Couple making $400K a year pays $6K in rent and spends more money than they make every month: 'My wife makes $220K and refuses to keep a budget'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Sep 30, 2025 8:00 PM EDT

Having a six-figure income doesn't mean you're rich. Many high earners should be wealthy, but are actually poorer than those who earn less money. They think that because they have a seemingly endless stream of cash flowing into their bank account, they don't need to budget and ensure they're saving as much as possible. They believe that this level of success will last them forever, even though they will need to retire one day, and they can't spend $ 1,000 a month on luxury pet products indefinitely. Maybe if you are richer than God, you can afford to sink a bunch of cash into pointless things, but even billionaires are intentional about exactly where their money goes and how much of it they have. You can't live off the interest if you don't have enough invested that actually earns interest. Your kids' travel baseball team is not an "investment," the S&P 500 is an investment.

The couple in this story needs to get their act together. They both earn around $200,000 a year and don't even combine their finances. They also spend more per month than they make, which I didn't even think was possible at that tax bracket.
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