I live in Seattle. Can give you some prices for you to compare.

Our 1600 square foot house at the edge of the city peaked on Zillow 6 months ago at 1.1 million.

We put our twin daughters in daycare (not an expensive one) and it coats $2800 a month for 3 days a week.

We almost never eat out and spend $1200/mo on groceries and house supplies.

Gas right now is about $5 a gallon.

Sales tax is 10.5%

We make about 280 pretax and feel pretty middle class. We have two cars (2005 with 150k miles and a 2019 with 15k), the house and thats about it. We do groceries and cook, we dont get out that much neither of us have expensive hobbies and our kids are in public school. We spend 9k a month.

Making 225k pretax you may find it actually a bit challenging to find a house with current mortgage rates.

4k a month and be inside the city? No. Redmond and Bellvue are actually more expensive suburbs. Rent an apartment in the suburbs? I dont know like $2600 for a 1 bedroom. Thats a guess can just look on Zillow.

I mean you absolutely can live in Seattle or Bellvue or Redmond making 225k....just not at 4k a month.

Another way to think about it is minimum wage in Seattle is $15/hr. Two 19 year olds working a first job in Taco Bell and living together would have more than $4k/mo to cover expenses. Meanwhile the 25 year old coding for Amazon or Microsoft (both headquartered out here) will be pulling in more than you and your wife combined. That is your competition.