NYC law partner w/ kids: "$850K gross is not enough to live on"

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. [b]Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

I don’t think you should be telling people this.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Go look at the map, the Red Hook projects are a good 15-20 minutes hike with a highway in the middle of it. Besides, there is no place in the walkable areas of NYC that is not within 15 minutes from some “undesirable” housing.

It’s a seven minute walk from Red Hook East to the Dunkin in Carroll Gardens. There’s an army of criminals and sex offenders in that housing projects. Also keep in mind Carroll Gardens is a big step down from Brooklyn Heights and even Cobble Hill.

New Yorker here. Tell me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade without telling me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade.

90 percent of the posts on here are written by tourists who don’t know the city.

Cobble hill is extremely desirable. Carrol gardens is extremely desirable. As is Park Slope and many other neighborhoods you haven’t heard of bc you clearly don’t know NYC. FWIW Brooklyn heights has long been considered a bit passé and boring, although the promenade is pretty. It is not a ‘top’ area to live for most people. Red hook is a desirable and totally fun place to live. Yes, there are many projects in one section but guess what? That’s true of pretty much every NYC neighborhood. The city was designed that way. And there are also many mixed income buildings around as well. Again, this was by design, and the city has ramped up those types of projects. The city is meant to be vibrant and not full of just wealthy white people who are lawyers and finance people. If you want that, go to the suburbs and eat at a chain restaurant. And fyi the public school system, especially at the high school level is amazing. And kids can go to any school they apply to and get in. They are not limited by zone.

Desirability is measured by price. Brooklyn Heights is more expensive than Park Slope and Carroll Gardens because it is more desirable.

No one said the redditor is white. It’s also appalling you assume lawyers and financiers are all whites. There wasn’t some city charter or decree saying it has to be “vibrant” and mixed income. The last three decades of NY say otherwise.

The public schools are horrible. Even if you get into Stuyvesant, it is an unhealthy environment.

Your real estate info is inaccurate. BH has some very expensive/large real estate along the promenade but overall it is not necessarily more expensive than other areas of Brooklyn. Of course you forgot DUMBO, boerum hill, LIC, and a number of other areas that have great real estate bc you don’t actually know the neighborhoods.

You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the public schools. You mention Stuy bc as a tourist it’s the one school you’ve heard of. I won’t list out what my kids had access to and some of their peers bc it will identify me, but I am constantly in awe of the opportunities they had just living here. Truly irreplaceable, no matter how much money I had.

And of course there are non whites in those fields, but they are still largely white, sorry that’s just the reality (that many of us would like to see changed). My point was that I suspect many people like you worried about living near ‘the projects’ are primarily concerned about being around non whites or people who aren’t wealthy/UMC. I am constantly amazed by how often people unconsciously view non white areas as ‘dangerous’. I’ve lived in NYC for decades and of course there is affordable/public housing around, as there is everywhere in NYC. But I’ve literally never ever been the victim of a crime except two times in the least diverse areas of NYC- 25 years ago near Wall Street when my car window was broken and when I lived in Brooklyn heights and someone stole my purse when I left it at a bar (so sort of my fault). My kids have never been the victim of a crime either. Not once.

Sorry, but you just don’t know anything so you should stop pretending you do.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Dp. Thanks for this. New Yorker here also with 2 kids and a similar HHI and we are very happy living here. I bought a starter apartment in the EV years ago, and then later bought my neighbors place and combined them. It’s not fancy but we adore it here, my kids went to great schools and had amazing opportunities.

Posters a page or two ago were saying the EV was for recent grads and not real New Yorkers. Who knew?! Thanks for your post.

Pp. Ha, there are young people around and it is funny to walk by bars I went to years ago in my 20s, but yes, there is definitely a community of families down here and nearby on the LES. Definitely some creatives, architects, advertising people, designers, film business, etc who just couldn’t stomach moving to the UES UWS or the suburbs, but then a number of regular boring people like me (a lawyer). I thought about moving myself at one point but then realized I like it here, my space was tight but large enough for my family, and we had everything we needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who in the right mind has 3 kids in the city?! I grew up in Paris and people have one, max 2. WIth 3, you move outside the city and commute.

So true, and in France they bribe people to have more than two kids and still most people won't do it if they are in the city. It is not just expense, it's also logistics and space and noise and just not wanting to have this complicated, excessive lifestyle. Three makes travel more difficult, eating out. It is just a hassle. I am confused as to what compels a family where both parents work, living in an apartment in the city, to have a third child. I understand it is different if one of you is staying home, if you live in the country, if you are very wealthy and have homes both places and staff or send the kids off to be partially raised by grandparents in the summer or whatever. But just an average family with jobs in the city? Who would look around and think, "yes, this, but with THREE children, that will be ideal." It will obviously be a mess. Why,

It just makes you seem like you don't understand where children come from or are an impractical or impulsive person who does not think things through. I don't understand.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. [b]Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

I don’t think you should be telling people this.

Yea, educated people making 850k really want their kid to be in a classroom with Nicki minaj and Madonna’s spoiled spawn

[Anonymous]

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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.

Go look at the map, the Red Hook projects are a good 15-20 minutes hike with a highway in the middle of it. Besides, there is no place in the walkable areas of NYC that is not within 15 minutes from some “undesirable” housing.

It’s a seven minute walk from Red Hook East to the Dunkin in Carroll Gardens. There’s an army of criminals and sex offenders in that housing projects. Also keep in mind Carroll Gardens is a big step down from Brooklyn Heights and even Cobble Hill.

New Yorker here. Tell me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade without telling me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade.

90 percent of the posts on here are written by tourists who don’t know the city.

Cobble hill is extremely desirable. Carrol gardens is extremely desirable. As is Park Slope and many other neighborhoods you haven’t heard of bc you clearly don’t know NYC. FWIW Brooklyn heights has long been considered a bit passé and boring, although the promenade is pretty. It is not a ‘top’ area to live for most people. Red hook is a desirable and totally fun place to live. Yes, there are many projects in one section but guess what? That’s true of pretty much every NYC neighborhood. The city was designed that way. And there are also many mixed income buildings around as well. Again, this was by design, and the city has ramped up those types of projects. The city is meant to be vibrant and not full of just wealthy white people who are lawyers and finance people. If you want that, go to the suburbs and eat at a chain restaurant. And fyi the public school system, especially at the high school level is amazing. And kids can go to any school they apply to and get in. They are not limited by zone.

Desirability is measured by price. Brooklyn Heights is more expensive than Park Slope and Carroll Gardens because it is more desirable.

No one said the redditor is white. It’s also appalling you assume lawyers and financiers are all whites. There wasn’t some city charter or decree saying it has to be “vibrant” and mixed income. The last three decades of NY say otherwise.

The public schools are horrible. Even if you get into Stuyvesant, it is an unhealthy environment.

Your real estate info is inaccurate. BH has some very expensive/large real estate along the promenade but overall it is not necessarily more expensive than other areas of Brooklyn. Of course you forgot DUMBO, boerum hill, LIC, and a number of other areas that have great real estate bc you don’t actually know the neighborhoods.

You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the public schools. You mention Stuy bc as a tourist it’s the one school you’ve heard of. I won’t list out what my kids had access to and some of their peers bc it will identify me, but I am constantly in awe of the opportunities they had just living here. Truly irreplaceable, no matter how much money I had.

And of course there are non whites in those fields, but they are still largely white, sorry that’s just the reality (that many of us would like to see changed). My point was that I suspect many people like you worried about living near ‘the projects’ are primarily concerned about being around non whites or people who aren’t wealthy/UMC. I am constantly amazed by how often people unconsciously view non white areas as ‘dangerous’. I’ve lived in NYC for decades and of course there is affordable/public housing around, as there is everywhere in NYC. But I’ve literally never ever been the victim of a crime except two times in the least diverse areas of NYC- 25 years ago near Wall Street when my car window was broken and when I lived in Brooklyn heights and someone stole my purse when I left it at a bar (so sort of my fault). My kids have never been the victim of a crime either. Not once.

Sorry, but you just don’t know anything so you should stop pretending you do.

Yea, people really want to be in LIC and boring hill (next to a ghetto) instead of BK Heights, which has some of the best private schools and is one stop from Manhattan.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Dp.

Lol. Even though you’re trying to pretend with ‘BoCoCa’, you clearly don’t know current NYC, so just stop. It’s like your understanding of NYC is from sex in the city reruns. You aren’t understanding that Brooklyn *is* the destination. Hate to tell you, but so is queens now too. You’re thinking of a world where only Manhattan is desirable, and therefore only the closest Brooklyn nabes are good (although I notice you never mention DUMBO bc you’re clearly not a local). That changed years ago. I live in Manhattan and my kids went to high school in Manhattan and guess where they all went out? Brooklyn.

[Anonymous]

I don't think people realize how much money it takes to live comfortably and I get that comfortably is relative. I totally get the Reddit attorney.

I often say it's hard to live on a $350k HHI in Del Ray with 2 teens. It truly is. You're in private school full pay with 2 kids who also have sports/activities. If you have a boy who also drives, the insurance kicks in + another car. You have a couple times of the year to do holidays that is more than a beach vacation - yes that is part of living comfortably or AKA without losing your mind and actually enjoying your life - and then you have your mortgage, fixed costs.

Food is insane - it's like $20 for a lunch sandwich in Del Ray by the way and groceries aren't cheap - teens eat a ton! So parents work and dining out is again, required sometimes because we do not want to lose our minds cooking post work every damn day - that is easily $100 dining out or $80 for take out from a restaurant. Even at 5 Guys it's going to be about that much if the kids order a milkshake with their burger. This is all not including fixed costs, savings, emergency fund, etc. It's just a lot of money when you added it all up.

Living life not spending anything is totally unrealistic. Maybe you can do that without kids but once you have the kids, forget about it. It's just not feasible to suggest every vacation you drive and you cook every day of the week except for once a month. If you don't want to be stuck in traffic, want a quality public school neighborhood, want to live comfortably, again, $350k/yr HHI is about what you really have to be at and that's NOT living large. That's all with the kids mow the lawn, we have 1 car payment and do 2 vacations per year. It's really not a big life we have.. so sorry to burst your bubble anyone who says we are richer than gods.

It's really hard to know someone's financials unless you know their family. If you have a kid with learning disabilities or paying out of pocket for therapy, even $600k HHI annually with 3 kids is not a promise of the potential of living large. It totally depends on that family's circumstances.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to [b]move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

Of course you assume that moving out of the city means a McMansion and finished basement. You’re rather provincial. This is exactly why you need to make a lot of money and not have to send your kids to school with the offspring of people like PP. you don’t get it, PP, but that’s why people pay for private, especially in Manhattan.

A lot of people like PP and probably the Redditor grew up in an okay suburb like new Rochelle or ronkonkoma. Not nice, not dangerous. They view living in nyc even in a shoebox as a major step up and don’t understand what life in Darien or Locust is like. It is not McMansions and finished basements

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. [b]Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

I don’t think you should be telling people this.

Yea, educated people making 850k really want their kid to be in a classroom with Nicki minaj and Madonna’s spoiled spawn

Nice sock puppet but my point was that the peer group in NYC- yes even in publics- is phenomenal. And yeah, LaGuardia is extremely prestigious. It turns out incredible talent. I’ve actually been there and you have no idea what these kids can do. There is a reason a tv show/movie was based on it. It’s an incredible place. And free.

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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.

Dp.

Lol. Even though you’re trying to pretend with ‘BoCoCa’, you clearly don’t know current NYC, so just stop. It’s like your understanding of NYC is from sex in the city reruns. You aren’t understanding that Brooklyn *is* the destination. Hate to tell you, but so is queens now too. You’re thinking of a world where only Manhattan is desirable, and therefore only the closest Brooklyn nabes are good (although I notice you never mention DUMBO bc you’re clearly not a local). That changed years ago. I live in Manhattan and my kids went to high school in Manhattan and guess where they all went out? Brooklyn.

Dumbo is for foreign trust fund kids to take photos of the bridge and pretend to be photographers.

“Queens is the destination” discredits everything you have to say. People with real money and class live in Manhattan and limited parts of BK.

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. [b]Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

I don’t think you should be telling people this.

Yea, educated people making 850k really want their kid to be in a classroom with Nicki minaj and Madonna’s spoiled spawn

Nice sock puppet but my point was that the peer group in NYC- yes even in publics- is phenomenal. And yeah, LaGuardia is extremely prestigious. It turns out incredible talent. I’ve actually been there and you have no idea what these kids can do. There is a reason a tv show/movie was based on it. It’s an incredible place. And free.

No sock puppet. I used to date a trashy chick who went there, real outer borough type with an accent and said see you next Tuesday a lot. Don’t tell me how great a peer group it is.

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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.

Go look at the map, the Red Hook projects are a good 15-20 minutes hike with a highway in the middle of it. Besides, there is no place in the walkable areas of NYC that is not within 15 minutes from some “undesirable” housing.

It’s a seven minute walk from Red Hook East to the Dunkin in Carroll Gardens. There’s an army of criminals and sex offenders in that housing projects. Also keep in mind Carroll Gardens is a big step down from Brooklyn Heights and even Cobble Hill.

New Yorker here. Tell me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade without telling me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade.

90 percent of the posts on here are written by tourists who don’t know the city.

Cobble hill is extremely desirable. Carrol gardens is extremely desirable. As is Park Slope and many other neighborhoods you haven’t heard of bc you clearly don’t know NYC. FWIW Brooklyn heights has long been considered a bit passé and boring, although the promenade is pretty. It is not a ‘top’ area to live for most people. Red hook is a desirable and totally fun place to live. Yes, there are many projects in one section but guess what? That’s true of pretty much every NYC neighborhood. The city was designed that way. And there are also many mixed income buildings around as well. Again, this was by design, and the city has ramped up those types of projects. The city is meant to be vibrant and not full of just wealthy white people who are lawyers and finance people. If you want that, go to the suburbs and eat at a chain restaurant. And fyi the public school system, especially at the high school level is amazing. And kids can go to any school they apply to and get in. They are not limited by zone.

Desirability is measured by price. Brooklyn Heights is more expensive than Park Slope and Carroll Gardens because it is more desirable.

No one said the redditor is white. It’s also appalling you assume lawyers and financiers are all whites. There wasn’t some city charter or decree saying it has to be “vibrant” and mixed income. The last three decades of NY say otherwise.

The public schools are horrible. Even if you get into Stuyvesant, it is an unhealthy environment.

Your real estate info is inaccurate. BH has some very expensive/large real estate along the promenade but overall it is not necessarily more expensive than other areas of Brooklyn. Of course you forgot DUMBO, boerum hill, LIC, and a number of other areas that have great real estate bc you don’t actually know the neighborhoods.

You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the public schools. You mention Stuy bc as a tourist it’s the one school you’ve heard of. I won’t list out what my kids had access to and some of their peers bc it will identify me, but I am constantly in awe of the opportunities they had just living here. Truly irreplaceable, no matter how much money I had.

And of course there are non whites in those fields, but they are still largely white, sorry that’s just the reality (that many of us would like to see changed). My point was that I suspect many people like you worried about living near ‘the projects’ are primarily concerned about being around non whites or people who aren’t wealthy/UMC. I am constantly amazed by how often people unconsciously view non white areas as ‘dangerous’. I’ve lived in NYC for decades and of course there is affordable/public housing around, as there is everywhere in NYC. But I’ve literally never ever been the victim of a crime except two times in the least diverse areas of NYC- 25 years ago near Wall Street when my car window was broken and when I lived in Brooklyn heights and someone stole my purse when I left it at a bar (so sort of my fault). My kids have never been the victim of a crime either. Not once.

Sorry, but you just don’t know anything so you should stop pretending you do.

I said Stuy because there’s only three good schools in the Bronx. Horace Mann, Fieldston, and Riverdale

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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.

Go look at the map, the Red Hook projects are a good 15-20 minutes hike with a highway in the middle of it. Besides, there is no place in the walkable areas of NYC that is not within 15 minutes from some “undesirable” housing.

It’s a seven minute walk from Red Hook East to the Dunkin in Carroll Gardens. There’s an army of criminals and sex offenders in that housing projects. Also keep in mind Carroll Gardens is a big step down from Brooklyn Heights and even Cobble Hill.

New Yorker here. Tell me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade without telling me you haven’t been to NYC in at least a decade.

90 percent of the posts on here are written by tourists who don’t know the city.

Cobble hill is extremely desirable. Carrol gardens is extremely desirable. As is Park Slope and many other neighborhoods you haven’t heard of bc you clearly don’t know NYC. FWIW Brooklyn heights has long been considered a bit passé and boring, although the promenade is pretty. It is not a ‘top’ area to live for most people. Red hook is a desirable and totally fun place to live. Yes, there are many projects in one section but guess what? That’s true of pretty much every NYC neighborhood. The city was designed that way. And there are also many mixed income buildings around as well. Again, this was by design, and the city has ramped up those types of projects. The city is meant to be vibrant and not full of just wealthy white people who are lawyers and finance people. If you want that, go to the suburbs and eat at a chain restaurant. And fyi the public school system, especially at the high school level is amazing. And kids can go to any school they apply to and get in. They are not limited by zone.

Desirability is measured by price. Brooklyn Heights is more expensive than Park Slope and Carroll Gardens because it is more desirable.

No one said the redditor is white. It’s also appalling you assume lawyers and financiers are all whites. There wasn’t some city charter or decree saying it has to be “vibrant” and mixed income. The last three decades of NY say otherwise.

The public schools are horrible. Even if you get into Stuyvesant, it is an unhealthy environment.

Your real estate info is inaccurate. BH has some very expensive/large real estate along the promenade but overall it is not necessarily more expensive than other areas of Brooklyn. Of course you forgot DUMBO, boerum hill, LIC, and a number of other areas that have great real estate bc you don’t actually know the neighborhoods.

You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the public schools. You mention Stuy bc as a tourist it’s the one school you’ve heard of. I won’t list out what my kids had access to and some of their peers bc it will identify me, but I am constantly in awe of the opportunities they had just living here. Truly irreplaceable, no matter how much money I had.

And of course there are non whites in those fields, but they are still largely white, sorry that’s just the reality (that many of us would like to see changed). My point was that I suspect many people like you worried about living near ‘the projects’ are primarily concerned about being around non whites or people who aren’t wealthy/UMC. I am constantly amazed by how often people unconsciously view non white areas as ‘dangerous’. I’ve lived in NYC for decades and of course there is affordable/public housing around, as there is everywhere in NYC. But I’ve literally never ever been the victim of a crime except two times in the least diverse areas of NYC- 25 years ago near Wall Street when my car window was broken and when I lived in Brooklyn heights and someone stole my purse when I left it at a bar (so sort of my fault). My kids have never been the victim of a crime either. Not once.

Sorry, but you just don’t know anything so you should stop pretending you do.

Yea, people really want to be in LIC and boring hill (next to a ghetto) instead of BK Heights, which has some of the best private schools and is one stop from Manhattan.

Again, your understanding of NYC is touristy/dated and like from a SATC episode. And guess what? Packer is a good school but it is one of many many many good schools around (and certainly not considered top btw), all of them highly commutable bc NYC is fairly small. Btw there’s a jail near BH. Not that you’ve ever been anywhere near there in decades.

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Anonymous wrote: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[i] who think they’re ‘poor’.

Again, striver.

It’s not unreasonable that a person earning close to a million a year thinks they should have more purchasing power than a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn.

It sounds like you have lower standards if you are okay being a single parent, NY public schools and live on much less in NY.

Nah, striver. I live in Manhattan fwiw. And Brooklyn is hardly dumpy. Clearly you haven’t stepped foot there in ages, if ever. NYC public schools are amazing. Bronx science? Stuy? LaGuardia? Madonna’s dd went to LaGuardia. Timothy Chalamet. Jennifer Aniston. [b]Niki Minaj. The list goes on. My dc got in there but opted to go elsewhere. Dc was able to qualify for LaGuardia by attending another amazing NYC public school that had a dedicated arts program for training. I literally did not pay for a single lesson.

And those are just the schools you know.
Plus museums, parks, plays, galleries, fashion, art, literature, center of the financial world, etc.


But sure, I guess my standards are too low. I should have given it all up to move to the burbs and live in a McMansion with a finished basement. Got it

I don’t think you should be telling people this.

Yea, educated people making 850k really want their kid to be in a classroom with Nicki minaj and Madonna’s spoiled spawn

Nice sock puppet but my point was that the peer group in NYC- yes even in publics- is phenomenal. And yeah, LaGuardia is extremely prestigious. It turns out incredible talent. I’ve actually been there and you have no idea what these kids can do. There is a reason a tv show/movie was based on it. It’s an incredible place. And free.

No sock puppet. I used to date a trashy chick who went there, real outer borough type with an accent and said see you next Tuesday a lot. Don’t tell me how great a peer group it is.

Lol so you know one person who went to LAG? How many years ago? You’re really ridiculous