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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I couldn’t book an appointment with my dermatologist for all of January because she took the month off. No family emergency…she just wanted to do it.

Again…must be the specialty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Some people are willing to sacrifice so their kids don’t have to.

[Anonymous]

Not sure about that income OP, but our HHI is a healthy 8 figures and we go on multiple high class vacations per year, own multiple properties, literally don’t give a **** about what we spend. I ****ing love being rich.

[Anonymous]

For those complaining about the cost of a skiing holiday, do cross country skiing instead.
I have my own pair and got to cross country ski for no cost just the other week here in Montgomery county

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A vacation is as expensive as you want it to be.
I know of one family who went to Disney world. They drove all the way, stayed at a motel in Kissimmee, made their own lunch and stored it in cooler bags. They were not able to bring food inside but were able to leave to go have lunch at their car in the parking lot and go back in again

[Anonymous]

Haven't read the posts but I things that stand out to me are the vacation time and money.

-No way are 2 professionals using that much time on travel alone. Once you have kids you burn a lot of leave and days off on stupid, one-off stuff.

-No way is that much travel only costing $70K for a family of 5. I'd probably double that.

I'm not a "you need a million dollars a year to have a decent lifestyle" poster but I honestly think your vacation time and money estimates are way off.

[Anonymous]

I don't get the poster who claims that spending $17K on Europe is preposterous.

We have 3 teens. Airfare during the summer is typically $1200+/person for economy. We buy on sale, months in advance and it's like $800.

Airbnb is easily $4k for the week and this is low end. I just searched for a place for 5 in Amsterdam (for example). $4k is totally low end.

Then museums are $100//day. Travel (train) is close to $100/day if you're moving around. Food is easily $400/day for 5.
So that's all $600/day and we're not talking high end.

So that all in (with airfare only being $800/person) is 13K for 7 days.

It add up quickly when you have a family of 5.

[Anonymous]

Maybe…it seems crazy, but even at that income level, you still have to budget and pick and choose what’s important to you.

Income $700,000

Fixed Expenses

Taxes $210,000
Housing $100,000
Utilities $10,000
Insurance (healthcare, car, life, disability) $15,000
Student loan payments? $15,000
Childcare? Private school? $40,000
Total $390,000

Variable Expenses

Retirement $100,000
Charity $20,000
Car savings $10,000
Vacations $70,000
College savings $30,000
Food $32,000
Gas $8,000
Everything else (clothes, camps for kids, furniture for your house, medication, gifts, etc) $30,000
Total $310,000

[Anonymous]

My American dream is to pay off our house, send our kids to college, and not die destitute. DCUM is delulu.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A vacation is as expensive as you want it to be.
I know of one family who went to Disney world. They drove all the way, stayed at a motel in Kissimmee, made their own lunch and stored it in cooler bags. They were not able to bring food inside but were able to leave to go have lunch at their car in the parking lot and go back in again

For skiing, time of year when you book is critical. Many ski resorts give huge discounts if you book your trip before like October…like 50% off daily lift prices.

The problem these days is you don’t know where the snow will be. It would have sucked to book a CO or UT trip this season.

[Anonymous]

I think you need a $1m HHI for that.

The travel is the big one. We travel a lot. We have 3 kids and now we need a suite or two adjoining rooms. We sold minimum 10k for anything. Peak winter and spring break trips easily cost us 20-40k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A vacation is as expensive as you want it to be.
I know of one family who went to Disney world. They drove all the way, stayed at a motel in Kissimmee, made their own lunch and stored it in cooler bags. They were not able to bring food inside but were able to leave to go have lunch at their car in the parking lot and go back in again

For skiing, time of year when you book is critical. Many ski resorts give huge discounts if you book your trip before like October…like 50% off daily lift prices.

The problem these days is you don’t know where the snow will be. It would have sucked to book a CO or UT trip this season.

This year, Utah sucks but CO was decent enough. We sent to Vail and while the snow was not as great as it usually is, it was totally fine and the overall experience (especially lift service) was vastly vastly superior to any big East Coast resorts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe…it seems crazy, but even at that income level, you still have to budget and pick and choose what’s important to you.

Income $700,000

Fixed Expenses

Taxes $210,000
Housing $100,000
Utilities $10,000
Insurance (healthcare, car, life, disability) $15,000
Student loan payments? $15,000
Childcare? Private school? $40,000
Total $390,000

Variable Expenses

Retirement $100,000
Charity $20,000
Car savings $10,000
Vacations $70,000
College savings $30,000
Food $32,000
Gas $8,000
Everything else (clothes, camps for kids, furniture for your house, medication, gifts, etc) $30,000
Total $310,000

Your tax estimate is too low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I couldn’t book an appointment with my dermatologist for all of January because she took the month off. No family emergency…she just wanted to do it.

Again…must be the specialty.

Yep, dermatology is well known and coveted for its high pay and cushy lifestyle. I’m encouraging my daughter to go into it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe…it seems crazy, but even at that income level, you still have to budget and pick and choose what’s important to you.

Income $700,000

Fixed Expenses

Taxes $210,000
Housing $100,000
Utilities $10,000
Insurance (healthcare, car, life, disability) $15,000
Student loan payments? $15,000
Childcare? Private school? $40,000
Total $390,000

Variable Expenses

Retirement $100,000
Charity $20,000
Car savings $10,000
Vacations $70,000
College savings $30,000
Food $32,000
Gas $8,000
Everything else (clothes, camps for kids, furniture for your house, medication, gifts, etc) $30,000
Total $310,000

Your tax estimate is too low.

Yep way too low