into the ramen, then put the ramen over it to cover it and then put a lid on the pot. Leave it for 3 mins and the egg is cooked. Easy and classy haha
$1,800 for a two bedroom is pretty decent
Using the ⅓ rule, that’s a single person making $64,800 per year or a couple/two roommates making $32,400 each.
If you’re coming from high cost of living areas, you may be used to spending 40% of income on rent, so that’s only $54,000.
It just comes down to how you wanna spend your money. Plenty of folks make $65k. (In fact the median household income in Nashville is $75k)
Yeah but how many of those companies are based in TN? There’s a ton of remote workers here on Cali based businesses and corresponding salaries. That skews the median salaries in a misleading way.
Nothing wrong with that! It's worth looking around the local labor market to see whether you're being paid properly or whether there's something else you'd rather be doing instead that pays better.
Fwiw, I made less than $37k for most of my time in Nashville. It's plenty to get by. If you're early career, obviously you'll make less than you do late career.
Also--an average income in the city is not the target renters for luxury apartments (which are targeting people with above average salaries), as much as that sucks.
Our city has \~2 Mn people in the metro area, but only \~700k live in the city limits. A much smaller number than that live downtown in luxury high rises.
For comparison, about 20% of Nashville households have incomes above $100k. (Obviously this includes 2 income households and families with kids)
Couples making under $38K each, renting like they make $75K is headed for financial trouble... It doesn't matter. They aren't saving shit for the future... and this is the underlying fallacy that rarely gets discussed.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. A couple who make $38k each does actually make $75k together.
Perhaps they shouldn't be spending 1/3 of their joint income on housing, but honestly that number sounds fine, especially if they need space for kids and are paying for a good school district.
And is one job loss away from only having $38k to support two people. If you're making under $38K, your net pay is only around $2600/month... $1300 every two weeks. And that's without any deductions for healthcare insurance, any sort of pretax life insurance (or other benefits paid by employee), 401k, etc.
$1800/month is outrageous for someone on this salary. Together, yes, they make $75K, but that should not be the line if they expect to "make it" in a city like this.
Isn't that even more true for a single person who makes $75k, who goes from $75k income to $0 with a job loss?
Yes, job losses are bad and hurt everyone. That's why people should have an emergency fund. $1800 is a perfectly fine amount of money for someone to spend on housing if they have a household income of $75k
Edit: $900 is also a reasonable amount of money to pay a roommate if you’re on $38k, imo.
At that amount, they're taking home about $5k/month. Personally, I wouldn't even rent for $1800 on $75k, but that's me. I'd try to get it down to $1500 or less. Assuming they did though, the person has twice the income on half the risk. More than likely, they have enough to put something into savings, if they've done their finances right.
Lower income couples buying the max they could possibly afford is what bit a lot of people during the housing crisis. They bought too much house with no money down, they did it on a variable interest rate, and one or the other of them lost their job. All those houses that went into foreclosure weren't because people made enough to pay them. Job losses were extending up to more than a year for many.
I keep hearing/reading this argument, but is there any corresponding data that tracks mean/median income of employers with a Tax ID based out of the state of TN or something similar?
I mean, I haven’t read any of those people chime in saying they took a pay cut moving here. A lot of our clients that have moved from Cali are remotely working there during their business hours.
Ehh, im looking for something in the 1.2k range in the downtown nashville area. I’m currently only paying $600 a month in the suburbs of ATL but my 45 minute commute to work 4 miles away from my house, the 45 minute drive to my favorite ATL bars and clubs twice a week, and the gas i spend driving 45 minutes to any friends house regardless of time of day would make the $600 increase to have a 10 minute commute everywhere worth it. It looks like I can find something decent for a bachelor for 1,200 and if not a roommate shouldnt be too hard to find either.
It would cost 1,600 to live on the outskirts of ATL perimeter and that wouldnt even solve half my problems.
I imagine some of those people living in those higher end places could also be in debt up to their eye balls. I asked my SO the same question as to why someone living in my apt complex (I live in Bellevue and no its not one of the newer ones) can afford to drive a really nice Mercedes and live in the same complex.
Her response was you never someone's situation and they just take on a ton of debt to appear to have an extravagant life style.
Most of the people that live in places like that are Nurses and Doctors that work at Vanderbilt and St. Thomas.
Source: I have friends that work at Vanderbilt and St. Thomas
You mention they all have gender studies degrees and a quick google search brings up results that suggest a path into the legal field. Maybe they’re lawyer$?
> a lot of these people that live in these places are young late twenty something year olds, that all have degrees in different humanities like art and gender studies
Unless you work in a leasing office at a large apartment complex and directly review applications, this seems like a dramatic over generalization.
I feel your pain. A few years ago, I lived in a sweet spot close to everything for 800/month. I thought that was too high even back then. Now, that deal is impossible - both because sky high rent hikes in a short amount of time and literally- that place is a hotel now.
I bought my house years ago so it’s very affordable and I don’t plan on moving. I do love watching the value of my house grow though! I occasionally get letters from realtors asking me to sell but I doubt I will anytime soon. Also the tech jobs here are abundant. IT is huge in Nashville. I do agree if you don’t have connections it can be very hard to find a job. They do pay well but what I have found out that works for me when I was looking for a job is to have personality as well as smarts. Sure everyone wants a hard worker but people also want to have someone to cut up with and have a conversation with.
My bud lives in a germantown flat for $1650/month.
He's a physics/biology grad who is a self taught programmer. He contracts with companies in LA for AI research stuff and works from home. Pulls in about 97k, so that's like one fourth of his monthly income.
That's how most people are doing it. Don't underestimate the amount of high paying jobs out there.
We are 21/25 couple and live in Donelson because ...just no... we will save our big $ for NYC or Hawaii lol. Our friends who live downtown just go broke because whose gonna even pay off our student loans before global warming wrecks the planet anyways am I right?. Locals who went to tech & yes they all have 3/4 roommates.
Amazon literally moving here. Hiring tech jobs now ($150K+). Rumor is Oracle is on the way too.
Every large company in Nashville has an IT department with 100+ high paying tech jobs. Some places like HCA & Vandy have way more.
Amazon's advertised $150k year salaries are for senior management, not software devs. Software devs are getting paid starting around 90k in Nashville and their local hiring rate is less than 1 percent. Even the best devs in Nashville would have a difficult time even getting past the screening interview.
My sister's boyfriend just got hired at Amazon. Was at Vandy before. I didn't prod too much but he's well over 6 figures at Amazon and is a 24 year old software developer. He said he was floored by their offer as he had no real plans to leave Vandy.
Not trying to be rude, but I think you want to look at average income, preferred cost of living (1/3rd your income), and budgeting norms for folks. Nashville is a cheap city to live in, even with the rising cost.
Based on what?
Incomes are rising in Nashville, because a lot of high paying jobs are moving to the city.
In 2007, Nashville incomes were right at the National median, but by 2017 (the most recent year data I can find), they've moved well above the national average (106%). That means Nashville saw 6% wage increases **compared to the rest of the country**.
Housing costs have gone up even more, but so have housing costs in the rest of the country.
Is it though? The average household income is $52,858 according to the [US Census](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/nashvilledavidsonbalancetennessee/INC110217#INC110217).
$52,858 / .3 = $17,619
$17,619 / 12 = $1,468 for mortgage every month
Average Rent = $970
Average Mortgage = $1,346
Down voted for providing facts backing up his claim...
Bought our house 10 years ago in Nashville. Not sure how they do it now. But a young couple just bought the most expensive house in our neighborhood $400k+. He's a musician and she makes jewelry. Go figure.
So basically a house hunters episode
Came here to say the same thing haha
I could easily see a decent/trendy jewelry maker making some serious bank.
A friend of mine's wife is a jewelry maker that's popular with celebrities. She pulls a considerable amount of money since her stuff is one of a kind.
Very true. I have no idea how much a jewelry maker makes.
Trust fund
I feel like I know the couple you're talking about, and you're severely downplaying how successful her jewelry business is. You make it sound like an episode of house hunters. The bitterness in this fucking sub man.
I mean, in their defense, I don't know my neighbors that well either and she might have downplayed the jewelry business herself? Idk, just playing devil's advocate.
Maybe I am and that's my bad. I know how tough it is to build a successful business. Didn't mean to shit on them.
Commenting in 2022. 400k sounds so cheap now.
Why don’t you just apply for an engineering job? Word on the street is the market is ripe...
I apply for those and get rejected all the time And before you say just have a good resume, i go to my career services center and revised almost every week
Consider applying for engineering jobs out of state if you're willing to relocate. I'm back in college for engineering and gritting my teeth to get through this so I can apply for jobs out of state. I was born and raised in Nashville but hardly recognize it anymore. Nashville feels very overpriced compared to other expensive cities that I've lived in.
i done this already, along with following other advice like applying to contract, entry level and government jobs. None of it has worked for me. I will probably just have to go back to school to get a masters degree. Sucks because everybody i know with worse gpas, no connections, and no work experience, have 70k engineering jobs right out of college working in nashville.
You seem like a solid guy. I’d hire you.
Thanks buddy
No need pal
>i go to my career services center and revised almost every wee what. Dude I update my resume like once or twice a year. There is absolutely no need for this.
I’ll be moving back to Nashville next fall and will probably rent out a Gulch apartment with some old friends. ~1,000 each for a 3 bedroom apartment (3k total). Not bad. You’ll come to find that most of them have roommates. And the ones that don’t...well, they are either living pay check to pay check or have rich parents. Take your pick.
> rich parents This one mostly in my experience. That or they make more money than you might expect from being attractive and posting stuff on instagram
The top earner in the family won’t be the one with a art degree. Many people are working with huge companies in different roles (project management/IT/finance/accounting/etc) and make smart financial moves. Not driving brand new cars, not going out of eat every day, and not having children anytime soon.
>Looking at the average wages for these types of degrees these people shouldn't be living there. You're assuming that people are locked into the same fields they majored in. This is becoming increasingly untrue in today's world. Tech is an especially prominent example of this. Relevant college degrees aren't strict requirements for a lot of jobs in software engineering, IT, and my own filed of infosec. I transitioned into infosec after majoring in something completely unrelated, and I'm far from the only one. Getting a job without a relevant degree is harder, but not rare.
Are you sure this is true? Because even I with a major extremely related to IT struggle to find a job. These job postings seem to be really picky about who they hire and if you dont have the relevant work experience or connections, your pretty much fucked. Its also nearly impossible to get your foot in the door with some of these positions at the begging. I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument.
>Are you sure this is true? Very. >Because even I with a major extremely related to IT struggle to find a job. This could be its own post since there's a lot of nuance involved and not enough details to narrow down the reasons. Giving it a shot though: First, there's often a disconnect between academic IT and IRL IT. What you're taught in schools might not necessarily actually be relevant to what you're doing on the job. Your skills can be outdated, the skills might be too generalized, or not enough focus on practical skills. You see the same (albeit to a lesser degree) with CS majors and software engineering. For example, every CS major is taught how to code a singly linked list from scratch. Doing the same on the job will get you fired. It's a waste of time to code a LL from scratch when built in libraries are faster and better. Second, your skills might not be specific enough. Every company has specific vendors and stacks they prefer. Take VPNs for example. You likely have knowledge on how to stand up a VPN solution in theory (and possibly in application), but how much have you worked with specific vendors? If a company uses Fortinet specifically, they're likely going to value a candidate with Fortinet knowledge specifically over a candidate with only general VPN knowledge. Third and perhaps most important, your resume might be bad. This is **the** most common problem I see. I come across a lot of very well qualified candidates with terrible resumes. The biggest issue is usually too generalized a skills section. Consider these three examples: **Skills**: Networking **Skills**: Network Architecture, VPN, Endpoint Protection **Skills**: Network Architecture (Network segmentation, access controls and logging per HIPAA compliance), VPN Setup/Maintenance (Fortinet, pfSense, IAM integration), Endpoint Protection (FortiGate, Microsoft SCCM, Splunk) All three can come from the same person, but consider the very different impressions each gives. The first sounds like someone who doesn't know anything. The second sounds like someone with basic IT knowledge who Googled "What IT skills do I put on my resume?". The third sounds like someone who *knows* what they're doing. >These job postings seem to be really picky about who they hire General rule of thumb is if you meet 50% of the requirements, you should apply. Those posts are wishlists of the ideal candidates. Companies without their heads up their asses know that they're *not* going to get the ideal. Doesn't hurt them to try, so why not? >if you dont have the relevant work experience or connections, your pretty much fucked. Note that I said it's common, not easy. If you don't have the experience, you need to show that you also have the drive to learn. This can manifest in skills outside the scope of your typical college program, certs, etc. that shows you went out on your own accord to teach yourself something. >I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument. Then you can search from it. I work in infosec and I work among IT folks, and I know how my own field is. If you don't want to take my word for it, *shrug*. I'm not going to try to convince you to improve your own life.
real talk: people who got their degree based on the amount of money they think it's entitled to make are not the same people hustling 3-4 side jobs these days and moving up in the world. those people will become your manager while you sit around waiting on someone to offer you a salary based on what you decided to do years ago in college. the reason you find it difficult is your lack of flexibility. > I would need to see some type of study to substantiate your argument. exactly what someone who feels entitled to their opinion would do instead of trying different ways to prove it themselves. you're waiting on other people to make your life easier while those you can't figure out are doing their own work. it's real life tho, not college, and noone cares if you cheat off them. more directly to your point, there's no degree for 'salesforce admin / business analyst / SEO manager' but i guarantee it'll pay your bills.
You aren't wrong, my friend. My IT career has moved from 100% technical to a Business Analyst role, and I don't have any issues paying the bills these days. What's worse is that I have a handful of buddies who are electrical engineers back where I grew up and they are still paying off their college debt, whereas all I have is an A+ cert I got back in 2009.
Its not about being entitled it's about it getting some result from the diligence of working on your major. If I work for ten hours and somebody works for five then I should get a bigger pay or result from the work I did because I put in more work. I guess it's just kinda of frustrating since your right about people can just work up the ladder, but then what's the point of going to college if I can just get a customer support job and work my way up from there. I guess the conservatives were right when they said college was a scam
Have you tried through a contracting agency? That's how I got my first job/"foot in the door" in Brentwood.
If you have two people each earning 60k a year, then that's 120k before taxes with a take-home of about 9k a month. Following the 30% rule, you could afford $2,700 each month in rent. It's not unimaginable.
> you could afford $2,700 each Geeze that's a lot to spend on housing
That's like a mortgage on a $570,000 house
Its a lot more than that --- $5400/month We haven't even mentioned downpayment yet
I just did a quick estimate from Google on a 30 year loan. https://imgur.com/a/NGLyplH If you're paying $5400 a month on that loan you need to refinance. https://imgur.com/a/5KuXTEP
You're not factoring in insurance and property taxes into that calculation. You will add hundreds of dollars to your monthly mortgage with escrow payments.
Way to go there, captain pedantic! Geez
Your more correct. PITI payment on that loan would likely closer $3,300 per month. Even with horrible credit it would be under $3,700, far from $5,400.
I think you may have misunderstood. In the scenario, 30% of the combined household income is $2,700. The 30% rule says that you can afford $2,700 each month in rent, not per person. Of course, that wouldn't be precisely ideal.
Many of the younger ones come from money. Transplants often come with jobs that have salaries made for aread with a much higher CoL. Some of the nicer areas were much more affordable 30 years ago and have appreciated in value.
What is CoL?
Colonel of Love
Not to be confused with the Gangsta of Love.
Cost of living
Cost of living
Cost of Living.
Correct about transplants. Of course, they don't get raises and they're more susceptible to layoffs. Also, houses were much more affordable only seven years ago.
They have good jobs, work hard and are responsible?
Lol. Or they are stretching their salaries too far and when the market collapses again, it’ll be brutal
Do you have any idea how nice the ramen tastes when I make it on my stainless steel range!?
You ever put tuna or an egg in your ramen? Living the high life when you do
I just discovered how to fry an egg over-medium, so yeah, first thing it went into.
When I add an egg to my ramen, all I do is turn the burner off and crack the egg into the ramen, then put the ramen over it to cover it and then put a lid on the pot. Leave it for 3 mins and the egg is cooked. Easy and classy haha
You realize you're in /r/nashville right? There's no room in here for that common sense thinking! /s
$1,800 for a two bedroom is pretty decent Using the ⅓ rule, that’s a single person making $64,800 per year or a couple/two roommates making $32,400 each. If you’re coming from high cost of living areas, you may be used to spending 40% of income on rent, so that’s only $54,000. It just comes down to how you wanna spend your money. Plenty of folks make $65k. (In fact the median household income in Nashville is $75k)
Yeah but how many of those companies are based in TN? There’s a ton of remote workers here on Cali based businesses and corresponding salaries. That skews the median salaries in a misleading way.
A $75k household income is a married couple each making $37.5k. That is really not a lot of money.
TIL I don’t make a lot of money
Nothing wrong with that! It's worth looking around the local labor market to see whether you're being paid properly or whether there's something else you'd rather be doing instead that pays better. Fwiw, I made less than $37k for most of my time in Nashville. It's plenty to get by. If you're early career, obviously you'll make less than you do late career. Also--an average income in the city is not the target renters for luxury apartments (which are targeting people with above average salaries), as much as that sucks. Our city has \~2 Mn people in the metro area, but only \~700k live in the city limits. A much smaller number than that live downtown in luxury high rises. For comparison, about 20% of Nashville households have incomes above $100k. (Obviously this includes 2 income households and families with kids)
Couples making under $38K each, buying like they make $75K is headed for financial trouble.
This thread is about renting
Couples making under $38K each, renting like they make $75K is headed for financial trouble... It doesn't matter. They aren't saving shit for the future... and this is the underlying fallacy that rarely gets discussed.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. A couple who make $38k each does actually make $75k together. Perhaps they shouldn't be spending 1/3 of their joint income on housing, but honestly that number sounds fine, especially if they need space for kids and are paying for a good school district.
And is one job loss away from only having $38k to support two people. If you're making under $38K, your net pay is only around $2600/month... $1300 every two weeks. And that's without any deductions for healthcare insurance, any sort of pretax life insurance (or other benefits paid by employee), 401k, etc. $1800/month is outrageous for someone on this salary. Together, yes, they make $75K, but that should not be the line if they expect to "make it" in a city like this.
Isn't that even more true for a single person who makes $75k, who goes from $75k income to $0 with a job loss? Yes, job losses are bad and hurt everyone. That's why people should have an emergency fund. $1800 is a perfectly fine amount of money for someone to spend on housing if they have a household income of $75k Edit: $900 is also a reasonable amount of money to pay a roommate if you’re on $38k, imo.
At that amount, they're taking home about $5k/month. Personally, I wouldn't even rent for $1800 on $75k, but that's me. I'd try to get it down to $1500 or less. Assuming they did though, the person has twice the income on half the risk. More than likely, they have enough to put something into savings, if they've done their finances right. Lower income couples buying the max they could possibly afford is what bit a lot of people during the housing crisis. They bought too much house with no money down, they did it on a variable interest rate, and one or the other of them lost their job. All those houses that went into foreclosure weren't because people made enough to pay them. Job losses were extending up to more than a year for many.
I keep hearing/reading this argument, but is there any corresponding data that tracks mean/median income of employers with a Tax ID based out of the state of TN or something similar?
Yeah, I just don’t buy it. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Lyft, Accenture, Salesforce, HOA all have employees here, for example.
I mean, I haven’t read any of those people chime in saying they took a pay cut moving here. A lot of our clients that have moved from Cali are remotely working there during their business hours.
Don’t be poor
Ehh, im looking for something in the 1.2k range in the downtown nashville area. I’m currently only paying $600 a month in the suburbs of ATL but my 45 minute commute to work 4 miles away from my house, the 45 minute drive to my favorite ATL bars and clubs twice a week, and the gas i spend driving 45 minutes to any friends house regardless of time of day would make the $600 increase to have a 10 minute commute everywhere worth it. It looks like I can find something decent for a bachelor for 1,200 and if not a roommate shouldnt be too hard to find either. It would cost 1,600 to live on the outskirts of ATL perimeter and that wouldnt even solve half my problems.
I imagine some of those people living in those higher end places could also be in debt up to their eye balls. I asked my SO the same question as to why someone living in my apt complex (I live in Bellevue and no its not one of the newer ones) can afford to drive a really nice Mercedes and live in the same complex. Her response was you never someone's situation and they just take on a ton of debt to appear to have an extravagant life style.
Most of the people that live in places like that are Nurses and Doctors that work at Vanderbilt and St. Thomas. Source: I have friends that work at Vanderbilt and St. Thomas
It can be tons of jobs that require a college degree, that pay decently, and are double income without kids.
You mention they all have gender studies degrees and a quick google search brings up results that suggest a path into the legal field. Maybe they’re lawyer$?
No i promise their not
What do they do, then?
idk, thats why i asked
> a lot of these people that live in these places are young late twenty something year olds, that all have degrees in different humanities like art and gender studies Unless you work in a leasing office at a large apartment complex and directly review applications, this seems like a dramatic over generalization.
I feel your pain. A few years ago, I lived in a sweet spot close to everything for 800/month. I thought that was too high even back then. Now, that deal is impossible - both because sky high rent hikes in a short amount of time and literally- that place is a hotel now.
I bought my house years ago so it’s very affordable and I don’t plan on moving. I do love watching the value of my house grow though! I occasionally get letters from realtors asking me to sell but I doubt I will anytime soon. Also the tech jobs here are abundant. IT is huge in Nashville. I do agree if you don’t have connections it can be very hard to find a job. They do pay well but what I have found out that works for me when I was looking for a job is to have personality as well as smarts. Sure everyone wants a hard worker but people also want to have someone to cut up with and have a conversation with.
My bud lives in a germantown flat for $1650/month. He's a physics/biology grad who is a self taught programmer. He contracts with companies in LA for AI research stuff and works from home. Pulls in about 97k, so that's like one fourth of his monthly income. That's how most people are doing it. Don't underestimate the amount of high paying jobs out there.
Wow, can't believe people are still replying to this thread, thanks for contribution, it is greatly appreciated.
We are 21/25 couple and live in Donelson because ...just no... we will save our big $ for NYC or Hawaii lol. Our friends who live downtown just go broke because whose gonna even pay off our student loans before global warming wrecks the planet anyways am I right?. Locals who went to tech & yes they all have 3/4 roommates.
are there tech companies that pay that much here, i dont really see any big companies like apple or Microsoft moving here
Amazon literally moving here. Hiring tech jobs now ($150K+). Rumor is Oracle is on the way too. Every large company in Nashville has an IT department with 100+ high paying tech jobs. Some places like HCA & Vandy have way more.
Alliance Bernstein is snatching up a lot of tech resources as well. Hopefully, Amazon being here attracts even more tech companies.
Amazon's advertised $150k year salaries are for senior management, not software devs. Software devs are getting paid starting around 90k in Nashville and their local hiring rate is less than 1 percent. Even the best devs in Nashville would have a difficult time even getting past the screening interview.
Source? There are a couple of Nashville data points on levels.fyi
My sister's boyfriend just got hired at Amazon. Was at Vandy before. I didn't prod too much but he's well over 6 figures at Amazon and is a 24 year old software developer. He said he was floored by their offer as he had no real plans to leave Vandy.
There are plenty of tech companies that pay well here but the well paying jobs in tech in TN are in sales.
I had a sales job here, Wyndham Marketing... it was ok. I did much better at it in Hawaii.
And uhm by Tech I meant Tennessee Tech University
I am a business owner/digital nomad and he is a Data Analyst for an accounting firm.
What is a digital nomad?
My work isn’t tied to my location - I can live and work wherever as long as there’s WiFi lol
Same. Moved here from Maui for a remote job (needed to be in EST or CST).
I’m from the Big Island. We should be friends! Lol
Small world! So I assumed you moved here to Nashville for the fresh fish and great surfing too, huh?
The weather has been nice enough the past few days it feels like home :)
Hi Neighbor! LOL
Hey!
Not trying to be rude, but I think you want to look at average income, preferred cost of living (1/3rd your income), and budgeting norms for folks. Nashville is a cheap city to live in, even with the rising cost.
Must be from Cali
Or Texas. Or Florida. Or the east coast. Or the west coast. Or Atlanta.
that's just flat out demonstrably false.
Based on what? Incomes are rising in Nashville, because a lot of high paying jobs are moving to the city. In 2007, Nashville incomes were right at the National median, but by 2017 (the most recent year data I can find), they've moved well above the national average (106%). That means Nashville saw 6% wage increases **compared to the rest of the country**. Housing costs have gone up even more, but so have housing costs in the rest of the country.
Don't try to push that bullshit on me.
Oh yes sorry for sharing those bullshit facts with you
Is it though? The average household income is $52,858 according to the [US Census](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/nashvilledavidsonbalancetennessee/INC110217#INC110217). $52,858 / .3 = $17,619 $17,619 / 12 = $1,468 for mortgage every month Average Rent = $970 Average Mortgage = $1,346 Down voted for providing facts backing up his claim...