Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Ok. if the Reddit OP’s viewpoint is that she’s too good for Park Slope, then I guess she gets what she gets.
Anonymous wrote:Main Line and Westchester are not much comparison. Philadelphia is a very poor city. It has so much history and good food but the people are so provincial and often don't leave the state ever. The politics of the state are ridiculous and stuck in the 1800s.
yep. Not at all the density of high-powered legal jobs as NYC. so it’s not really a comparison for most NYC partners, except in that if they believe they are “poor” in NYC then yes, maybe they need to trade some of the prestige and money of NYC for something slower paced. I went to law school in NYC and practiced in Philly at the beginning of my career and the cool thing is that most of my cohort went on to do a broad variety of interesting stuff in/around Philly (small firms, legal aid, DA, AG, opened own non-law businesses) specifically because Philly is so much more affordable and you are not locked into the law firm track the way you are in NYC.
Exactly. No one is arguing Philly is more exciting or even overall better. But it is better not to live in a shoebox and shoehorning three kids into a tiny space so you can brag about being a New Yorker. Go look at Rittenhouse if you want an urban neighborhood in Philly.
+10000. The people who insist on doing this are insufferable.
They also are typically lifelong renters.
Yep. You need to have family money, be in finance, or be an entrepreneur to live the life the redditor wants. Being a non-rainmaker partner doesn’t cut it and their NW will be a fraction of what it would be if they lived in the suburbs or a lower cost of living metro.
Again - the density of law and finance jobs cannot be paralleled in other cities. People move to NYC because they want the NYC lifestyle- which yes, includes less square footage but much much more to do outside of the home and higher power work. If you don’t want that then don’t move there, but don’t delude yourself into thinking New Yorkers are crying themselves to sleep over your McMansion.
This is debatable, especially when you have kids. Whenever I’m in NYC visiting family/friends I’m struck by how the only thing to do is go out to eat or to a playground. If you’re actually wealthy with multiple nannies then maybe you’re living a fabulous NY lifestyle. But the average $800k lawyer is hardly living it up. They aren’t doing anything you can’t do in any metro area in the US. They are just doing it with less square footage and less disposable income.
Correct. They have 2-3 regular neighborhood restaurants (not Le Bernadin) like they would in Scarsdale or Bethesda and they take advantage of NYC's artistic offerings to a similar degree (almost never).
No one is jealous of or impressed by your living in NYC, unless you have a 30+mm net worth, big apartment, weekend house, and place in Florida or Aspen for the winter. Then yes, lord it over us.
+1000. For all but the impossibly wealthy, living in NYC with children is exhausting.
Did you live in NYC with children? I’m not so sure what’s exhausting about having your kids’ elementary school two blocks away; multiple playgrounds, parks, libraries and museums within walking distance; delicious (affordable and fast) food options on every block; then when they turn 13 they can get themselves wherever they need to go on the subway?
Totally fine if that is not for you but you just sound like a rube when you make those kinds of statements.
Yes I did, and life was much easier when we moved to a major US city where we could still walk to all those things (well, not museums, but those are an easy subway ride away) and kids were using good public transit without adult supervision by 13, but we also could afford a home with a little room to spread out (although still not large) and a yard so that they could play outside without constant supervision, and we could use the car easily when we needed to and get out of the city easily when we wanted to, and so much less traffic noise--I didn't realize how stressful the noise was until I moved to a city with less traffic. (To be clear, traffic where I live is very bad. It's just not NYC bad.)
I love NYC, but I didn't love it with kids.
Great you made a good choice for yourself instead of whining that you are poor in NYC. Unlike the dumb*ss OP.
Anyone making 850k and has their children splitting a bedroom fits the dumb*ss description. Also thinking you’re doing well with 850k a year in NYC is idiotic.
Since when is having children share a bedroom a negative? I shared a room with two sisters and turned out pretty damn great
The issue isn't sharing a room. It's parents choosing themselves over their kids. OP's kids don't share a room out of necessity, nor because OP thinks it's a good formative experience. They are sharing a room because OP made a series of short-sighted and selfish choices and now she's blaming the situation on her apparently recent discovery that NYC is super expensive.
We're your parents selfish idiots too, or....?
Curious, what did your parents refuse to buy you? An American girl doll? Nike sneakers? Anyway, whatever it was, that’s not why your life turned out the way it did.
Nope. I'm speaking as a parent who understands that you don't have THREE KIDS before for firing it out where you will live and where they will go to school. It's one think to have one kid before you have this figured out, but three? And then to blame circumstances that you knew to be the case before you had any kids?
If OP were living in poverty or lacked education, I'd be empathetic because it can be hard to make good choices if you haven't been given many opportunities in life and are in survival mode. But she's a lawyer. A partner! She made the CHOICE to ignore her kid's needs and refuse to plan for their future. They will resent her for this later.
You sound unhinged. I’m pretty sure the redditor is giving her kids a great upbringing with more advantages than the vast majority of the planet. Geez. Why are you so angry about where a complete stranger is making a life?
Making 850k and forcing children to live in shared bedrooms all to live in Carrolll Gardens (lol) is not a recipe for a great upbringing. The Red Hook projects are 2-3 blocks away too.
Agreed- sharing a bedroom and living within a few blocks of poor people is basically child abuse.
I disagree the proximity of housing projects matter. But the Redditor's kids aren't merely sharing a room. It's three kids sharing one room in a two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. That's *tight.* It's not child abuse but it's super weird. The Redditor is highly educated and makes a lot of money. Just... why? It's not necessary, and the Redditor has admitted that the reason for it is that she just doesn't like the housing stock available for 1.5m in Westchester. Also she's being disingenuous about her finances. She could move them to a slightly larger apartment (at least 3 bedrooms) for 8-10k/mo and they would be financially fine -- saving a bit less but not wanting for anything.
None of this is child abuse but it just doesn't make sense given the Redditor's resources. And again -- she's the one complaining. She's unhappy with their current set up but acting like it's totally outside her power to change it. Her kids are going to cotton on to her ridiculous victim mentality over stuff that is totally within her control (just requires making some grown up choices and planning a bit) and eventually they will be resentful. Especially when they realize their parents are actually rich. Eventually these kids are going to find out what she does for a living, how much she makes, and they are going to be so confused as to why they lived like this.
I think it’s because the truth is being a law partner with young kids is a crappy, crappy job where you are effectively selling your life for money, and she’s realized the money just makes her merely rich and not super rich.
It's this. None of the responders get it. For the quality of life that she has, which is objectively crappy because she probably works all the time while having 3 kids in a "tiny" (but large for NYC standards apartment), making $850K sucks. This is on her though - she could totally rent a 3 bedroom in Carroll Gardens for $10K a month instead of buying, and I imagine that is what she will do, but its just a matter of a few years before she starts feeling the school crunch so its always in the back of her mind like, am I throwing money away on just 2 more years in BK when i should buy now. She also probably hates her job but lacks the creativity to find another job that will pay that much. Commuting from westchester or NJ or LI sucks. I'm guessing she is in transactional law or she would move to DC to do litigation and have a much easier financial time.
Correct on all accounts. She cannot go in-house without a large paycut. She cannot transition to finance or medicine or tech or some career that would give a comparable comp package. The commute to NYC from the suburbs is so much worse than Boston or Philly. It is a tough pill to swallow for the Redditor, a lot of professionals wind up in this position based on some hazy notions of quality of life when they were 22 and making big decisions.
NP. This is exactly it. A lot of people move to NYC after college and build a career there without fully understanding what trade-offs will be involved when they are older.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Price wise they're very similar. Are you suggesting that $850k in Cobble Hill is like my $400k in Park Slope? Really?
Fwiw my subway ride from Park Slope is 13 minutes into my job in Manhattan. I think the F train from Bergen isn't much faster and there are no stops in lower Manhattan. Or do rich people in Cobble Hill only take Ubers?
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Ok. if the Reddit OP’s viewpoint is that she’s too good for Park Slope, then I guess she gets what she gets.
I think the Reddit OP would be thrilled to live in Park Slope. I have no idea what all these PPs are going on and on about. People would kill to live in Park Slope. It's no better or worse than Carroll Gardens. It's literally just a matter of different subway lines and preference for how close you want to be to Prospect Park.
Anonymous wrote:Main Line and Westchester are not much comparison. Philadelphia is a very poor city. It has so much history and good food but the people are so provincial and often don't leave the state ever. The politics of the state are ridiculous and stuck in the 1800s.
yep. Not at all the density of high-powered legal jobs as NYC. so it’s not really a comparison for most NYC partners, except in that if they believe they are “poor” in NYC then yes, maybe they need to trade some of the prestige and money of NYC for something slower paced. I went to law school in NYC and practiced in Philly at the beginning of my career and the cool thing is that most of my cohort went on to do a broad variety of interesting stuff in/around Philly (small firms, legal aid, DA, AG, opened own non-law businesses) specifically because Philly is so much more affordable and you are not locked into the law firm track the way you are in NYC.
Exactly. No one is arguing Philly is more exciting or even overall better. But it is better not to live in a shoebox and shoehorning three kids into a tiny space so you can brag about being a New Yorker. Go look at Rittenhouse if you want an urban neighborhood in Philly.
+10000. The people who insist on doing this are insufferable.
They also are typically lifelong renters.
Yep. You need to have family money, be in finance, or be an entrepreneur to live the life the redditor wants. Being a non-rainmaker partner doesn’t cut it and their NW will be a fraction of what it would be if they lived in the suburbs or a lower cost of living metro.
Again - the density of law and finance jobs cannot be paralleled in other cities. People move to NYC because they want the NYC lifestyle- which yes, includes less square footage but much much more to do outside of the home and higher power work. If you don’t want that then don’t move there, but don’t delude yourself into thinking New Yorkers are crying themselves to sleep over your McMansion.
This is debatable, especially when you have kids. Whenever I’m in NYC visiting family/friends I’m struck by how the only thing to do is go out to eat or to a playground. If you’re actually wealthy with multiple nannies then maybe you’re living a fabulous NY lifestyle. But the average $800k lawyer is hardly living it up. They aren’t doing anything you can’t do in any metro area in the US. They are just doing it with less square footage and less disposable income.
Correct. They have 2-3 regular neighborhood restaurants (not Le Bernadin) like they would in Scarsdale or Bethesda and they take advantage of NYC's artistic offerings to a similar degree (almost never).
No one is jealous of or impressed by your living in NYC, unless you have a 30+mm net worth, big apartment, weekend house, and place in Florida or Aspen for the winter. Then yes, lord it over us.
+1000. For all but the impossibly wealthy, living in NYC with children is exhausting.
Did you live in NYC with children? I’m not so sure what’s exhausting about having your kids’ elementary school two blocks away; multiple playgrounds, parks, libraries and museums within walking distance; delicious (affordable and fast) food options on every block; then when they turn 13 they can get themselves wherever they need to go on the subway?
Totally fine if that is not for you but you just sound like a rube when you make those kinds of statements.
Yes I did, and life was much easier when we moved to a major US city where we could still walk to all those things (well, not museums, but those are an easy subway ride away) and kids were using good public transit without adult supervision by 13, but we also could afford a home with a little room to spread out (although still not large) and a yard so that they could play outside without constant supervision, and we could use the car easily when we needed to and get out of the city easily when we wanted to, and so much less traffic noise--I didn't realize how stressful the noise was until I moved to a city with less traffic. (To be clear, traffic where I live is very bad. It's just not NYC bad.)
I love NYC, but I didn't love it with kids.
Great you made a good choice for yourself instead of whining that you are poor in NYC. Unlike the dumb*ss OP.
Anyone making 850k and has their children splitting a bedroom fits the dumb*ss description. Also thinking you’re doing well with 850k a year in NYC is idiotic.
Since when is having children share a bedroom a negative? I shared a room with two sisters and turned out pretty damn great
The issue isn't sharing a room. It's parents choosing themselves over their kids. OP's kids don't share a room out of necessity, nor because OP thinks it's a good formative experience. They are sharing a room because OP made a series of short-sighted and selfish choices and now she's blaming the situation on her apparently recent discovery that NYC is super expensive.
We're your parents selfish idiots too, or....?
Curious, what did your parents refuse to buy you? An American girl doll? Nike sneakers? Anyway, whatever it was, that’s not why your life turned out the way it did.
Nope. I'm speaking as a parent who understands that you don't have THREE KIDS before for firing it out where you will live and where they will go to school. It's one think to have one kid before you have this figured out, but three? And then to blame circumstances that you knew to be the case before you had any kids?
If OP were living in poverty or lacked education, I'd be empathetic because it can be hard to make good choices if you haven't been given many opportunities in life and are in survival mode. But she's a lawyer. A partner! She made the CHOICE to ignore her kid's needs and refuse to plan for their future. They will resent her for this later.
You sound unhinged. I’m pretty sure the redditor is giving her kids a great upbringing with more advantages than the vast majority of the planet. Geez. Why are you so angry about where a complete stranger is making a life?
Making 850k and forcing children to live in shared bedrooms all to live in Carrolll Gardens (lol) is not a recipe for a great upbringing. The Red Hook projects are 2-3 blocks away too.
Agreed- sharing a bedroom and living within a few blocks of poor people is basically child abuse.
I disagree the proximity of housing projects matter. But the Redditor's kids aren't merely sharing a room. It's three kids sharing one room in a two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. That's *tight.* It's not child abuse but it's super weird. The Redditor is highly educated and makes a lot of money. Just... why? It's not necessary, and the Redditor has admitted that the reason for it is that she just doesn't like the housing stock available for 1.5m in Westchester. Also she's being disingenuous about her finances. She could move them to a slightly larger apartment (at least 3 bedrooms) for 8-10k/mo and they would be financially fine -- saving a bit less but not wanting for anything.
None of this is child abuse but it just doesn't make sense given the Redditor's resources. And again -- she's the one complaining. She's unhappy with their current set up but acting like it's totally outside her power to change it. Her kids are going to cotton on to her ridiculous victim mentality over stuff that is totally within her control (just requires making some grown up choices and planning a bit) and eventually they will be resentful. Especially when they realize their parents are actually rich. Eventually these kids are going to find out what she does for a living, how much she makes, and they are going to be so confused as to why they lived like this.
I think it’s because the truth is being a law partner with young kids is a crappy, crappy job where you are effectively selling your life for money, and she’s realized the money just makes her merely rich and not super rich.
It's this. None of the responders get it. For the quality of life that she has, which is objectively crappy because she probably works all the time while having 3 kids in a "tiny" (but large for NYC standards apartment), making $850K sucks. This is on her though - she could totally rent a 3 bedroom in Carroll Gardens for $10K a month instead of buying, and I imagine that is what she will do, but its just a matter of a few years before she starts feeling the school crunch so its always in the back of her mind like, am I throwing money away on just 2 more years in BK when i should buy now. She also probably hates her job but lacks the creativity to find another job that will pay that much. Commuting from westchester or NJ or LI sucks. I'm guessing she is in transactional law or she would move to DC to do litigation and have a much easier financial time.
Correct on all accounts. She cannot go in-house without a large paycut. She cannot transition to finance or medicine or tech or some career that would give a comparable comp package. The commute to NYC from the suburbs is so much worse than Boston or Philly. It is a tough pill to swallow for the Redditor, a lot of professionals wind up in this position based on some hazy notions of quality of life when they were 22 and making big decisions.
NP. This is exactly it. A lot of people move to NYC after college and build a career there without fully understanding what trade-offs will be involved when they are older.
Most people who don’t like NYC move after a couple of years. The issue isn’t that OP didn’t understand the tradeoffs - it’s that she is spoiled and whiny. If she was in Chicago she’d probably be whining that it was too cold and her comp was lower than NYC.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Price wise they're very similar. Are you suggesting that $850k in Cobble Hill is like my $400k in Park Slope? Really?
Fwiw my subway ride from Park Slope is 13 minutes into my job in Manhattan. I think the F train from Bergen isn't much faster and there are no stops in lower Manhattan. Or do rich people in Cobble Hill only take Ubers?
It’s pretty clear that there is someone posting on here about “BoCoCa” who has lived in New York maybe one summer as an intern or summer associate and has no sense of the place.
Anonymous wrote:What a ridiculous thread. Park Sloper here with a $400K HHI raising 2 kids, public schools, loving our life despite living in a small two bedroom apartment. I'm sure we'd be happy in a dense suburb, also, but our jobs are tied to this location and we have a great work-life balance. "Where the action is" and "prestige" are not our priorities right now, and we head into Manhattan with our kids a handful of times per year (I commute to lower Manhattan every day). But there's tons to do locally and further afield in Brooklyn. How do we spend our weekends? Like many, in parks, playgrounds, at sports practices, and also at the beach (you can take a subway to Coney Island in under 30 mins!) at the BK botanic garden, the prospect park zoo, the library, restaurants, open streets every Saturday May-October, and so on. We're high enough income to be able to afford "whatever we want" around here. There is so much to do for free or low cost in NYC, when people talk about the HCOL they're really just talking about real estate. The OP on this thread and so many people responding are incredibly out of touch with what life is like - or what like can be like - raising a family in Brooklyn.
Park Slope and BoCoCa are worlds apart in price and culture. It’s not at all a given that someone living in Cobble Hill is up to move deeper into Brooklyn.
Oh yes … deeper into the terrifying and unmapped wilds of Park Slope.
Park Slope is much more left wing in an alternative lifestyle way. It is much further from Manhattan too. It is a completely separate thing.
Ok. if the Reddit OP’s viewpoint is that she’s too good for Park Slope, then I guess she gets what she gets.
I think the Reddit OP would be thrilled to live in Park Slope. I have no idea what all these PPs are going on and on about. People would kill to live in Park Slope. It's no better or worse than Carroll Gardens. It's literally just a matter of different subway lines and preference for how close you want to be to Prospect Park.
Can we talk about how great Prospect Park is? Love it. I have relatives who live near it and I never get tired of jogging there in the morning and grabbing some coffee on the way back.
Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry but this is so stupid and out of touch.
Not really. It’s good insight into what an upper middle class life in NYC looks like and the decisions that demographic has to make. I found a lot of it edifying.
Upper middle class! This is also stupid and out of touch.
This is in NYC...they can't afford an above average sized condo on that income
In a decent neighborhood, no she cannot. Carroll Gardens is already far from the action and not that expensive per square foot. She'd have to go to Bed-Stuy or Astoria to get the cost down and those are non-starters for most people in her position.
Curious, what “action” do you think a family with three small kids is looking for? They live in a safe and convenient family neighborhood with a very easy commute to downtown Manhattan.
If you don’t want “action” then why be in the city? Go move to Westchester.
So you think all the action is … on the UES?
A lot more so than Carroll Gardens. Add in Tribeca, UWS for the arts, East Village
I live on the UWS, have friends in Brooklyn, and regularly go to Carrol Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Ft. Greene for restaurants and shopping. I urge you to spend an afternoon on a nice day and just wander. The city is full of interesting places and things to do, and the subway can get you to most of them quickly and easily.
Anonymous wrote:If the reddit poster lived in Chicago she would be in a city with 90% of NYC's cultural offerings and could have a great house in the city (or in the burbs on public transit) and be able to afford private school (or send her kids to some of the best public schools in the country). The winters are bad, but NYC winters are no picnic either.
Please keep in mind she is in Carroll Gardens, not the West Village or UES. It’s not some art and culinary mecca. It’s pretty mid and far from the action. If anything she may be in a hipper area in Chicago.
Caroll Gardens is so much nicer and more livable than the UES (which is honestly kind of disgusting and boring as hell east of Park) and West Village (overrun with influencers).
DP, totally agree. Besides, NYC is huge, and there is no single place that counts as “art and culinary Mecca”. I am not much of a foodie, but if you want to keep up with the art stuff, you 1) should expect to get on the subway and 2) not necessarily want to live with 3 kids where all the action is - too many a-holes visiting.
UES has many Michelin stars, the Frick, the Met, Cooper Hewitt, neue, Guggenheim. It is the Mecca
.
So, UES covers the textbook visual arts with an occasional edgier thing thrown in. Cool. You still have to get on the subway to see a play or listen to live music. Or see some visual art created by a living artist.
No. You can walk from 5th Avenue to Lincoln Center and attend the opera or enjoy jazz or ballet. There are also living artists on the UES, most people residing there aren’t rich stereotypes.
that’s a long walk.
It's not---not for NYers, anyway. Plus you can make the park part of your excursion.
Anonymous wrote:If the reddit poster lived in Chicago she would be in a city with 90% of NYC's cultural offerings and could have a great house in the city (or in the burbs on public transit) and be able to afford private school (or send her kids to some of the best public schools in the country). The winters are bad, but NYC winters are no picnic either.
Please keep in mind she is in Carroll Gardens, not the West Village or UES. It’s not some art and culinary mecca. It’s pretty mid and far from the action. If anything she may be in a hipper area in Chicago.
Caroll Gardens is so much nicer and more livable than the UES (which is honestly kind of disgusting and boring as hell east of Park) and West Village (overrun with influencers).
DP, totally agree. Besides, NYC is huge, and there is no single place that counts as “art and culinary Mecca”. I am not much of a foodie, but if you want to keep up with the art stuff, you 1) should expect to get on the subway and 2) not necessarily want to live with 3 kids where all the action is - too many a-holes visiting.
UES has many Michelin stars, the Frick, the Met, Cooper Hewitt, neue, Guggenheim. It is the Mecca
.
So, UES covers the textbook visual arts with an occasional edgier thing thrown in. Cool. You still have to get on the subway to see a play or listen to live music. Or see some visual art created by a living artist.
No. You can walk from 5th Avenue to Lincoln Center and attend the opera or enjoy jazz or ballet. There are also living artists on the UES, most people residing there aren’t rich stereotypes.
that’s a long walk.
It's not---not for NYers, anyway. Plus you can make the park part of your excursion.
very few UES residents are going to walk across Central Park at night after seeing an opera a the Met lol. the PP who claimed that obviously has never really live in NYC.
New Yorker here. Ridiculous. Lawyers are so striver (I’m one btw). I work in house, am a single mom and make far less and have raised two kids here. I bought in an up and coming neighborhood which has gotten nicer over the years but still isn’t exactly park Avenue (oh well) and my 2 kids went to public, although one went to a parochial for high school. Very happy here, the city has so much to offer and I loved having teens in a city where I didn’t have to worry about drunk driving.
It’s people like this who only want to send their dc to private schools (why? There are amazing public options) and have a house in the hamptons and a huge apartment in the west village who think they’re ‘poor’.
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