The prestigious school tuitions ARE the extravagence. They don’t make enough money to spend on much else after that.
$73k a year is the same as the payment on a $1.3 million mortgage. Marty could have taken a ton of Hawaiian vacations if he hadn’t spent that on pre-college tuition. Or bought some pricey real estate.
Marty and his wife made $339k last year. His 23% effective federal tax rate brings that down to $261k. I’d guess state and local is another 10%. So you have $235k after tax. Which means the primary and secondary tuitions were 31% of the after tax income and 22% of the pre-tax.
The only way he could swing this is because (i) he had minor living expenses while governor, (ii) he has little need to fund retirement due to the public pensions he and his wife will get, (iii) he leveraged himself up to the hilt as a 50 year old and (iv) his income will spike once he enters the private sector – law practice, speech making, corporate boards, maybe a TV pundit job.
Agree that once you send your kids to a pricey private school, there is a certain amount of quasi-mandatory spending that comes along with that. Like donating to the school fund raiser and some other keeping up with the Joneses stuff.
Katie O’Malley went to Notre Dame Prep too, and as was said above, family tradition that you go to the school your parent went to in Baltimore. Family friends had a daughter who went there grades 1-12. The year she finished, her little sister started, grades 1-12. The year she finished niece (older sister’s daughter who lived with the family) started, grade 1-12. The mother/grandmother drove to that school for 36 years dropping off and picking up a child. Luckily, she lived north of the school, not in Annapolis, so about a 30 minute drive (for 36 years!).
Of course, the older child was already in high school when he first became governor so had already started and maybe she could drive them both to NDP, but it’s a long way from Annapolis, especially in rush hour traffic in the morning.
Annapolis does, but Baltimore does not have good public schools. When he became governor, his older kids were already in high school and didn’t change schools. I don’t know where his younger children went to school (one is still in grade school), but not NDP as that’s for girls only.
Give into children who want to attend expensive schools.
Make bad financial decisions.
Try to get the government to fix things.
Wouldn’t it have been better for Gov. O’Malley to have:
Made wise decisions.
Is Gov. O’Malley’s daughter who attended CoC even making a salary that’s more than tuition was? If not, that’s a further reflection of a poor decision.
If O’Malley had a mortgage of $900,000 instead of a mortgage of $550,000 and school loans of $350,000 nobody would care. The family income is over $300,000. There is going to be 3 pensions in this family.
He might not care about money that much. The family probably has good life insurance policies. Good health care.
He can give speeches and make money. Maybe that is why he is really running. To increase the value of his brand. Isn’t that why almost 20 republicans are running? Most of them have no shot, but for the rest of their lives they are going to be…so and so…presidential candidate.
Politically, I don’t know this guy.
I don’t think O’Malley is in financial trouble. He shouldn’t borrow too much more though unless he knows his income is going to increase.
I think his biggest mistake was using his own family’s situation (primarily from PLUS/Private loans) as a way of showing his solidarity with students with federal loan debt. This confuses two separate issues.
If Marty had made his kids to go Annapolis public schools (which are probably fine) and with few living expenses, he would have been able to save a boatload of dough for Georgetown and CoC. But the NDP and other tuitions drained all the money (and more) he was saving by living in the Gov Mansion for free. So he had to borrow 100% of the cost of the first two college educations.
Deciding to send all four kids to K-12 private schools is much more than the cost of a second house/mortgage – that’s 52 student-year tuition bills to pay prior to paying for college. Only reason Marty didn’t go bankrupt is because he doesn’t have to fund his retirement much or at all and he got to live mortgage free for 8 years as governor.
His sons would presumably go to a Catholic all-boys school like Loyola Blakefield ($20k a year) or Calvert Hall ($14k). Which are not the most expensive options in that part of the world. Boys Latin is $27k, Georgetown Prep (which is DC more than Baltimore) is $33k.
If you are a private sector worker (no pension, no free house) you probably need to be making $600k annually or more to fund the 68 years of private school education for four kids.
People make decisions based on their circumstances. At least. I hope they do. People don’t make decisions based on what if they had a totally different life. O’Malley and his wife worked in the public sector. They decided their personal financial decisions based on their lives…not somebody else’s. Their decisions were based on their values. They weren’t based on my values or anybody else’s values. They are grown ups. I doubt very much I would send my kids to a Catholic school…especially because I told one kid I wouldn’t. Others can choose differently. My brother married a Catholic. One of his kids is going to a Catholic High School. If his family is happy, I am happy.
I don’t see O’Malley asking anybody here for financial advice. I guess he is a public figure so criticism comes with the territory.
Marty’s wife is a judge who probably is required to reside within the city limits in order to keep her job. Which would mean their Baltimore city public school options are pretty bad.
In most cities in the northeast, buying a house within the city limits pretty much locks you into private schools. If you want to use public schools, you buy a house in the suburbs.
I once lived in a neighborhood that was right past the city border. All the kids on one side went to suburban public schools. The mayor, the police chief and the DA all lived across the street; their kids all went to private schools.
Marty’s choices are actually fine financially. They quite logically flow from his particular personal situation as a public sector employee. His increased income will pay off the debts. Every appearance on the news and the talk shows increases his speaking fee rate.
His situation isn’t a typical one, as happymom correctly points out.
So I have to reiterate my earlier comments. There is a very small town mindset about schools in Baltimore and Towson in particular. It’s a very preppy insular area. See my prior post
I just have to chime in here and explain the mindset of Baltimore in terms of 9-12 grade schooling. Where you went to high school is EXTREMELY important in Baltimore. I know of very few people our age (40-50s) who went to public school there. It just wasn’t “done” by most families, perhaps for the reasons raised above about integration or the predominance of Catholic schools. And families used to be able to pay for private schools on a solidly middle class income.
My DH is from Baltimore and I had to really sell him on sending our kids to the public school. I know his family thinks we were doing something akin to neglecting them by doing so. Everyone he knew went to some sort of private school even if it was the local parochial high school.
For more info, check out this article - I was so excited when Baltimore magazine covered the topic. In Baltimore if someone asks where you went to school, they do NOT mean college. They mean HS. Even if you have a graduate degree!
“There are zero decent (academically) public schools in most of those big cities?”
I know in Albany most people who live in the city send their kids to catholic schools and the rest to non sectarian private schools. A few do go back to the one public high school which has a special IB program for the bright kids - but it’s like going to a completely separate school from the rest of the high school - which is one of the worst in NYS.
Growing up in New Haven it was the same thing and I don’t think much has changed. Tigermom’s kids went to same private school I went to in New Haven - not the New Haven public schools.
ucalum asked: There are zero decent (academically) public schools in most of those big cities?
There are no academically decent public schools in Baltimore, but it doesn’t matter because this family sends their kids to Catholic school. Parents went to catholic school, grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc, for generations have all gone to catholic school. There were 4 magnet schools for many years, 1 all female, 1 all male, and the others co-ed. In the 70’s they were unsafe, but an okay education, and still Catholic families sent their kids to Catholic schools. There may be a few magnet programs within the public schools, but it is still not the number one choice. If you want public school, you live in one of the suburbs.
My brothers all started at a catholic high school. One graduated, one was asked to seek other educational opportunities (expelled) so went to public school in the suburbs (it was fine) and the last tried the catholic school but just didn’t like it so went to the public suburb school (he’d gone to middle school in the burbs too).
I don’t know that the judges have to live in the city. She obviously didn’t for the last 8 years (that was one reason I thought they kept their old house from when he was mayor, but the articles quoted said they lived in Annapolis). Some cities no longer have that rule, but they obviously would have had to live in the city when he was mayor.
I agree that the financial decisions were all theirs, that they’ve spent and saved (or not) their money as they wanted to. And I agree that he just made a bad political decision to use his own decisions of paying for private or OOS tuition as a reason to want to expand Pell grants and make state schools free. One has nothing to do with the other. Even if Pell grants were $20k per year and instate tuition was free, the OMalleys still would have needed $340k to send their kids to the schools they picked. IMO, bad financial choice but his choice.
“There are zero decent (academically) public schools in most of those big cities?”
It is almost always the case that the doctor/lawyer/banker-type parents living inside the city limits use private schools. If they want to use public schools they buy a house in the suburbs.
Maybe today there is the occasional charter or magnet school (Boston Latin, Bronx Science or Stuyvesent) that is a possibility. It was 100% like that growing up in NYC. I can’t think of one city public HS in Philly that those parents would use. I now live in Colorado – in Denver there is exactly one (and only one) public HS in the city limits that would even be considered by those parents.
Those type of downtown urban parents consider the private school tuition like part of the mortgage on the city house when they buy it. The Catholic angle reinforces those tendencies.
The family income is over $300,000. There is going to be 3 pensions in this family.