Once upon a time, a "meaningful wage" was something that would allow you to raise a family of 4 while living a comfortable middle class standard of living.

57k€ gross salary in Berlin amounts to ~3360€ per month net income. Rent alone will eat 30-40% of that.

You can survive on that salary, which is more than most people are managing to do nowadays. But to think that someone with such specialized competency should expect a "not bad" salary shows a pretty sad state of affairs.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Rent eating 30-40% of your income is extremely normal, isn't it? Or is that only true in the US (where it has recently become much more than that for many people)?

[–] rglullis 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You missed the last paragraph, didn't you?

I don't know about you, but I don't think we should accept to be working for less or to accept a lower standard of living just because so many people have it worse.

As long as your work is:

honest
ethical
providing real value to whoever is paying for it
not pushing externalities for others

Then "what is normal" should have no bearing in this.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, what I meant was, is rent taking 30% really indicative of a low standard of living?

[–] rglullis 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Not so much of a good measure of how you live but on how much (or little) people are left for other things, including saving/investing towards their own homes.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like we're talking past each other. My impression was that 30% towards your living situation is a pretty decent target; what would you expect the percentage to be?

[–] rglullis 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I will paraphrase my father: "it doesn't matter how much money you are making if you are spending most of it. If you want to build wealth, you need to look at how much you can set aside every month".

what would you expect the percentage to be?

A lot less. When I was single and sharing an apartment, I'd pay 600€ on a ~4000€ netto salary. 10 years, a marriage and two kids later, our place is about 1400€ even when our combined income was 3.5x as much.