Does no one here buy cars? I forgive you. A $40k car will likely come with a 5yr loan that's cheaper than student loans. That'd actually be $8k/yr+interest... which is not 40% of your salary. Find something else to judge the guy for.

You could also by a nice used car for 10-15k or so, pay cash, and have no payments for many years. People who can afford better will willingly do this to save cash for other things. If you refuse to play the game well it's probably because you have weird ideas about what you "deserve".

Definitely. Also, getting a new car that prioritizes reliability is a smart move as well. The author didn't do this though. A nice(imo) new car can be had for less than ~$25k and his $40k tells me he wanted something a little more flashy. I agree these overextended purchases usually come down to someone's ego getting in the way. A direct consequence of our "what you buy defines you" culture.

Again, missing the point.

The narrative is that we are so well paid that we should be able to do that. But we obviously can't.

I'll concede that software engineers are overpaid and in such high demand when that is the case for the median case.

Just caught your edit. Middle class is relative to cost of living. Most of us work in cities where the CoL is much higher and so is the middle class income. It'd be better if we can both stick to comparing apples to apples and I think in this case sticking to cities is our best bet. SF median income is 100k [0]

[0] http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisco...

Spending 30% or 40% of your family's income on a car is bad financial planning.

If "the narrative" indicates you "should" be able to spend that much, you need a new narrative. Ideally one that will not send you into penury.