agreed
In the last half a year, give or take, we've:
* lost about $1500 per month in expected income
* spent about $4000 on unexpected automobile expenses
* spent over $2000 on emergency pet care
. . . in addition to the usual expected-unexpected expenses. When that sort of confluence of bad financial luck is not an unreasonable scenario for "bad luck in the coming year", it's tough to justify a household income of less than $50K per year even if you aren't paying off any loans. That alone is 15% of income if you're only making $50K, and things could easily go worse than that in a really bad year.
No . . . it's much better to aim for a six figure household income. Even living modestly, if you need two cars and have pets and/or children you're going to need the ability to build (and, when the worst happens, rebuild) savings reasonably quickly.
