Sometimes there is an opposite side to this discussion. As the kids were growing up and got frugal habits along with us, we always thought that they should grow up and learn to spend money. A little bit more. And enjoy a better life. Not go crazy, but just a bit better.
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I have noted other news stories using a title that is not consistent with the story to increase increase clicks, but I don’t think that is the case here. The survey option is called “primarily live paycheck to paycheck”. The survey adds further text defining what “primarily live paycheck to paycheck” means, as you listed. It’s unclear whether persons responding to the survey are primarily basing their choice on the “primarily live paycheck to paycheck” wording of the selection or the text that follows.
an estimated 8% to 10% of Manhattan-specific households bring in $500,000 or more per year - so a bigger percentage than the whole country but still not a lot of people
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Yes. He is. I just wanted to point out that not everyone who makes a lot is sweating it out in the salt mines.
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I don’t know of a single place in the United States where a private school is a necessity, as a free and appropriate public education is required by law in the U.S.
There have been several people in this thread mentioning the importance or prevalence of private schools for high-income families. I think it would be interesting to have more individuals add their voices on the thread: NYT article: "In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (link below). It’s in the Politics in Education forum, so it may not be visible unless you’re a member of the forum.
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I’m kind of done commenting on this thread, but do want to add my support to @AustenNut ’s comment. I have literally known dozens & dozens of people who went through the NYC public schools ranging in age from my dad and other relatives in the 1930s and 1940s (and don’t kid yourself, all the urban ills were there in his large Queens high school even then) to people my age (50’s and 60’s) to my friends’ kids who range in age from their 30’s to those still currently in the school system now and in every borough except Staten Island. I also know some people who attended or sent their kids to private school for some or all of the K-12 years including a few who attended well known Manhattan privates. I can honestly say there I’ve seen no difference in outcomes in either my generation or the next generation in those who went to high-ranking / selective colleges or who was more successful later. Most sent their kids to neighborhood schools for elementary (though they were likely to live in “better” neighborhoods), many did for middle school, though some traveled, and many went to one of the specialty high schools, especially in the current generation as more cropped up, but certainly not all. Had we stayed in the city my D22 would have attended public school (we were in the outer edges of Park Slope, but not zoned for PS 321). It is definitely not a given that you have to send your kid to private school in NY!
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I think this is debate we often have on CC about sending our kids to elite colleges. I went to a good public in NJ and sent D1 to a public for a semester (and switch to a private). I know the difference in resources and caliber of students in top private schools. College placements are also different. This is probably off topic.
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Is it time to dust off the world’s tiniest violin?
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Later I will post a link to the thread about Nikole Hanna-Jones. Yes, there have been changes to the benefit of all except those with an inside “in” to schools they want their kids to attend.
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It is not visible. But I read it in the NYT.
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I know I am going to regret wading in, but…This idea that it’s a requirement, thus necessary, for these 500K families to use up huge portions of their income for the “best” schools just irks me every time. Same with, “you have to otherwise live where they have the TOP public schools.” Those things are choices and no one has to. And it’s not child abuse to send your kids to “good enough” schools, the NH-J controversy notwithstanding.
To link to the physician discussion, my H was a doc for a couple decades before he quit to be a teacher. (And much happier now). Never made those big doctor bucks because he was a pediatrician in city clinics. But he made enough, no complaints. We probably could have afforded to move out of what half of CC would consider a town with subpar schools (Title One, average 900 or so SATs when our kids went to HS). But then maybe we would have been the ones living socalled “paycheck to paycheck,” especially since we were also paying off med school loans that had ballooned during residency (remember those 1980s interest rates?). And those routes would have been a choice, not a necessity. And so we didn’t choose moving or private school. Somehow my neglected kids ended up at a top LAC and an Ivy despite those “deprivations.” And, bonus!, by living below our means, we’d saved money to pay for college, and lived modestly enough that H could choose to switch careers.
I have little patience for the “trapped by our aspirations/expectations/ambitions” mindset. I guess some of you are right–I definitely don’t understand (some) rich people.
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I view private school as a luxury consumption good – a place which is less crowded than public, possibly less competition, and where you have better college outcomes with less effort. Both my kids went to private school, and would pick it for their kids if they can afford.
This is informative. For elementary, where you live matters because priority goes to the zoned kids, and then remaining spots go to the matching process.
Just looked up a friend’s address and their zoned school has math proficiency pass rate of 36-44% and ELA of 40-60%. This didn’t feel like a good option to them. They wanted a school outside their zone that they could get to with some ease, in part because one parent traveled alot for business and the other taught middle school (in the NYC public schools, but not near home) so had little flexibility in the morning. How they got to a private makes sense. Not saying it was the only choice, but the one that worked for them. That is simply one anecdote. To be clear, there are kids who navigate this system fine, whether by choice or necessity. AND there are families like this one for whom more costly options feel like the default.
But back to the thread - if someone felt that their kids would not thrive in the public system and they had the $ to spend on tuition, what would be left for discretionary spending could make them feel strapped.
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I suspect that the counterintuitive U-shaped pattern in the Goldman Sachs survey largely relates to a biased and non-representative sample group among the high earners. I say that because other more robust surveys show the expected pattern – as income goes up, savings rates go up, and financial struggles go down. For example, the Goldman Sacs survey shows a U-shape for revolving credit card debt, as pictured below. As income goes up above $200-$300k, portion with credit card debt goes up.
However, the more robust fed Survey of Consumer Finances instead shows portion with revolving credit card debt goes down as income goes up with no limit. Even at top 1% income ($700k+), portion with revolving credit card debt continues to go down – almost the opposite result as GS survey. A graph is below. The fed SCF applies careful selection and weighting to insure appropriate representation by geography, demographics, and other characteristics. They intentionally oversample high earners, then adjust weighting to increase reliability.
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Seems relevant to this thread :
San Francisco now offers free child care to families of four earning up to $235,000 a year… The city pays half the cost of child care for families making up to $325,000 a year, an eye-popping level that is more than 3.5 times the country’s median household income.
Raising a family in San Francisco, the city with the fewest children per capita in the United States, has never been easy or cheap. But the affordability crisis has soared to new levels this year as the artificial intelligence boom has driven up prices for everything. That has made life even more challenging for young families not working in the tech industry, and city leaders are desperately trying to ensure that those families don’t flee.
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I think my confusion is that by the above definition, no one can know the issues faced by anyone else whether or not they have similar household incomes or even whether or not they share the same parents or social circle. That statement seems different than saying people making 50k/yr and the people making 500k/yr are oblivious of each others’ worlds. Are you saying that it is the difference in income that makes people oblivious of each other or are you saying that it is just the mere fact that we don’t live in each other’s heads or openly communicate about our life experiences to anyone else even close friends and family.
For what it is worth, I think that I am pretty aware of the experiences and concerns of friends who make 10x the salary that I do. Certainly, I don’t have social contact with the Elon Musks of the world, but plenty of contact with households earning anywhere from half of my income to 10x it. Heck, I have some friends who talk about their consumerism at least as much or more than they talk about their sex lives (or political lives or family life or binged TV shows or any other topic). I think it is pretty natural to share your woes and triumphs with the folks in your personal life.
I also think my children spend significant time hanging out with a socioeconomically diverse group of friends and classmates. So my kids are reasonably aware of their friends’ life experiences (and in some cases their girlfriends/boyfriends’ life experiences) even those peers whose parents have either much less or much more income than my family does.
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I see that as an unusual amount of sharing, and I am skeptical if really share all that much. This is not the experience among wide swaths of my friends/relatives. People are very private. You have a small window into other people’s lives. Easy to think you know their life well.
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Exposure to such diversity is much more likely to happen at a public school, of course.
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Huh, I am tempted to quote James Baldwin here, but maybe I am just closer to my friends than you are to yours --it is not like I have access to their checking account balances or investment portfolios, but at least for me, having a meaningful relationship with another person requires be interested in their lives beyond mere small talk and chitchat. If you aren’t going to talk about something real, what is the point of a friendship? If we aren’t going to spend time in each other’s homes and we don’t want to bother being authentic with each other, it is hard to have more than an casual acquaintanceship and who has time for the superficial?
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