Massachusetts salary?

[Almondbut]

Hey, wonder if anyone can help! DH has been offered a job in US, salary $130k a year. Good healthcare, good annual leave, and they’d cover shipping costs for the move. Once here this would be a permanent move so we would get no help with housing etc on top of the salary.

My question is - is this salary sustainable in the US or should we negotiate more?

We currently live in Surrey commuter belt, small mortgage, current household income is around £110k (but would drop to £55k if I was SAHM). We would want a similar quality of life to what we currently have.

We’ve got no kids at the moment but TTC and (fingers crossed works soon), I would be a SAHM if we moved. We are looking at living in Massachusetts but don’t need to be near Boston (so can be further out and therefore cheaper housing costs). Good school districts would be important to us but it seems all of Massachusetts has pretty good schools?

thanks for your help

ps. Don’t want this thread to become derailed into benefits of UK/US…I’m aware of gun crime and abortion rights. Thanks

I would say you will need more than that. That's low for US salaries. We lived on the east coast on a similar salary and had a great standard of living but the company paid all housing costs. Have a look at a website called zilllow for houses that would be right for you (renting I assume to start?) and work out costs from there? I think you'll find you'll need a higher salary. But go for the move - we lived living in the us and Boston is one of my favourite cities Be prepared for the haters to come on and say the us is awful - it's not.

Thanks @picklesandtea thats helpful 🙏

Any other out there with experience of MA?

Try the Facebook group Two Fat Expats - lots if good information available

$130k in the US is less than 110k in the U.K., in my opinion. I would cost out housing on Zillow and check property tax prices - in a decent area with good schools, that's a large chunk on top of your mortgage. Check the co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket maxes on your health insurance to see how much you have to pay before insurance kicks in every year. Remember dental and vision are usually separate, so check costs and coverage for those too.

If you like to eat decent food (meat, fish and good quality veg) I would double your current costs - good quality groceries are expensive here.

Ask what % of his salary they'll pay into his 401k.

I would also ask what visa he will be on - if an H visa, that limits your working prospects as a spouse. If it's an intercompany transfer, you'll be much more easily able to get back to work quickly. I would also make sure that the timing of your green card applications is written into the contract - you can't renew visas indefinitely, and if you want to stay, you'll want to make sure you get green cards.

Cost of living is about the same Boston vs London

But I think you will find your housing costs to be much higher as you have said you have a small mortgage, so I think that $130k isn’t going to give you the same lifestyle you have here.

Healthcare costs are insanely high in the US as well, you will need excellent health insurance especially as you are planning on TTC.

Any DC born in the US will be US citizens and if you travel back and forth, then by law they will need US passports when entering the US from any trips back to U.K.

If it’s a permanent move, as in you are emigrating, you might want to get copies of your NI records as you can claim pro-rated state pension from the US once you are pension age. Assuming you have the minimum 10yrs needed to get some of it.

You will need to register birth of DCs with British embassy so they are registered as British citizens.

Visa are an issue- as others have said what visa he is on makes a difference if you do want to work.
Also we felt quite vulnerable as visa is tied to the job and employment rights are poor - we were always (potentially) in a position of needing to leave fairly quickly. If the move is permanent you need to be progressing citizenship from the get go.

On average I would say salaries are double uk - so if on £55k here the salary looks okay but is quite low for a household salary. But outgoings are higher and groceries and washing out expensive.

I do love the college towns west of Boston though.....

Also try to build credit in the UK that you can port. Credit rating is really important. I think having an Amex card can help but research this.

Thanks so much this is all really helpful!

I could get a job out there but as we are TTC (and would ideally have two kids)- and I know maternity leave is minimal and we would have no family support - I’d like to only make the move if it could work just on his salary while we have a young family.

It seems general consensus is $130k is low for a family income. Does anyone have any rough figures for what would be a good family income there? Sorry I know it’s like asking how long is a piece of string…

How would you work though? DH visa won't cover you, you'll be completely financially vulnerable in a foreign country.

Seems mad for a worse standard of living, trashing your own career. Would he make this move for you?

It depends what visa. If it's an L then she just needs a work permit. Maybe she wants to have kids without worrying about a career and is looking to ensure they can afford that option. A move like that is an incredible opportunity

OP I think this would work really well for your family plans, and $130K plus good health insurance is definitely doable! You'd have the same standard of living that you have now, but just from one income - what's not to love? Housing varies wildly but you have a huge range of options to find something that suits you and you'd find savings in other areas - cars and petrol for example. There are a heap of nice middle-class towns full of young families doing it on less money that you would be, find where (for example) the teachers all live, they're on a lot less money than that when kids are young and one parent has to stay home.

Am surprised at the number of posters saying "you'd need good health insurance" (you've already said you've got that) and "it'd be hard for you to work" when you've already said you'd like to be a SAHM 🤔.

The reason so many people stress good health insurance is because the system is very different to the U.K. and having health insurance doesn't mean that everything is covered. My insurance, for eg, costs me $500 a month and doesnt doesn't pay anything at all until I pay 3k out of pocket each year, and then only 80% of costs are covered. So a significant amount of money to budget for even though I have insurance and pay for it out of my paycheck.

Yes and the OP literally says the package has good healthcare in her first post.

Could we perhaps take her at her word and move on?

$130k is too low.

I have coupes without children on $100-140k in the US and they're all saying it's tight.

Our US grad salary is $70-75k and that's not considered high

I recently worked in Massachusetts’s in a town about 40 minutes outside Boston called Swampscott. It was extortionate.

$7 dollars for a coffee, the food is so expensive! $18 dollars for a packet of chicken in Walmart! That’s 17 pound for a packet of 4 chicken fillets!

if you’re eating out, even McDonald’s is around 9 dollars a meal so 8 pound. You’re doubling everything plus tip and tax!

I wouldn’t want to work there again on anything under 200k

I can't quite tell whether you want to be a SAHM or whether that is just what you would do if you moved - if you stayed here, would you want to continue to work? Because I think that's a big difference

On healthcare - really dig into the detail of the offer and co-pays etc - I have found that even good healthcare packages have quite a lot of those

On taxes - it's really different and more complicated, look at state and property taxes carefully

Exactly. The health insurance I had in the US was excellent and considered “gold plated premium” health insurance. “Good” health insurance often means a lot of out of pocket expenses, high deductible, high hospital and surgery contribution %s.

It’s not that, it’s that in the US “good” healthcare is actually bottom tier health insurance. Like a HDHP with HSA. So not questioning OP, but rather whatever the job offer to her DH is actually offering in terms of health insurance.

Refinery29 does a money diaries series, they can be good for looking at spending in certain areas. There’s definitely a few based in Mass and it shows you the costs of day to day stuff.

You have all been so helpful - lots of
things to consider - really do appreciate it

I can only speak for Chicago suburbs area, but DH was on 150k before we moved back to Uk in 2021. It was definitely comfortable, but not particularly extravagant. That was our household income and we had 2 small DC.

He brought home approx 8k per month. 2k was our mortgage and property taxes (4 bedroom suburban house which we bought in 2014). Bills like electric, gas, water, trash collection etc were probably $300 a month total (might have gone up now though!). Phone contracts are quite pricey and I think that was $100 for 2 phones. Food was roughly $150-$200 per week for a family of 4. We had one car on lease and owned the other one so that was about $300 a month, plus petrol etc

We did manage to save up a decent pot of money and still had a good lifestyle, 2 cars, eating out and takeaways, kids activities, some improvements to our house, not having to worry too much about what I bought. We certainly weren’t rolling in it though.

DH contributed towards a HSA saving account through his salary that we could spend on medical costs, and we were very lucky to be healthy and have no major accidents so other than the years I gave birth, we never paid significant medical bills.

I’d say it’s doable, but it depends on what standard of living you want. And obviously also depends on housing and general cost of living in your area

So many risks!
Just be very aware of becoming financially dependent on someone in another country and then having children. You won’t be able to just come back to the UK with them them without his permission and if you can’t work then what happens?
You don’t know if you’d like to be a SAHM - noone does until they actually have DC. You might love it, you might hate it.

This has red flags all over it as a permanent move. A few years is one thing but permanent moves are something else.

I've lived in this area. This would be a low salary, for a family, around Boston so it's good you don't need to be in that commuter area. I earned around $140k per year just as a singleton and had good quality of life but would not have wanted to support 3-4 people on that.

Quality of life for a family in MA is great, especially in the university towns around Northampton/Amherst/Holyoke. There are also some lovely areas in further western MA, near the border with NY, where lots of families from NYC settle after having kids (Hudson, NY, over the border, is lovely). Skiing and fall leaves in Vermont, summers in Maine and Cape Cod. You could take the train to NYC or Boston (US rail services are nothing on the UK, but the densely populated East Coast is better than a lot of the rest of the country).

I would agree with others though that you should keep the option of you working open. You don't know how you will feel once you actually have kids, and it might not be in your best interest to be a single income family should misfortune befall you.

I had good health insurance in the US and preferred it to the state of the NHS right now -- it was pretty easy to make a doctor's appointment, very good technology to assist communication and follow up, and I felt like I was in good hands with my care. Of course, that's not the case for many, and you'll need to get used to a different system.

I would say $130K is a bit low, not as low as if you needed to be close to Boston. MA is expensive. When you go house-hunting look carefully at the state of the HVAC as old houses (which are very common) can be poorly insulated and have leaky windows. Add to that that many houses use fuel oil and you will cry in the winter and stifle in summer. You cannnot just leave the heating off in a New England winter, and a house that hasn't been properly modernised will cost you hundreds a month to heat, plus you'll have to spend your entire winter with the windows either taped shut or covered in storm windows that can't be opened.