$60k is well beyond the minimum needed in rural areas. Hell, I went to college hoping to get a wage around $60k. I have a friend in the Indianapolis area who is supporting a wife and two children and owns a house and I would be shocked to discover that he is making more than that these days. It's always sort of funny to me how distorted the idea of a 'living wage' in flyover country is to those that live on the coasts in big cities. My sister's husband made $40k in the mountains of western NC (about 2 years ago) and was able to just barely support my sister and their three children. Now, that was a pretty untenable situation, so that's probably about as low as you can scrape (at least with a bunch of kids), but even they managed to buy a small house on that single (!) income. They were certainly on the poverty line at the time, but they were able to survive until he found something better.