If you need another data point, my partner and I only pay about 25% of our combined after-tax salary in rent, living in a "major German city" (both employed in STEM). Factor in an additional 10/15% for living costs and we are left with significant disposable income, in my eyes.

Do you foresee being able to purchase a home in the next 10-15 years? I think the problem with renting for a long time (I'm a renter, my wealth is growing in other investments) is assets are inflating in value, housing is becoming more and more expensive.

If you can't buy now, with "significant disposable income", will you be able to buy later? That is, if you care for home ownership at all.

FAANG/SV engineers could buy a home pretty much in any major city after some years in the industry. I have heard that is not the case in Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich, etc...

As whole houses sell for 1 or 2 million euros that seems a bit of a stretch, maybe possible in a longer time span and a good career in management (we are both early stage). But smaller 60 square meters apartments sell for about 500k and are well within reach with two salaries in my opinion.

Thanks for sharing. I'm curious how much do you and your spouse make as that's the main factor.

55k and 75k yearly pre-tax, but as a PhD student and recent graduate we expect to get a significant increase in a few years as I also join the industry and we both level up.

But, as said by others, comparing raw numbers is pointless. Even if we spent the 2/3k that are left each month, we'd still have health insurance and pension paid for by our taxes. We aren't forced to build so much wealth to weather bad times because proper insurance is built in the system.

So you're making those numbers as PhD students instead of workers? Where do I sign up? ;)

What domain are you in if you don't mind me asking?

Sorry I wasn't clear, my partner is an IT consultant in a large firm and there you can earn 90k or more in senior positions (say five years in). I get 55k as a PhD student and this is mandated by law, but you can get less if you don't have teaching duties.

What exactly does an IT consultant do, vs let's say, a SW developer?

It's project work with different clients. Each project lasts for 3 to 9 months and you are involved in many stages, from defining requirements and expectations at the beginning, to developing and possibly deploying a solution, to presenting the work done to stakeholders at the client's. After a project is done you either negotiate an extension of the project or leave maintenance to the client and leave to start a new thing.

So there is much more focus on soft skills, such as leaving a good impression, properly selling your work so that the client is happy, securing future collaborations with them, and so on. And, on the flip side, hard technical skills are not that important: as long as you can produce something that works in a reasonable time and sell it well you will be fine.

Any idea what credentials or background you need to become such an IT consultant?

Requirements aren't very specific since there is a relatively heavy focus on communication and soft skills, and since consulting companies hire lots of fresh graduates the bar for juniors is not so high. It's important to have wide range of interests and shallow knowledge since that increases the number of clients you can be sold to. You are (implicitly) expected to work longer hours than usual and grow quickly though, as I said earlier the good ones can earn 90k per year within five years of graduation.