Michael Green: For a family the new poverty line is now around $140,000 including child care and everything else. And this is conservative.
The problem is the median family salary in America is only around 80k.
We are sinking and it’s getting uglyhttps://t.co/eDxVnI3SLW
— QE Infinity (@StealthQE4) November 24, 2025
New EPI family budget data shows even basic living costs can exceed $200,000 in big metros
The Economic Policy Institute’s 2025 update finds that a bare bones “modest but adequate” budget for a two parent two child family in San Francisco is $211,473 a year, while the median family income there is $176,676, which still is not enough to cover basics like housing, food, transport, child care, health care and taxes. Even in the cheapest metro in the country, Rockingham County in North Carolina, a basic budget of $79,191 still sits above the local median family income of $70,961, which means families in both high cost and low cost areas are underwater before they even talk about savings or emergencies.
Economic Policy Institute