What HHI would you need to have to send 2 kids to private assuming...

[Anonymous]

I think a big q is whether a commute will hurt your ability to be successful in your job or mean a sacrifice to ever seeing your kid. Some people have a 9-5 and they can drop kid at school, commute in and be back for dinner. If you start extremely early (finance) or finish at 6/7 then imo you can’t easily make burbs work AND the job and still get any family time. This is the issue with nyc is that the closest burb is still 1h commute at least

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a big q is whether a commute will hurt your ability to be successful in your job or mean a sacrifice to ever seeing your kid. Some people have a 9-5 and they can drop kid at school, commute in and be back for dinner. If you start extremely early (finance) or finish at 6/7 then imo you can’t easily make burbs work AND the job and still get any family time. This is the issue with nyc is that the closest burb is still 1h commute at least

Most people don’t go into the office everyday and do a full day. Also, you have weekends and vacations. Parachoial schools are half the price, and even less costly in the burbs. Most importantly, your husband is not working at all. This seems like a pretty easy problem in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Our HHI is 900k with 2 in private school—$100k total in tuition. Keep in mind, the $100k is after tax money (so you need $200k before tax to cover it.) My husband earns the lions share of kid income, and my salary (after tax) doesn’t even cover the tuition. We have a $9k per month mortgage, about $1800 in car payments each month…and of course lots of other stuff. I’d say at the $900k HHI it’s pretty comfortable with 2 kids in private but we aren’t going to be joining a country club or buying a second house any time soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is 900k with 2 in private school—$100k total in tuition. Keep in mind, the $100k is after tax money (so you need $200k before tax to cover it.) My husband earns the lions share of kid income, and my salary (after tax) doesn’t even cover the tuition. We have a $9k per month mortgage, about $1800 in car payments each month…and of course lots of other stuff. I’d say at the $900k HHI it’s pretty comfortable with 2 kids in private but we aren’t going to be joining a country club or buying a second house any time soon.

That was supposed to say lions share of OUR income

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a big q is whether a commute will hurt your ability to be successful in your job or mean a sacrifice to ever seeing your kid. Some people have a 9-5 and they can drop kid at school, commute in and be back for dinner. If you start extremely early (finance) or finish at 6/7 then imo you can’t easily make burbs work AND the job and still get any family time. This is the issue with nyc is that the closest burb is still 1h commute at least

Most people don’t go into the office everyday and do a full day. Also, you have weekends and vacations. Parachoial schools are half the price, and even less costly in the burbs. Most importantly, your husband is not working at all. This seems like a pretty easy problem in my opinion.

I would dispute that most people at that income level don’t have a full day of work every day. You don’t get to high six figures without most days being fairly intense - whether in office or not. My dh makes mid six figures and he is not clocking off at 430 to jump on an hour long train ride any day of the week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a big q is whether a commute will hurt your ability to be successful in your job or mean a sacrifice to ever seeing your kid. Some people have a 9-5 and they can drop kid at school, commute in and be back for dinner. If you start extremely early (finance) or finish at 6/7 then imo you can’t easily make burbs work AND the job and still get any family time. This is the issue with nyc is that the closest burb is still 1h commute at least

Most people don’t go into the office everyday and do a full day. Also, you have weekends and vacations. Parachoial schools are half the price, and even less costly in the burbs. Most importantly, your husband is not working at all. This seems like a pretty easy problem in my opinion.

I would dispute that most people at that income level don’t have a full day of work every day. You don’t get to high six figures without most days being fairly intense - whether in office or not. My dh makes mid six figures and he is not clocking off at 430 to jump on an hour long train ride any day of the week.

Assuming you aren’t the OP with the out of work DH, who could take care of the kids while his wife is working by the way.That said, the statement was that most people don’t commute to an office 5 days a week. It has nothing to do with how much they work during the week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a big q is whether a commute will hurt your ability to be successful in your job or mean a sacrifice to ever seeing your kid. Some people have a 9-5 and they can drop kid at school, commute in and be back for dinner. If you start extremely early (finance) or finish at 6/7 then imo you can’t easily make burbs work AND the job and still get any family time. This is the issue with nyc is that the closest burb is still 1h commute at least

Most people don’t go into the office everyday and do a full day. Also, you have weekends and vacations. Parachoial schools are half the price, and even less costly in the burbs. Most importantly, your husband is not working at all. This seems like a pretty easy problem in my opinion.

Most people at nearly a $1m income level have a pretty intense schedule and still want to see their kids. Bear in mind that commutes in the NYC area are 1-1.5h each way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We make about $500k and have one in college and one in private high school (we only did private for high school and only for one child). We’re paying about $125k/year in tuition and I am looking forward to this period being over. I can’t imagine doing this for K-12. And, our mortgage is relatively cheap - about $3k per month - as we bought our home in 2008.

Similar situation. 2 in college (one just finished in May) and one in private HS. HHI is about $600k with tuition of $120k. Kids started private in middle and high school. There is no way I would pay for private elementary school. We have plenty of money to save, travel and basically live the same way we did before private school. We saved aggressively from the first day we started working.

[Anonymous]

Private from K-12 vs just HS makes a big difference.

[Anonymous]

$500k
With that low savings and &130k a year and going up each year in tuition, I would move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$500k
With that low savings and &130k a year and going up each year in tuition, I would move.

I agree. Most people I know in OP’s situation moved to a more affordable area with better school options and just dealt with the commute. I disagree that people in high income brackets and demanding jobs don’t commute. In my most recent experience at a F 500, over half of the senior execs commuted in to the city. Between one stay at home parent and domestic help, it works out fine.