<p>Taxes are graduated too so that you’re paying a higher proportion in taxes compared to those in low cost - low income areas.</p>
<p>I dunno about the property tax thing. Every Sunday, I read the real estate articles in the NYTimes. They always feature million dollar houses with taxes less than my rickety six-room in Jersey. I don’t understand how ritzy brownstones in fancy parts of Manhattan or Brooklyn are paying the tiny property taxes they do–homes with those prices have taxes typically ten times as much in Jersey or Westchester. Seems that NY could fix all their monetary problems with a more realistic tax scale.</p>
<p>well NYC residents pay income tax to the city at a rate that non residents do not pay. The suburb I reside in does not charge income tax, but sure do charge the same in property tax. So those brownstones can be $$$$ low property tax, but to buy those your paying one heck of a city income tax, All evens out in the end.</p>
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<p>Exactly… people forget that it’s very possible to live less than 30 mins from the center of Manhattan and pay a fraction of what someone living in Manhattan would pay. I have friends who seemingly would rather pay $5,000 per month to rent a place when they could pay half that a month and own an apartment of similar size and quality just outside of the city. It’s personal preference really… but if you want to live in Manhattan you will pay pay pay (relative to other nearby options).</p>
<p>So just remember, living in Manhattan and living a few miles outside of NYC (but still closer to midtown by travel time than many who live within NYC and take the subway, not train) are two different worlds in terms of living expenses.</p>
<p>rocketman08 - I actually disagree. We lived in NYC for 15 years, had a condo (not co-op) with one car. The monthly maintenance was a few thousand $. We thought if we moved outside of NYC with a house we could save some money. We found out houses in Westchester, Summit/Short Hills NJ, Greenwich/Stamford CT(within reasonable commuting distance), were just as expensive as NY apts except they were bigger. Property tax alone were as much the maintenance charges, on top of that you have the lawn, furnace, roof…to maintain. Living outside of NYC , instead only needing one car you need multiple cars, even one for your nanny, because we have no public transportation. I do not see where you could live anywhere that’s a few miles outside of NYC and able to cut your costs by half, unless you mean Queen or Brooklyn, even that is difficult now. Most people with any meaningful jobs do not have the luxury of working 9-5, you could have 7 am breakfast or late business dinner/meeting. It is hard to live outside of NYC where public transportation runs irregularly after 7pm. I drive in to have a better control of my time. We also didn’t save any money on education, my kids ended up going to a private school.</p>
<p>If we were to do it over again, we would have stayed in NYC - commute would have been better for me (more time with family), and our costs would have probably been the same if not less in NYC, and our quality of life would have been better (more take outs, better restaurants, cultural events). We have a big yard that my girls never used because they didn’t like bugs.</p>
<p>Well, Oldfort, it depends on where you are willing to live. I live not too far from Short Hills, but a world away. We have no lawn in front, and no one cares that our back yard is an amalgam of messy vegetable gardens, a sprawling grape “arbor” (more like a jungle), the wooden pirate ship my H built the kids when they were little, two fish ponds, and some scraggly stuff in between we like to call grass.</p>
<p>We have public transportation locally and to NYC until after midnight. Yeah, the property taxes are high (especially compared to NY’s). We sent our kids to the public school, so no expense there. That didn’t seem to hurt their college chances; in fact, I think it helped. There’s plenty of culture around us, we live near a town that’s stuffed with refugee chefs from NY if we want to eat well, and NY is a hop skip and a jump away.</p>
<p>Again, less than 100,000, and we probably save 20 a year (oh, and that includes paying for the temporary second house–hoping to make it the only soon, but not likely with this job market.) We do seem to allocate funds differently from most, so we may not be a typical example, just a possible one.</p>
<p>oldfort- you just named about the 4 most exclusive towns in the Tri State area. I am from NJ and of course $100k is a fine income in most of the State. In good times it’s a kids allowance in Summit and Short Hills. Oh and most of us do not worry about a car for the nanny.</p>
<p>LOL, tom. Yeah, in my neck of the woods “car for the nanny” is not a usual expense.</p>
<p>We live a 10 minute walk from a Metronorth stop, approx. 1/2 hour to Grand Central, nice, safe diverse neighborhood, good schools, property tax are way below county averages. We had one car for quite a few years, but no question it’s easier to have two. Never needed a third car though! :eek:!</p>
<p>I don’t see how your babysitter (better word than nanny) is to get your kids to and from activities or even to doctors if they don’t have a car. </p>
<p>I think everyone makes their choice of how they want to live their life. We chose to work long hours to provide a certain life style for our family. I could have stayed home, lived in a smaller house and sent out kids to public schools and possibly have our kids be on FA to college, but I didn’t. Most women I work with do have multiple nannies for their children because that’s what it takes to make sure they could travel for their work on a short notice or go out to unplanned dinners at night or take care of production problems at night. We often do not get home at 6pm when daycare closes. Many people I know have the smallest houses in Summit, but having a car at their nanny’s disposal is a must.</p>
<p>Out here in the real world some of us managed to work full time and raise kids without the addition of a “nanny” or full time “babysitter” to the mix. You see, they have these places where you can take your kids called “day care centers”, and parents deliver the kids to those places all by themselves. And, amazingly enough, in many communities the delivery can be done via public transportation.</p>
<p>I would very much like the $500K executives to get a sense of how the rest of the world lives. And if they don’t like the $500K, they can opt for a pink slip instead. (Personally, I think that any banking executive who has been making millions and isn’t sitting on top of a huge nest egg can hardly be described as “top talent” in any case… if the people who run the banking system can’t manage to do anything other than run it into the ground, maybe there are some more recent business school grads who would do a better job of it).</p>
<p>^^ Frankly, I don’t see why they should have to get a sense for how the rest of the world lives. Despite the few bad apples, most highly-compensated executives spent a lot of years working very hard to get where they are. Why should they put their kids in daycare? I wasn’t nearly that highly paid, and my husband and I weren’t willing to put our kids in daycare. Nothing wrong with it- just a personal choice on our part. There are a number of executives in the large company that employs me that are very well-compensated, and, believe me, they earn every cent of it. They are wonderful, compassionate men and women who do everything in their power to run our company well, keep the business going so that employees have jobs and give back to the community. If they get to have a vacation home, travel on a company plane (those have now been sold) or have some nice meals, more power to them. And- as a lower level executive, if I occasionally get to go along, good for me! I work hard, too.</p>
<p>What I don’t understand is how it can pay to work when you need multiple nannys and a car for them too. And you probably have to pay other people to do things for you such as housecleaning and minor repairs.</p>
<p>I would just stay home, take care of the kids & house, & enjoy my free time. But then, I’m a musician… :)</p>
<p>Garland, I think it’s great you could live under 100,000 in NJ. I am sure you’ve had to make some sacrifices to make that happen, and you probably have gained in other areas that were important to you. Is it the life I aspire to? No, to be very blunt. I like my lawn to be neat and my house painted every few years. I have also made sacrifices in order to make that happen. The difference is I do not judge why you have made that choice, and many of us do not complain of the choice we have made either.</p>
<p>I think comments like
is just not necessary. So many working moms have no choice but to have in home daycare, and so many of them also stay home because they couldn’t have affordable daycare for their children. I am sure most moms would like to stay home with their young children, but often it’s not an option.</p>
<p>calmom - do you think those daycare centers open until 11-12 midnight? This past Tue when there was a snow storm in NYC, I was at a dinner with my global manager until 11pm. He was in town for 2 nights. He wanted to see how I could further reduce our footprint in NYC. I convinced him that we could probably deliver more than his European team, at a lower cost. By the time I was going home, there was a sheet of ice on the ground. </p>
<p>I am not one of those high power executives, I am just a fairly average working mom that is at a certain position because of my age.
There are many working people like me out there. </p>
<p>MomofWildChild is right. I have worked with/for many women in very high positions with multiple nannys. Many of them have made our jobs more secure and better. They also do make homemade play doh late at night for their children, or take a company car service to their kid’s play or field trip because of time constraint.</p>
<p>If the economy were doing well and everyone were prospering, then I don’t think anyone would begrudge the executives their high salaries. But since many, many people are suffering through no fault of their own, the question becomes why should Wall Street execs be any different? Especially since it seems–rightly or wrongly I don’t know–that at least some of these execs did something to contribute to the financial mess we are in now. At the very least, those companies that received government money last fall should have known better than to give multi-million dollar bonuses when they did. Bad PR judgment if nothing else.</p>
<p>This post may put this thread on the political sub-forum, but…I have little problem with executives making as much money as they can in companies that are making money, fair to their employees and providing a quality product/service to their ultimate consumers.</p>
<p>I have more problems with executives making such large sums of money when their companies have essentially become government “owned”. The $500,000 cap…which is still higher than most goverment workers…even very senior ones…is appropriate.</p>
<p>For people who are now out of work, bright and ambitious, they could leave their upper east side homes, live somewhere a little more econmical, and help us all work our way out of this mess. Then go back to making the big bucks when their companies no longer need government intervention.</p>
<p>Garland, I envy you your public transportation. Staten Island has the worst public transportation system in the entire region and one of the longest average commutes in the country. Weekends and nights are almost impossible to get into Manhattan unless you drive. I live in the same city in which I work. The commute is at least an hour and a half each way and sometimes substantially longer.</p>
<p>“Frankly, I don’t see why they should have to get a sense for how the rest of the world lives.”</p>
<p>Because these executives make decisions that impact the way the rest of the world lives. </p>
<p>How can executives make informed decisions if they don’t understand the world they live in, or their customers, or their employees?</p>
<p>driving in the NYC/northern NJ area is a headache. I worked 15 miles from my office in Newark and I had to give myself an hour to be sure I made it on time. I now live in Central/SouthJersey and drive 25 miles- I need about 40 min.</p>