New Delhi: A LinkedIn post by investment banker Sarthak Ahuja has gone viral for showing how even a big salary—Rs 70 lakh per year—doesn’t guarantee comfort in India’s metro cities. He explains that after taxes (about Rs 20 lakh), the take-home pay is roughly Rs 4.1 lakh per month.
Out of this, fixed costs eat up most of the money:
Rs 1.7 lakh for a home loan EMI (for a Rs 3 crore flat)
Rs 65,000 for a car loan EMI
Rs 50,000 for international school fees
Rs 15,000 for domestic help
After these, only about Rs 1 lakh is left for everything else—groceries, fuel, electricity, medical bills, eating out, shopping, and saving for holidays. This means that even high earners are left with little by month-end.
Ahuja lists three main reasons for this squeeze:
Rapid inflation in cities like Mumbai, Gurugram, and Bengaluru
Housing and car prices rising much faster than salaries
Social media pushing people to spend more to keep up with others
He calls this group the new “sub-middle class”—people who look rich on paper but feel financially stuck. His advice: don’t take a home loan unless you really need to. Many professionals agreed with his post, saying they face the same struggles.
