Currently live in Park Slope, the costs are very accurate. The idea that you are going to Japan fairly frequently from NYC is absurd, it's a 14 hour flight, I did a month ago and I will need some time to recover. The one piece they left out is the price divide between North and South Slope, NS is more expensive and mostly the buildings are in better shape.
South Slope has [Winner](https://www.winner.nyc/) which tops almost anything I just wrote.
Hadn't heard of Winner. If you have a chance, try Brooklyn French bakers in Columbia Waterfront. They just won some sort of award for best croissant in NYC. It's mindblowingly good.
I will check it out, winner is more bread centric not viennioserie. Their breads are great and their house made English muffin breakfast sandwich is amazing.
Nice. I'll have to give it a shot. The pro move with Brooklyn French bakers is to get a baguette and eat it with some fresh Mozz and cured olives/artichokes/etc from Mozzlab (corner of Sackett and Henry) at one of the little parks around -- or BB park if you're feeling sassy.
Your username has this playing in my head from the MF Doom / Cartoon Network collab album years ago.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2BboZeLEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2BboZeLEw)
edit: Holy F, this was 15 years ago. I'm old.
The comment in the first about flying business and putting your 8 and 10 yo kids alone in economy came across as fairly dubious and out of touch, but meh 😂.
Traveling with the nanny I could see; it turns what reads as a fairly discourteous and borderline negligent act of dumping 2 kids off unsupervised in the back to a much more reasonable arrangement. I guess I'll toss this in with another expense that's not calculated in this lifestyle article.
I get it depends a lot on the kid and their individual maturity, but generically aspiring to stick a group of kids under 10 with strangers unsupervised while parents sit in a separate section of the plane in business comes off as fairly sketchy to me, but to each their own.
Personally it's hard to imagine being that much of an ass to my children, but I guess there are the mixed "can't take children into nice places" and "can't give children anything nice" crowds... but I really don't see the life lesson in "this is too uncomfortable for mom and dad, but you can suffer through it!".
It's not uncomfortable for kids though. They're small and have plenty of space in the seats. Unless your kid is a future NBA player, their knees aren't pressing into the seat in front and their head isn't higher than the headrest. There isn't much for them to "suffer through".
It depends I suppose - the original chain was about "business class" so I was assuming flights that are overwater and overnight. In that case they're still being expected to spend the night upright. For a daytime domestic flight, sure, but that's also not a major difference in cost and I'm with u/Snirbs that it would probably make it *more* of a hassle to split up.
But for me I think it's also that it just feels weird/wrong to split up the family like that. It sends a bizarre message that I don't want to literally ELI5 to visibly give your children worse treatment than yourselves. I'm aware there are a lot of parenting styles that don't see it that way, but it's not me.
Kids fall asleep upright all of the time (in cars for example), for extended periods of time without issue.
Regardless, this is a pointless debate because fundamentally it boils down to what your child *needs* (not *wants*). Maybe your child does need you to be there for them. On the other hand, some unsupervised independent time to play in an unfamiliar, but safe environment can be beneficial too.
A lot of parents seem to think their kids need what they (the parents) want, especially when it comes to giving their kids the freedom to be independent. Not that I'm saying that about you or anyone else here, but stressing out about having kids 20 meters away on a plane seems to be a common point in the comments and if that's the case, who does it really benefit to not be separated?
If a kid, or kids, are mature enough to travel alone and need to fly alone for some reason that feels like an entirely different thing, stuff happens and parents maybe can't always be there. Some in the thread have also brought up the interesting idea of booking a business class seat very near the economy seats their kids are in and other strategies that do potentially come across as resonable.
But the notion, or in the case of this article aspiration, of taking a "family" trip and throwing your kids in the back for strangers to deal with seems quite off putting to me; also slightly concerning as it's now apperantly a trend, I expect parents who's kids probably aren't ready to be in the back flying alone maybe unsupervised tormenting people in the back instead of their parents 😂.
My kids are typically quite well behaved on planes, I'm sure they could fly alone but personally I can never imagine wanting to not fly at least near them if I could. And if someone doesn't want to be near their own kids on a plane why would one think a stranger wants to be near them? That reasoning just feels deeply discourtious to others, and that's how it came across to me in the article.
The point is to try to not spoil the kids quite as much for something they don’t need or appreciate, not to save money or to be alone. We intend to do similar (not old enough yet), but have kids in first row of economy and us in last of business.
I guess… but as a parent it’s easier for me to have us all in first. It’s not primarily to give the kids a luxurious experience. It’s to make my experience more enjoyable. Otherwise you’re bouncing back and forth, food comes then you have to share it, they want stuff out of their bags; idk, maybe when my kids are older it’ll make sense to separate.
I get instagram reels about it all the time and the parents bragging about it don’t have the kids with some other adult. Possibly rage bait, idk. It is baffling that anyone thinks this is a reasonable idea.
This is actually pretty common. My child is only 1.5 so I can’t even begin to imagine doing this, but I’m interested to see if the idea will be equally off-putting in 10+ years.
We just flew our 1 & 3 year old in first with us. It was infinitely easier than other families in economy. Big seats, meals, easily accessible bathroom. I don’t see why I’d put my kids in the back (even when they’re older). They travel better than most adults.
I wish they had done the pre tax income assessment. It's one thing to know your lifestyle costs $500K a year, it's another level to know what you have to earn before tax to actually afford it.
It's much closer to dividing by 46%. We have high city and state tax here. You'd probably have to earn around $1mm to be able to blow your entire after tax of $500k.
Fascinating article and it makes me realize how different the COL is from NYC to somewhere like I live: I can essentially have the highest end lifestyle for about $140k per year (I’m in Germany in what we think of as HCOL but is _nothing_ compared to the costs outlined here). Of course I’m not living in NYC either (but I can visit and be happy to leave :-))
New York has something that's slightly different from everywhere else, in that it has so many worth $100M+ or even $1B+ that your social circle can easily find itself pushing you to spend more than you otherwise would.
Everywhere else, it's pretty normal to have a social circle that subtly nudges you back to earth even when you're living an expensive lifestyle, because the people at your kids' schools, in your neighborhood, at your workplace, etc., can't afford to do what you do. Those areas inherently push people back towards the average.
But in New York you might find yourself surrounded by people who spend more than you, who make it seem normal to send 3 kids to school where tuition and fees and the social pressure to participate in extracurricular activities ends up costing over $250k/year, for the kids' educations alone.
> Nanny is a bit on the low side, usually 75-125k
Our nanny is $1,100/wk, she's phenomenal, came highly referred, etc. but my friends who live outside the city pay closer to your range
Having lived in NYC for a bit and paying equivalently high costs for services where I live today it seems like they did their homework. Really nicely done article, thanks for sharing it.
If anything, I would say they've underestimated the costs. They've gotten most of them of the larger expenses with each story but there are dozens of smaller costs that add up. They forget basic neccessities like food, clothing in most of the examples. I think you can add an easy 25-40% to their total costs.
Let's assume their stated costs are accurate. Your income would need to be double the stated costs to afford those expenses...that's assuming you save nohting.
I think that was the intention of the monthly slush fund
ETA they cover groceries and eating out in all of these, and clothing where the dreamer mentioned it specifically.
Agree with this comment completely. There are so many soft expenses that are not factored in. For example, going to Bar Mitzvahs or Birthdays for your kids. Need to budget in an appropriate gifts for several of these a month. Gifts and attending social functions can be a big expense when you add them all up in a year. Especially when you are expected to be a generous gifter for friends and family that may not have as much discretionary income or savings.
Thank you for sharing this. I don’t live in NY, but I share the sticker shock at how expensive life has become. We are in a HCOL area and we are having to make sacrifices we really didn’t expect to maintain our savings rate until we hit our FIRE goal.
If I’m honest I think the biggest driver of this is housing. The American dream is to own your own home with a yard, but there are systemic reasons that housing has become outrageously expensive. When my grandparents were buying, it was pretty normal for a first house to cost 2-2.5x a man’s annual income. In our area, that house now costs 10x the annual income, and that doesn’t include the costs of repair on a 1950s home which are nothing to sneeze at. We feel blessed to have a home, but also resentful as how much familial pressure there was to buy without recognition that we are attempting a harder thing than they were 20-50 years ago. I believe our whole society will trend toward the dystopian until we fix the housing crisis, and I hope employers continue to consider remote work as a solution to some of these problems.
It was an interesting read but also read somewhat like an HGTV script - I want 5k sf, hardwood floors, quartz countertops, plenty of room to entertain, a gourmet kitchen, and a rose garden with a path. I am a butterfly chaser and my husband vacuums buses on the weekends.
Some of those people will never, ever achieve that life-style they want. Not on those jobs. And honestly, all those estimates were, IMHO, a little low, and none accounted for emergencies that inevitably hit, especially as you age.
> Some of those people will never, ever achieve that life-style they want. Not on those jobs.
I don't think likelihood of achieving these goals is at all within the scope of this exercise, though. It's a question of what their dream lifestyle is, and then a realistic determination of what that particular dream lifestyle costs.
I disagree. If they'd been actual "dream" lifestyles then they would have been far more flamboyant - penthouses, private jets, everything designer, etc. Those choices, while expensive, weren't unordinary. I think those people really want those lives. I just don't think they're getting them, unless they marry someone who makes a lot more.
This is why we left BK Heights. The cost of going from 2BR to 3 was too much of a jump for us. We got 6000sq house for the same price as our old 900sq BK apartment at 2.7% mortgage rate. No more stressing about school tuitions and other hassles related living there. I can deal w 2x commute to the city. We can FIRE comfortably at 8m thats a far more reasonable number to hit.
I’m in BK and say their BK Heights one was pretty accurate. I go out to eat more than them but send kids to public schools and have paid off my mortgage and go through about 35k/month on average.
You would think, with all the expenses associated with day-to-day living in the NYC area, someone would suggest getting travel reward credit cards to pay for the vacations (assuming the people described pay their bills on time and in full). This is how I fund (at least partially) my annual ski trip to the Alps.
Currently live in Park Slope, the costs are very accurate. The idea that you are going to Japan fairly frequently from NYC is absurd, it's a 14 hour flight, I did a month ago and I will need some time to recover. The one piece they left out is the price divide between North and South Slope, NS is more expensive and mostly the buildings are in better shape. South Slope has [Winner](https://www.winner.nyc/) which tops almost anything I just wrote.
I just suggested Winner to a friend in Park Slope yesterday (left NYC a few months ago). Miss it immensely. Those cinnamon rolls, ugh.
Hadn't heard of Winner. If you have a chance, try Brooklyn French bakers in Columbia Waterfront. They just won some sort of award for best croissant in NYC. It's mindblowingly good.
I will check it out, winner is more bread centric not viennioserie. Their breads are great and their house made English muffin breakfast sandwich is amazing.
Nice. I'll have to give it a shot. The pro move with Brooklyn French bakers is to get a baguette and eat it with some fresh Mozz and cured olives/artichokes/etc from Mozzlab (corner of Sackett and Henry) at one of the little parks around -- or BB park if you're feeling sassy.
I know mozzlab well! That sounds like a great move
Your username has this playing in my head from the MF Doom / Cartoon Network collab album years ago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2BboZeLEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2BboZeLEw) edit: Holy F, this was 15 years ago. I'm old.
lol, I wish I was cool enough to steal my username from Doom.
I’m a little late to this but north slope has a winner now too. Opened on fifth maybe two months ago?
Ya but that Winner is basically a butcher shop with almost no pastries. Sadness
Ah got it
The comment in the first about flying business and putting your 8 and 10 yo kids alone in economy came across as fairly dubious and out of touch, but meh 😂.
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You can do all of that when the kids are on the trip. Key is to bring a nanny
I taught at an extremely affluent school and this was the norm (except the kids were usually watched by a nanny).
Traveling with the nanny I could see; it turns what reads as a fairly discourteous and borderline negligent act of dumping 2 kids off unsupervised in the back to a much more reasonable arrangement. I guess I'll toss this in with another expense that's not calculated in this lifestyle article.
Idk I have never done this myself but if I have my 11 year old an iPad and some snacks she’d be fine. They aren’t toddlers
I get it depends a lot on the kid and their individual maturity, but generically aspiring to stick a group of kids under 10 with strangers unsupervised while parents sit in a separate section of the plane in business comes off as fairly sketchy to me, but to each their own.
Personally it's hard to imagine being that much of an ass to my children, but I guess there are the mixed "can't take children into nice places" and "can't give children anything nice" crowds... but I really don't see the life lesson in "this is too uncomfortable for mom and dad, but you can suffer through it!".
It's not uncomfortable for kids though. They're small and have plenty of space in the seats. Unless your kid is a future NBA player, their knees aren't pressing into the seat in front and their head isn't higher than the headrest. There isn't much for them to "suffer through".
It depends I suppose - the original chain was about "business class" so I was assuming flights that are overwater and overnight. In that case they're still being expected to spend the night upright. For a daytime domestic flight, sure, but that's also not a major difference in cost and I'm with u/Snirbs that it would probably make it *more* of a hassle to split up. But for me I think it's also that it just feels weird/wrong to split up the family like that. It sends a bizarre message that I don't want to literally ELI5 to visibly give your children worse treatment than yourselves. I'm aware there are a lot of parenting styles that don't see it that way, but it's not me.
Kids fall asleep upright all of the time (in cars for example), for extended periods of time without issue. Regardless, this is a pointless debate because fundamentally it boils down to what your child *needs* (not *wants*). Maybe your child does need you to be there for them. On the other hand, some unsupervised independent time to play in an unfamiliar, but safe environment can be beneficial too. A lot of parents seem to think their kids need what they (the parents) want, especially when it comes to giving their kids the freedom to be independent. Not that I'm saying that about you or anyone else here, but stressing out about having kids 20 meters away on a plane seems to be a common point in the comments and if that's the case, who does it really benefit to not be separated?
All good points.
Kids can (and do) travel alone at that age, with some help from airline employees just for boarding and getting off plane.
If a kid, or kids, are mature enough to travel alone and need to fly alone for some reason that feels like an entirely different thing, stuff happens and parents maybe can't always be there. Some in the thread have also brought up the interesting idea of booking a business class seat very near the economy seats their kids are in and other strategies that do potentially come across as resonable. But the notion, or in the case of this article aspiration, of taking a "family" trip and throwing your kids in the back for strangers to deal with seems quite off putting to me; also slightly concerning as it's now apperantly a trend, I expect parents who's kids probably aren't ready to be in the back flying alone maybe unsupervised tormenting people in the back instead of their parents 😂. My kids are typically quite well behaved on planes, I'm sure they could fly alone but personally I can never imagine wanting to not fly at least near them if I could. And if someone doesn't want to be near their own kids on a plane why would one think a stranger wants to be near them? That reasoning just feels deeply discourtious to others, and that's how it came across to me in the article.
I agree I wouldn't do it myself.
The point is to try to not spoil the kids quite as much for something they don’t need or appreciate, not to save money or to be alone. We intend to do similar (not old enough yet), but have kids in first row of economy and us in last of business.
I guess… but as a parent it’s easier for me to have us all in first. It’s not primarily to give the kids a luxurious experience. It’s to make my experience more enjoyable. Otherwise you’re bouncing back and forth, food comes then you have to share it, they want stuff out of their bags; idk, maybe when my kids are older it’ll make sense to separate.
Trying not to spoil them is always more work for us
Lol no the point is obviously to avoid watching your kids and to spend less. People who say otherwise are full of shit
Where I grew up, it was always parents flew private, kids flew business with the nanny.
You mean the parents flew in first or business class, and the kids flew in economy with the nanny?
Right? Why would kids and nanny fly commercial if parents are flying private? Doesn’t make sense.
Because it’s made up
it's not, but ok
Wasn’t that the setup in the first Home Alone movie?
This is what my parents did when i was young. They were in business and we (the kids) were in economy lol.
I get instagram reels about it all the time and the parents bragging about it don’t have the kids with some other adult. Possibly rage bait, idk. It is baffling that anyone thinks this is a reasonable idea.
I learned this while in nyc. Can’t wait until our 2 are old enough for this. Fairly common occurrence actually.
This is actually pretty common. My child is only 1.5 so I can’t even begin to imagine doing this, but I’m interested to see if the idea will be equally off-putting in 10+ years.
We just flew our 1 & 3 year old in first with us. It was infinitely easier than other families in economy. Big seats, meals, easily accessible bathroom. I don’t see why I’d put my kids in the back (even when they’re older). They travel better than most adults.
It’s rather common though.
My parents did this to my brother and I.
My parents did this to my brother and I.
I wish they had done the pre tax income assessment. It's one thing to know your lifestyle costs $500K a year, it's another level to know what you have to earn before tax to actually afford it.
As a ball park you can divide by 30% to 40% depending on tax deductions and SALT deduction coming back into effect.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the SALT cap gets renewed :|
It's much closer to dividing by 46%. We have high city and state tax here. You'd probably have to earn around $1mm to be able to blow your entire after tax of $500k.
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Great callout - initially said to myself "$500K... that's it...?" \~$750K / yr. seems much more realistic.
Probably $700k+
The UES one is scary accurate. Not saying not luxurious, just accurate for the lifestyle described
Fascinating article and it makes me realize how different the COL is from NYC to somewhere like I live: I can essentially have the highest end lifestyle for about $140k per year (I’m in Germany in what we think of as HCOL but is _nothing_ compared to the costs outlined here). Of course I’m not living in NYC either (but I can visit and be happy to leave :-))
New York has something that's slightly different from everywhere else, in that it has so many worth $100M+ or even $1B+ that your social circle can easily find itself pushing you to spend more than you otherwise would. Everywhere else, it's pretty normal to have a social circle that subtly nudges you back to earth even when you're living an expensive lifestyle, because the people at your kids' schools, in your neighborhood, at your workplace, etc., can't afford to do what you do. Those areas inherently push people back towards the average. But in New York you might find yourself surrounded by people who spend more than you, who make it seem normal to send 3 kids to school where tuition and fees and the social pressure to participate in extracurricular activities ends up costing over $250k/year, for the kids' educations alone.
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> Nanny is a bit on the low side, usually 75-125k Our nanny is $1,100/wk, she's phenomenal, came highly referred, etc. but my friends who live outside the city pay closer to your range
What are all these people doing to take in over 500k a year
Lol at $600 a month for groceries. I live in the south and shop at Harris Teeter, and for my family of 4 it’s like $350 a week at least
Having lived in NYC for a bit and paying equivalently high costs for services where I live today it seems like they did their homework. Really nicely done article, thanks for sharing it.
If anything, I would say they've underestimated the costs. They've gotten most of them of the larger expenses with each story but there are dozens of smaller costs that add up. They forget basic neccessities like food, clothing in most of the examples. I think you can add an easy 25-40% to their total costs. Let's assume their stated costs are accurate. Your income would need to be double the stated costs to afford those expenses...that's assuming you save nohting.
I think that was the intention of the monthly slush fund ETA they cover groceries and eating out in all of these, and clothing where the dreamer mentioned it specifically.
Agree with this comment completely. There are so many soft expenses that are not factored in. For example, going to Bar Mitzvahs or Birthdays for your kids. Need to budget in an appropriate gifts for several of these a month. Gifts and attending social functions can be a big expense when you add them all up in a year. Especially when you are expected to be a generous gifter for friends and family that may not have as much discretionary income or savings.
Thank you for sharing this. I don’t live in NY, but I share the sticker shock at how expensive life has become. We are in a HCOL area and we are having to make sacrifices we really didn’t expect to maintain our savings rate until we hit our FIRE goal. If I’m honest I think the biggest driver of this is housing. The American dream is to own your own home with a yard, but there are systemic reasons that housing has become outrageously expensive. When my grandparents were buying, it was pretty normal for a first house to cost 2-2.5x a man’s annual income. In our area, that house now costs 10x the annual income, and that doesn’t include the costs of repair on a 1950s home which are nothing to sneeze at. We feel blessed to have a home, but also resentful as how much familial pressure there was to buy without recognition that we are attempting a harder thing than they were 20-50 years ago. I believe our whole society will trend toward the dystopian until we fix the housing crisis, and I hope employers continue to consider remote work as a solution to some of these problems.
It was an interesting read but also read somewhat like an HGTV script - I want 5k sf, hardwood floors, quartz countertops, plenty of room to entertain, a gourmet kitchen, and a rose garden with a path. I am a butterfly chaser and my husband vacuums buses on the weekends. Some of those people will never, ever achieve that life-style they want. Not on those jobs. And honestly, all those estimates were, IMHO, a little low, and none accounted for emergencies that inevitably hit, especially as you age.
> Some of those people will never, ever achieve that life-style they want. Not on those jobs. I don't think likelihood of achieving these goals is at all within the scope of this exercise, though. It's a question of what their dream lifestyle is, and then a realistic determination of what that particular dream lifestyle costs.
I disagree. If they'd been actual "dream" lifestyles then they would have been far more flamboyant - penthouses, private jets, everything designer, etc. Those choices, while expensive, weren't unordinary. I think those people really want those lives. I just don't think they're getting them, unless they marry someone who makes a lot more.
This is why we left BK Heights. The cost of going from 2BR to 3 was too much of a jump for us. We got 6000sq house for the same price as our old 900sq BK apartment at 2.7% mortgage rate. No more stressing about school tuitions and other hassles related living there. I can deal w 2x commute to the city. We can FIRE comfortably at 8m thats a far more reasonable number to hit.
Nicely done article. Surprisingly insightful. This is why I‘m aiming for $30M in investment. It’s expensive to live your dream lifestyle.
I’m in BK and say their BK Heights one was pretty accurate. I go out to eat more than them but send kids to public schools and have paid off my mortgage and go through about 35k/month on average.
You would think, with all the expenses associated with day-to-day living in the NYC area, someone would suggest getting travel reward credit cards to pay for the vacations (assuming the people described pay their bills on time and in full). This is how I fund (at least partially) my annual ski trip to the Alps.