S/O American Dream. Would $500-750k HHI be enough for this lifestyle?

[Anonymous]

Not a “dream” to live in any American suburb if you ask me. With that income, I’d live in a smaller closer-in home and save aggressively to retire earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a “dream” to live in any American suburb if you ask me. With that income, I’d live in a smaller closer-in home and save aggressively to retire earlier.

So, one of the any suburbs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been reading all the replies and people seem to be really stuck on the 6 weeks of vacation thing.

My H and I both work remotely right now and are digital nomads moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. We really like to see different parts of the country and world and I don’t want that to change too much when we have kids, though I know we’ll have to pick a place to live to give them stability. To answer some questions, my in laws are gifting us a large down payment and my mom is planning to move near us when we have a baby to be our nanny. She’s very excited about this, it’s not something I asked for.

On the subject of vacations, do you think 4 trips would be doable on 500-750k?

Not with your other expenses. We have two kids and do, on average, a long ski weekend, a week or two weeks in Europe/similar, and two in Maine every year. Our europe trips, which are not budget but are not at all high-spend, are at least $17k each. Skiing is another several thousand, and Maine is also several thousand. Add in another kid and even more travel, I think this is at least $100k in travel alone.

How do you spend $17K on 1-2 weeks in Europe? Are you staying on Lake Como or in Capri? Flying business? Spending $1K / night for lodging? We go all the time and I struggle to find luxury experiences to take my $ outside of Paris, London, Lake Como, etc. Even supposedly luxury places have a very low ceiling. Idk how I’d spend $17K lol.

I’m not the OP, but I’ll take a stab at this:
Flights $1000-$1200 a person x 4 people is $4000-$4800. (Sure, there are occasional great deals out there, but even at this price, you probably planned ahead)
Hotels: let’s say 12 nights at $250 a night is $3000. This may be optimistic, especially in big cities.
Food x 4 people (including snacks)
Transportation x 4 people
Activities x 4 people

I think it would be pretty easy to hit $17k

You can half your housing expenses by staying in airbnb type of places (in Europe it's booking.com). Hotels in Europe are notoriously overpriced and also have limitations on how many ppl can stay in the room forcing families of 4 to get a second room. If you insist on hotels, especially nicer ones and have 2+ kids it's very easy to spend 17K on 10 days in Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems like some lala land weird idea of what family life should look like. We have an 8 figure hhi yet don’t take that many vacations, and it’s nothing to do with money. You seem to have an idealized version of life and want to slot kids into it, but that’s not how it works. Maybe when the kids are very young, but if your kids do serious sports or school activities, a lot of your schedule will revolve around that. For vacations, it depends what level of nice you want, but we have 4 kids, and a ski week alone is well over half your travel budget. You also seem to be ignoring sleep away camps, sport camps, etc. I think you want some instagram version of parenting.

Where do you ski if you spend 40K on a sling trip??? We've done a lavish skiing trip in Canadian Rockies at $10K for the whole week and fantastic nordic spas this year

For 5 people? No you haven't.

yea what a joke. We just went up to stowe for the 4 day holiday. Flights were $1600, truck rental was $350, lodging was 2,220 (and this was 10min drive from the resort), lift tickets were $3744. And Food was god only knows, I don’t even want to think about it. So before food and whatever miscellaneous crap we were $8k for 4 days in friggin Vermont. No family of 5 is traveling from DC to “the Canadian Rockies” to ski for 7 days for 10k. Lift tickets alone will put a family of 5 close to 10k for lift tickets alone.

We were supposed to meet friends in NJ for a long ski weekend and it was around 200/person per day, plus, they were sold out the entire weekend. People either have a lot of money to burn to support these pricing models or they are spending stupidly. These things that used to be somewhat accessible to the middle class (local ski slopes and local beaches) are becoming increasingly out of reach luxuries. Yet, people still spend. And there are crowds of people spending.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised by all the vacation naysayers. Where I live, it is very common for families to travel this much. Over every school break basically. Maybe not 6 weeks total but 3-4 for sure.

And yeah, the skiing out West, Caribbean spring break, east coast beach vacay schedule is very very common ime.

Anyway, we do this and we still managed to save up 5-6 million in the last 10 years despite facing kids. So idk why you’re all saying it is impossible.

where you “live”? are all of you teachers? My DH has a very busy medical practice and no way in hell is he taking 6 weeks off a year nor are any of our friends who are highly compensated professionals. Even me who is moderately compensated in a finance field could never take 6 vacations a year.

It's independently wealthy crowd, or people who can work remote (and often do during vacations), having digital businesses, having contract type schedules, or seasonal work, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems like some lala land weird idea of what family life should look like. We have an 8 figure hhi yet don’t take that many vacations, and it’s nothing to do with money. You seem to have an idealized version of life and want to slot kids into it, but that’s not how it works. Maybe when the kids are very young, but if your kids do serious sports or school activities, a lot of your schedule will revolve around that. For vacations, it depends what level of nice you want, but we have 4 kids, and a ski week alone is well over half your travel budget. You also seem to be ignoring sleep away camps, sport camps, etc. I think you want some instagram version of parenting.

Where do you ski if you spend 40K on a sling trip??? We've done a lavish skiing trip in Canadian Rockies at $10K for the whole week and fantastic nordic spas this year

For 5 people? No you haven't.

yea what a joke. We just went up to stowe for the 4 day holiday. Flights were $1600, truck rental was $350, lodging was 2,220 (and this was 10min drive from the resort), lift tickets were $3744. And Food was god only knows, I don’t even want to think about it. So before food and whatever miscellaneous crap we were $8k for 4 days in friggin Vermont. No family of 5 is traveling from DC to “the Canadian Rockies” to ski for 7 days for 10k. Lift tickets alone will put a family of 5 close to 10k for lift tickets alone.

We were supposed to meet friends in NJ for a long ski weekend and it was around 200/person per day, plus, they were sold out the entire weekend. People either have a lot of money to burn to support these pricing models or they are spending stupidly. These things that used to be somewhat accessible to the middle class (local ski slopes and local beaches) are becoming increasingly out of reach luxuries. Yet, people still spend. And there are crowds of people spending.

There’s this weird phenomenon where people don’t understand how the top 5% still represents 6.5-7 MILLION households in the US. People are spending because there’s 7 million households making $500K+.

When you look at it that way, the luxury travel market is actually arguably underserved and there’s a lot of TAM not captured.

Even if we limit to the top 1%, that’s 1.5 million households too.

[Anonymous]

500k seems tight for this TBH. Assuming the kids are in public school - private school would absolutely not be doable on this.

Full summer sleepaway camp is 20k per kid. Fully funded 529s is another small fortune per kid.

If you have two parents maxing out 401s and getting insurance through a private employer, your taxable income on 500k gross goes down like 425k.

After taxes you’re looking at about 275k for all living expenses, camps, vacations, college savings, brokerage contributions/savings, medical deductibles and out of pocket costs. A birthday party at a simple venue like a bouncy place is easily a thousand dollars per kid. Childcare for babies. Etc. feeding a family of five without worrying about takeout costs adds up quickly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:500k seems tight for this TBH. Assuming the kids are in public school - private school would absolutely not be doable on this.

Full summer sleepaway camp is 20k per kid. Fully funded 529s is another small fortune per kid.

If you have two parents maxing out 401s and getting insurance through a private employer, your taxable income on 500k gross goes down like 425k.

After taxes you’re looking at about 275k for all living expenses, camps, vacations, college savings, brokerage contributions/savings, medical deductibles and out of pocket costs. A birthday party at a simple venue like a bouncy place is easily a thousand dollars per kid. Childcare for babies. Etc. feeding a family of five without worrying about takeout costs adds up quickly

Also - I’m not saying it’s not a very healthy income for a family of 5. It absolutely is. But I think you need the higher end of this range at minimum to do everything you’re describing.

[Anonymous]

A lot of you described lives of miserable grind as "affluence". I can never understand this. Making these high incomes or having wealth and still being unable to take more than 1-2 consecutive weeks off or total of 6 weeks per year is a terrible life unless you are absolutely in love with your job and it defines you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised by all the vacation naysayers. Where I live, it is very common for families to travel this much. Over every school break basically. Maybe not 6 weeks total but 3-4 for sure.

And yeah, the skiing out West, Caribbean spring break, east coast beach vacay schedule is very very common ime.

Anyway, we do this and we still managed to save up 5-6 million in the last 10 years despite facing kids. So idk why you’re all saying it is impossible.

where you “live”? are all of you teachers? My DH has a very busy medical practice and no way in hell is he taking 6 weeks off a year nor are any of our friends who are highly compensated professionals. Even me who is moderately compensated in a finance field could never take 6 vacations a year.

+1

My DH is a lawyer. No way we are going away for 6 weeks a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised by all the vacation naysayers. Where I live, it is very common for families to travel this much. Over every school break basically. Maybe not 6 weeks total but 3-4 for sure.

And yeah, the skiing out West, Caribbean spring break, east coast beach vacay schedule is very very common ime.

Anyway, we do this and we still managed to save up 5-6 million in the last 10 years despite facing kids. So idk why you’re all saying it is impossible.

where you “live”? are all of you teachers? My DH has a very busy medical practice and no way in hell is he taking 6 weeks off a year nor are any of our friends who are highly compensated professionals. Even me who is moderately compensated in a finance field could never take 6 vacations a year.

That must be specialty specific. My brother is an oncologist with a successful practice and he takes a good 2-3 months off each year. He has junior doctors who have to work their way up who of course can’t do that.

Our entire circle of friends are doctors and medical professionals and I have never once heard of this....except the ones who have sold out to PE and they hardly work now at all.

[Anonymous]

We come pretty close to all that on 650K, but we still live in the house we bought 13 years ago for less than we make now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems like some lala land weird idea of what family life should look like. We have an 8 figure hhi yet don’t take that many vacations, and it’s nothing to do with money. You seem to have an idealized version of life and want to slot kids into it, but that’s not how it works. Maybe when the kids are very young, but if your kids do serious sports or school activities, a lot of your schedule will revolve around that. For vacations, it depends what level of nice you want, but we have 4 kids, and a ski week alone is well over half your travel budget. You also seem to be ignoring sleep away camps, sport camps, etc. I think you want some instagram version of parenting.

Where do you ski if you spend 40K on a sling trip??? We've done a lavish skiing trip in Canadian Rockies at $10K for the whole week and fantastic nordic spas this year

For 5 people? No you haven't.

yea what a joke. We just went up to stowe for the 4 day holiday. Flights were $1600, truck rental was $350, lodging was 2,220 (and this was 10min drive from the resort), lift tickets were $3744. And Food was god only knows, I don’t even want to think about it. So before food and whatever miscellaneous crap we were $8k for 4 days in friggin Vermont. No family of 5 is traveling from DC to “the Canadian Rockies” to ski for 7 days for 10k. Lift tickets alone will put a family of 5 close to 10k for lift tickets alone.

FYI, Canadian lift ticket prices are significantly cheaper than US prices...even resorts owned by US companies.

We were considering Whistler and it would have been US$380/adult for 4 days' lift tickets over Christmas.

Are you just making crap up or did you hit some weird promotion since December skiing sucks? We are headed to Whistler over college spring break early March and 4 days of lift tickets for 4 people is $3412 USD. We normally avoid Epic resports due to Epic lines. Hopefully since we are doing this during the week it won't be awful.

[Anonymous]

OP isn’t accounting for.l childcare costs either. She says her mom agreed to be her nanny. OP, I speak from experience when I say two things:

1. Your mom is not going to be your nanny to three kids. Unless she’s like lorelai Gilmore young. This arrangement will last fine for one baby but will be done by the second. It’s hard work and no one would do this for free full time especially beyond one baby.

2. Remote jobs will not last forever. You may have remote jobs now but that is unlikely to remain that way - fewer and fewer jobs are remote and for a myriad of reasons, you won’t hold onto your remote role forever (even if it feels that way now).

If you’re serious about moving around a lot? You can Airbnb your own home while you travel. Lots of people do that to fund excessive travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been reading all the replies and people seem to be really stuck on the 6 weeks of vacation thing.

My H and I both work remotely right now and are digital nomads moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. We really like to see different parts of the country and world and I don’t want that to change too much when we have kids, though I know we’ll have to pick a place to live to give them stability. To answer some questions, my in laws are gifting us a large down payment and my mom is planning to move near us when we have a baby to be our nanny. She’s very excited about this, it’s not something I asked for.

On the subject of vacations, do you think 4 trips would be doable on 500-750k?

Not with your other expenses. We have two kids and do, on average, a long ski weekend, a week or two weeks in Europe/similar, and two in Maine every year. Our europe trips, which are not budget but are not at all high-spend, are at least $17k each. Skiing is another several thousand, and Maine is also several thousand. Add in another kid and even more travel, I think this is at least $100k in travel alone.

How do you spend $17K on 1-2 weeks in Europe? Are you staying on Lake Como or in Capri? Flying business? Spending $1K / night for lodging? We go all the time and I struggle to find luxury experiences to take my $ outside of Paris, London, Lake Como, etc. Even supposedly luxury places have a very low ceiling. Idk how I’d spend $17K lol.

I’m not the OP, but I’ll take a stab at this:
Flights $1000-$1200 a person x 4 people is $4000-$4800. (Sure, there are occasional great deals out there, but even at this price, you probably planned ahead)
Hotels: let’s say 12 nights at $250 a night is $3000. This may be optimistic, especially in big cities.
Food x 4 people (including snacks)
Transportation x 4 people
Activities x 4 people

I think it would be pretty easy to hit $17k

You can half your housing expenses by staying in airbnb type of places (in Europe it's booking.com). Hotels in Europe are notoriously overpriced and also have limitations on how many ppl can stay in the room forcing families of 4 to get a second room. If you insist on hotels, especially nicer ones and have 2+ kids it's very easy to spend 17K on 10 days in Europe.

You're doing it wrong. We buy our EPIC passes the previous spring for unlimited skiing nationwide and internationally all season. We drive to VT using our own car and own our ski equipment. We use points for hotel stays out west (that include $100 credits towards breakfast, from which we make and save sandwiches for lunch) and stay with friends in VT. Have been 4 days in Utah at slopeside resort, and 3 days in VT for under 3K pp this winter. You have to plan in advance and leverage.