Who can afford 800K-1M homes? Genuine Curiosity!
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Anonymous
Wow...I would never have believed it. On my income, I'm in the top 0.66% (about top 40M in the world) and with our joint HHI, we qualify as top 0.01% in the world (about top 800K in the world). Huh. Whodathunkit. Living here in DC, it doesn't feel like we're that well off, but then DC like NY and CA tends to distort your evaluation. |
Anonymous
What if you made $1M/year? |
Anonymous
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We make about $1M a year and live on Capitol Hill. But, we bought in 2003, so only paid $500,000 for our house. It is now worth about $850,000. We had to put $$ into it because it was a bigtime fixer upper (we made much less back then) but we paid for most of the renovations with rent from our basement apartment. Now we turned the basement apartment into a family room and have a mortgage of about $2500/month.
We thought about buying a more expensive house in NW, but we love the Hill and like that we could both easily change jobs and take a huge pay cut and still live in our house. We just save a ton, maybe for a summer house down the road. |
Anonymous
| Fake? If your home appreciates, will that be fake, too? |
Anonymous
That's funny, because I am fine paying $6k a month for mortgage (and actually do) but would never spend $2k a month on private school. NEVER!!!!! I could afford to (even with my mortgage) but thought the private school kids I went to college with were simultaneously way too worldly and way too sheltered, with a healthy dose of entitlement and unfounded high self estemm. So to each their own I guess! |
Anonymous
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you're not rich because you are in the top 1% of the GLOBAL rich list, you moron. the average per capita income in the world is $7k.
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Anonymous
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Two lawyer household with two kids here. Annual income is in the low-$300s. We just bought a house for around $875K. It's actually not the fanciest house but in a very expensive area. We also rent out our first house, which we bought at the height of the market for $475K. The rent just barely covers our mortgage payment for that one.
How did we do it, especially since we had no equity from a prior home? We saved up a ton of money for a down payment. We also received money from my husband's parents, which is sort of embarrassing to say since I am sure we would be judged for doing so. But the money we received from them really wasn't that much compared to the total cost of the house, and they genuinely wanted to give it to us so that their grandchildren could be in a good school district and closer to them. Finally, our credit scores rock. |
Anonymous
| Inheritance. |
Anonymous
nope - not on your life My father made a million/yr way back in the day and we lived in modest homes. They never had a mortgage either. You never know what the future holds. I've seen people living high on the hog, only to lose it all. My kids' education is my priority, too. So it's private K-8 for now and public high. so . . . nope . . . never!!! You can live comfortably in a modest home, as there's no need to be showy. People buy large homes to brag. I wasn't raised that way. |
Anonymous
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Prior poster, it is interesting to me that you would prefer to send your kids to private school for K-8 and public high schools. I am genuinely curious about your rationale for this, because I've always heard people say the opposite (that they would not pay big buck for elementary and middle school, but would do so for high school since that is where kids learn more complex work and since high school is so important for college). Any explanation (and I ask respectfully and without judgment, just curiousity)?
Anyway, I've also seen people who lived very expensive lifestyles lose everything during this recession. One family lived in designer clothes, had a private plane, went on several shopping sprees a year in NYC, sent their kids to private schools, and lived in million dollar homes. Lavish lifestyle is an understatement when it comes to these people. I've seen how the recession changed them, how they cannot even afford to send their kids to college now. It's made me think a lot about entitlement and greed. Had the family only lived within their means the whole time in an upper-middle class lifestyle, perhaps with the schools and house but without all of the clothes, cars, vacations, etc., they could have survived this recession easily. Instead, they are now suffering, and have been for years, and it is sad sight indeed to see the father slogging away trying to support the family who became accustomed to such excess. Don't get me wrong. I want money and I want security. I even want nice things. But I hope that I never become completely dependent on money for my happiness. |
Anonymous
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I teach (PT) and today I'm home with a sick child. So I'm not on the clock in case anyone wishes to blast me.
But experience has taught me that a solid K-8 education is the way to go, and in my system, there are no K-8 schools. So we went the private route. While critical thinking skills are essential, w/o the basics, kids will never reach these higher level skills. In a K-8, true articulation takes place, and there is a curriculum with backward planning. So what I learn in first grade is buidling upon what I learned in K. It's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. So with fantastic skills, students should do well in a public high school - where there are more opportunies to specialize in certain areas (and more resources in general). Most of the students coming from our local K-8 private who enter grade 9 at my high school are amazed at the resources and take full advantage of what we have to offer.
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Anonymous
| We just bought a house and borrowed at a 3.375% fixed rate for 15 years. Out of a $5.5K monthly payment interest is below $2K from the very beginning, not that scary. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
I agree wholeheartedly with this. We in fact made this very calculation. PP will pay more than $216,000 for tuition (plus the public school tuition embedded in her taxes) at what must be a substandard private school (to only cost $2,000 a month). We decided we'd rather that much more house and utilize superior public schools. |
Anonymous
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As an "insider," I can honestly say that no matter how "great" you think your elementary and middle schools are, they are simply driven by tests. So there's NO comparison. It's private all the way!
And to the sense of entitlement poster who claims private schools kids are sheltered - My child is not entitled. However, many of the students in the "W" clusters - who attend their local publics - are. And I won't go into how sheltered many of those kids are either. So don't kid yourself.
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