The median wage for workers in the United States in 2017 was $857 per week or $44,564 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Based on that data, we’d imagine most of the human race would deem making $500,000 a year a very, very comfortable salary.

However, it turns out that some families in that bracket actually struggling financially. Sam Dogen of “Financial Samurai” recently broke down the budget of one family who, combined, makes $500,000, and feels as if they’re “scraping by.”

The duo is a husband and wife who are both in their early 30s and have two children ages three and five. The couple lives in New York City, which is known as one of the, if not THE, most expensive city in the United States. But even so, wouldn’t $500,000 a year still go pretty far?

Here’s the salary breakdown:

As you can see, making so much money a year, they have quite a bit of taxes coming out. At a 40% effective tax rate, they’re already down $185,000. That, combined with their 401k contributions of $18,000 each, they come out with a net salary of $278,000. Still pretty respectable, right?

Well, not the way this couple spends apparently. They spend about $42,000 a year on childcare for their two children, so about $21,000 each. In New York City, the the average family spends up to $16,250 per year for an infant, $11,648 for a toddler and $9,620 for a school-age child. So perhaps this is quite the prestigious child care they’re receiving.

They also list that they spend about $23,000 a year on food for four, which includes date night every two weeks. That’s about $479 per week to feed two growing children and two adults. Not terrible, though there could be room for improvement there.

Then there’s that pesky mortgage. The couple does own a $1,500,000 home, so they pay a total of about $60,000 a year, plus about $20,000 a year in property taxes. That definitely eats up a huge chunk of their budget, but hey, if you make nearly half a million a year, they should be able to bask in that expensive house!

Of course, we can’t forget about car payments (two of them for this family), car insurance, and gas, all three coming in at $16,600 a year.

The family also prioritizes vacationing, spending about $18,000 on three of them per year. And they of course need to get the kids sports, piano, and violin lessons, which, mixed in with academics, costs them $12,000.

On top of charity, still paying off their student debt, and some miscellaneous funds because “something always comes up,” they’re only left with just over $7,000 a year to put in their savings.

It’s pretty eye-opening one you lay out your expenses in this way. And while we don’t think this couple is dong anything too wrong, we’re sure there are plenty of places they can cut down (like perhaps take two vacations a year instead of three?).

How do you budget your money, and what do you think of how this couple spends theirs? What would you do with $500,000 if you had it?