<p>5 years ago, my colleague told me that she was paying 850/week + health insurance for her babysitter. I remember paying 3-400/week when my kids were young.</p>
<p>“It’s $30,000 a year!—and we are NOT a ritzy neighborhood.”</p>
<p>That is my niece’s conundrum. She cannot afford to stop working and live on only her husband’s salary and they cannot afford the day care. My sister said she would help out a few days a week but my niece told me, “over her dead body.”</p>
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<p>The guys I know that wanted to improve the schools where they did before their kids started ran for seats on the school board.</p>
<p>Ellebud, I am curious? Why isn’t 4,000 sq ft big enough for you?</p>
<p>In my community, most of the families with kids in public schools donate time or money. Not too many donate 5,000 but a few families do donate 5,000. Most donations are 100 to 500 a student. </p>
<p>And yeah…some families prefer the private school route. I think the costs of private schools are closer to 20,000 to 35,000 with the Catholic schools costing a little less than 20,000. I might be off by a few thousand. I haven’t looked lately.</p>
<p>Some people leave SF and move to Marin County because the public
schools are better in Marin County than SF generally and you don’t have to pay for private schools. The money saved from private school costs can go to a mortgage instead.</p>
<p>Living in a city, especially Manhattan is a wonderful adventure when you’re young, single or newly marrieds. Raising kids is another matter. $30k for child care? Yikes. But the schools are good. We’d be living in the city if I had known just how subpar our school district would turn out to be. </p>
<p>Most parents in our rural school district don’t donate. They may buy something at an auction, but certainly not $5k worth.</p>
<p>Catholic High schools in Portland are all around the $10,000 give or take a few hundred. There is one though that charges $3500 and the student works one day a week.</p>
<p>I grew up in Queens but out near the Nassau County line, what is known as a two-fare zone. DH grew up in Brooklyn. I had apartments with roommates when I graduated and then with DH, both rentals in midtown and in Brooklyn Heights with a skyline view back in the late 70’s early 80’s for $400 month. We were in the second wave of looking at brownstones in the early 80’s as our apartment went co-op without insider pricing. We were turned down for our bid on a park block in Park Slope in which the asking was $125,000 for a triplex plus a rental. The family was being relocated to Europe and his company was offering a fixed price to him of $110,000 so he did not really need to negotiate. $110,000 was beyond our price range at the time but in hindset we should have stretched… as that property today is worth over $3 million. We bought a one-family house instead for $77,000 very close in to the city with a then well-recognized and regarded school system and close drive to DH’s job. Two children later who are both living in Brooklyn, we would love to sell our house and move back. The housing prices in our area have dropped and so a few years ago, we could sell for $700,000 but now only for $500,000… we would need a two-bedroom with a garage as the days of alternate street parking are a bit past us as in having been there and done that… and I look at real estate listings all the time… for the neighborhoods where we would want to live… we are looking at $900,000 to $1 million plus… the dollars don’t seem to make sense, but keep looking. DH is retired but I am not…
Just today we went to the Guggenheim, no traffic, 30 minutes and we found a spot on 5th Avenue across from the museum with no problem. That is unusual however, even though DH is quite lucky with parking. Sometimes we take the LIRR and sometimes we drive to Queens and take the subway. We do visit museums and go to theatre and Lincoln Center a lot … but living in Nassau County has its benefits. We park at the beach for only $7.50 and DH as a retiree can go for free during the week. He can play golf on local 9 hole course for almost nothing mid-week and more on weekends. He sometimes plays on 18 hole courses at Bethpage State and Eisenhower Park… but that is more expensive and harder to do. He would like us to have a place in Florida for the winter… but I would rather rent a month here or there and not deal with issues of managing a second home…I’d rather travel when I retire in a year or so.</p>
<p>I commute in from Staten Island and live for the day I can move away. I detest living in New York, although I wouldn’t mind visiting.</p>
<p>Zoos, when will you move – when the birds have all flown the nest? When DH retires?</p>
<p>Somewhere warmer with low taxes. One of the Carolinas possibly. Just looking for a slower pace.</p>
<p>One of the reason house prices in Northern NJ are so high is that couples don’t blink at their monthly mortgage payment (including our crazy property taxes), as they look at it as saving money over whatever their rent/mortgage payment in NYC plus private school tuition, as they can send their kids to public schools. I am amazed at people who send their kids to private elementary and middle schools. (I know many kids in private high schools that is the right decision for them, as they probably would get lost in our 2000+ student HS).</p>
<p>I got curious and ran with some figures that were mentioned earlier.</p>
<p>If you lived in “the rest of the country” and made $70000/year with an average house costing $230000, you’d pay $15300 for housing annually (as calculated on bankrate with a 30 year mortgage, the calculator’s standard tax rate of 1.5%, 4% mortgage rate, 10% down). That would leave $54700 year “after housing income”.</p>
<p>If you lived in NYC with a “middle class income” of $166000 and somehow managed to make a 10% down payment on an “average” home costing $1.46 million, you’d pay approximately $9315/mo or $111,780/annually. The only term changed was taxes, which I doubled. Your “after housing income” = $54200 - almost identical to above. (Yes, I know this is simplified, as you would have serious problems with the down payment and getting approved for a loan at that percentage of your income).</p>
<p>However, if you lived in NYC on the same “middle class” income of $166000 and paid the average rent of $3973/mo, you’d have $124,324 “after housing income”! That’s a lot more disposable income (and money for tuition)!</p>
<p>Again, building equity, income taxes, mortgage write-offs, day care, etc. would all create differences - as would the big yards/square feet of living space in the rest of the country vs. the cultural amenities and public transportation of the city. I just thought it interesting.</p>
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<p>My son shares my aversion to suburbia–especially because of construction that is frequently inferior to that of older homes. Both of us cringe when we see houses with plastic mullions on the windows, cheap-looking siding, and ostentatious entrances. We both value quality, location, and history, and think “small, cool” houses are more interesting than big, gaudy boxes.</p>
<p>My daughter, on the other hand, has never met a McMansion she didn’t like. To her, bigger is better. She has begged me since she was little to move out to a subdivision where we can afford a larger house, and finds our current home embarrassingly small. She doesn’t care that it was designed by an architect, expanded by another, is extremely well-built, and has an interesting local history.</p>
<p>You couldn’t be able to get a 2 bedroom for 3973, and rent is not tax deductible. Someone who makes 167K is going to higher rate of taxes than 70K.</p>
<p>Just using the figures that were mentioned earlier in the thread, and I acknowledged that income taxes would be different.</p>
<p>Using the mortgage tax deduction argument, that would work very much in favor of the NYC buying scenario with a large portion of the very large mortgage being written off at the individual’s higher tax rate, versus the interest on the less expensive house being deductible at a lower tax rate.</p>
<p>I guess I have much simpler needs than many of you. My house is a bit less than 2000 square feet, with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. It’s on a nice cul de sac lot with a big back yard. The well & septic are turn-offs for some, I suppose. I am quite happy where I am. If I were to sell it today, I would be lucky to get $125,000. My neighborhood is older, but it is nice - and the schools are acceptable (plus, it’s no farther to the district-of-choice schools, which I used & a lot of folks here use). I am in Michigan - a northern suburb of Detroit. I cannot even fathom paying $500,000-$1,000,000 for a home, and I most certainly do not “need” 4,000 square feet. By the way, I consider myself upper middle class. I am guessing many of you here are in the top few % in terms of your wages.</p>
<p>Kelsmom, we have a 2,000 square foot house. Three bedrooms, finished attic, one and a half bath. House is worth around 400,000 and we make over 200,000 but don’t consider ourselves upper middle class. Income yes, but not class.</p>
<p>:), zoosermom!!!</p>
<p>I know it is really hard in areas like NYC and SF to get decent housing for a decent price. I realize also that wages are higher in these areas, but that many really struggle to make ends meet. It’s the folks who are in less expensive areas who have really expensive homes that blow me away … I cannot even imagine having that much money for a house. We don’t make $200k, but we do okay. We do shell out money for college …</p>
<p>The distinction for me is education. We don’t have it, so we will never really be upper middle class, which always seems to encompass educated professionals.</p>
<p>Hmmm … I have met many educated professionals who have far less class than you exhibit in your posts, zoosermom. Just sayin’.</p>
<p>Thank you kindly! My own lack of education is why I’m relentless with my kids’.</p>