They Make $500,000 a Year and Still Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I just downloaded EveryDollar this month, 2026, getting on our budgeting, and I plugged in all of our bills and all the things that we want to spend money on, and there seems to be quite a bit left over, yet the past, especially the past six months, the past year, really, we were just eagerly waiting for payday. Okay, what do you... So in reality, you're paycheck to paycheck, but on paper, in EveryDollar, it's like, hey, you should have $8,000. You're like, where is this going? That means you're just not sticking to the numbers. Yeah, we're not sticking to the numbers, and we do put away a little bit in savings. We do have quite a bit in savings, but it's not as much as we would hope, considering how much money we make. How do you make? So this information just became privy to me. My husband's been taking care of the finances up until now, but he is seeing that I cannot budget if I do not have the information. So he helped me out setting up the EveryDollar app, putting in his income, and I pay all of the bills, and I do all that kind of thing with the shared money, but I make sure all the bills are paid. Okay. I think it's about 40, about $40,000 a month. $40,000 a month. You're talking like half a million dollars take home a year. Yeah. Wow. Some months it's a little less, some months it's a little bit more. I was not expecting that with the way this call was set up. I'm not going to lie. Okay. So $40,000 a year is a lot. I think America's going, I wouldn't know how to spend $40,000 a month if you gave it to me. Yeah. What's your mortgage? What's your mortgage payment? You can sign on to my EveryDollar and you can check how I spend it. You should DM it to Jade and I just for fun, because we have a dark curiosity. We want to know how you would even do that. Listen, if you did, we would look at it. So tell us a couple of the biggest line items on your budget. I'm guessing there's a house. Well, we try to put away about 12K, maybe like between 10 and 12 for taxes every month, just to make sure that that's in an account. So when that happens, we're not scrounging. So that's not actual income? Yeah. No, we put away. Oh yeah. That's before taxes. Oh, okay. So after taxes, it's closer to 28? I guess so. Okay. So in EveryDollar, you're going to list take home pay. Is that what you did or did you list the gross amount? No. I listed the gross and then I put in as a category taxes. Got it. Okay. Okay. It may be helpful for your sake to do it the other way, but if the gross money shows up in the account, that's what you're budgeting off of. So that makes sense. Yeah, because the gross will show up in our account and then we take care of paying taxes quarterly. Okay. Fantastic. And then how much is your mortgage every month? So we have a rent is 3,300 a month. Fine. Okay. Any debts? A little bit of credit card for just the last couple of months in England to pay it off. And we want to put a lot of money into savings so we don't end up paying the credit card, not much, maybe 16K at most. And if we really wanted to, we could pay it off. We just, we want to make sure we're on the right track and really start budgeting. I'm sorry. Can I go back a second? Did I hear you say you rent? Hey, you got to take care of your vehicle if you want to keep it on the road. And the smartest move is regular maintenance. I recommend Christian Brothers Automotive, the official auto repair partner of The Ramsey Show. Your local Christian Brothers shop provides high quality maintenance and repair services you can trust. Visit cbac.com slash Ramsey to find a location near you and get an exclusive Ramsey discount of 10% off your visit. 10% off up to a $250 value. See store for details. I'm sorry. Can I go back a second? Did I hear you say you rent? Yes, we rent. Why? How long have you been making this money? This money, about a year, a year before that, it was also good. Yeah. We've been married four years, so it's been getting better every couple of years. Okay. But you've been six figures for, upper six figures for quite a while. We've always been six figures, upper six figures. Yeah. Help me understand the renting part. Right quick. Location is very important to us. When we first moved here to Texas, the company was paying our rent. So we're like, great, pay our rent. And now they're not no longer, but we still want, the location is very important. And we're looking for a house. We're looking. Okay. So sorry, that was just a squirrel I needed to chase. Okay. Continue, George. I'm confused why you guys are even going into credit card debt with this level of income, because you don't want to touch savings, but then you're going to pay 29% APR on the $16,000? That feels... Yeah. And we have quite a bit in savings. How much do you have in savings? We have quite a bit in the stock market. I'm not a hundred percent sure. My husband has access to that account, but he has, I think he put 30K into the market in the last couple of months, and he's got to have about 60 or 70K in his high yield savings account. Okay. So I'm picking up on another issue here. I know you called about one thing, but part of the issue is you don't have the transparency you need to know what's actually going on. It sounds like you asked for that so you can make the budget, but you really do, Sydney, need to know all of these numbers so that you both can live in a state of reality with your money. Instead of guessing, it's hard to be in reality when you're guessing. If one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, you're going to always have this problem and keep living in the cycle. You both have to be on the same page with full accountability and transparency. So that's step one. And then do you have any other debts outside of the credit card? Any car payments, student loans? We have leases, but we don't intend to own a car. What are they? What are the leases? So I drive a 2025 minivan, and that's $893 a month. It's important to my husband that I'm in a reliable vehicle every couple of years, and he drives a Range Rover for just under $3K a month. Goodness gracious. So let me go back to the minivan talk. So basically what you're saying is that 99% of the population is not in a reliable vehicle if they don't switch it out every three... No, no, no. I didn't say that. He did. Right. But my point is to call out the ridiculousness of that statement. And therefore, that means that you know it, too. Plenty of people buy a car, even if you bought a brand new car and you just drove it until, you know, I don't know, for 10 years until you, whatever. That would be more reasonable than the statement that was said. You guys are dropping $4K a month to rent cars, and you're prepaying all the depreciation. Exactly. So that's part of the problem. I think that's a microcosm of a bigger problem here, which is you guys, you make great money and you want to show it off, right? There's some flaunting here. And the truth is you could save up and buy these things outright and it would still be okay. But we haven't actually, we don't have the discipline. We have the savings muscle there because he can shovel money away in other places. But you guys are totally okay taking on debt and payments because you can stomach it right now. Yeah. I wonder why there's the aversion because I agree 100% with George. You guys make good money. If you want nice things, have at it. You don't have a ton of debt. But leasing is crazy. You could have literally bought both of these vehicles outright and nobody would have said a word to you. We would have been like, great. That's awesome. And it would have been yours. And you wouldn't have been paying outrageous interest and all these things on this. So what else is there? There's the two leased cars. Anything else? Nothing. Oh, the only other significant is I have a lady that comes help me with my kids and with the cleaning. And when I put it into every dollar, I put in $2,000 a month. But between you and me, it's usually a little bit more because it's five o'clock and she just stays extra and I pay her. I pay her more. Okay. So call it three. So on the budget, here's what I think you need to do, Sydney. So when you make the first budget, it's a guess, right? It's, I think it's this. I think it's that. I don't know if you've actually gone back and I'm not sure how long you've been on a budget, but if I were you tonight, I would go back and download some old bank statements and really see, here's what I actually spent. Add up what you spent on, on food, add up what you spent on, you know, door dash, add up what you spent on housekeeping, add up, add up those actual numbers and plug them in every dollar. Then you're going to have what's called an accurate budget of what you spend. Then you can decide what makes sense to cut back on. And that's honestly, all you need to do is cut back on frivolous spending. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.