Oof this is a sore subject for us. My wife and I are of a similar age, with similar housing expenses (slightly higher, closer to $3,400 all-in) and are considering having children in the next 24 months.

We make a pretty comfortable living of between $250-275k/year(depending on how bonuses and salary increases go this year), and can afford a clean and comfortable (but by no means lavish) apartment, dining out every weekend, roughly $15k/year of travel, and a reasonable savings rate for retirement. The schools around our current apartment are quite good, so it would be a great place to raise a kid…if we wanted to continue to rent. When we looked at buying a condo or townhouse of comparable size and location to what we currently enjoy, all the math goes to shit.

We would like to both have children and become homeowners in the near future, but even with a household income of >$250k/year, we cannot afford to do both without either A) relocating to a different part of the county or further away from DC entirely and (likely) compromising on our current standards for public schools or B) directing almost all of our money towards housing and child expenses, leaving relatively little money leftover for home improvement, family recreation, and saving for college. I think to own a home of >1,200 square feet in Arlington, send your kids to a good school (by that I mean Elementary, Middle, and High Schools for the area are all rated a 6/10 or higher by Great Schools), and have enough discretionary income leftover for everything that people typically associate with “comfortable” middle class living (saving for retirement, saving for college, investing in home improvement, driving 1-2 reliable and safe cars, eating out occasionally, and still having money available to travel once or twice per year), you probably need to have a combined household income of $300k/year or more, probably closer to $400k/year if you want to do those things above but live in a townhouse or detached house that isn’t falling apart.

I know this is a controversial subject and some people do a great job of raising well-rounded kids on far less money and live a happy life. But if you were looking for an “ideal” number to aim for to raise a family in Arlington, that’s what I would aim for. (For the record, I don’t think we’re ever going to hit those numbers, which is why we’ll likely be exiting the DMV in the next 5-10 years entirely).