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

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

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

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

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

I really question how people are finding an income of 750k tight. I posted earlier in the thread about how we are pretty sloppy spenders (we don’t budget, we don’t look at grocery prices, we eat lunch out frequently or get takeout for dinner, our kids do costly activities, and we take really bougie trips for a little of probably ~ 75k. My husband has a porche which he pays to store in the winter. We belong to an expensive golf club etc. I can keep going on here).

And yet even with all of this spending, we still managed to save up 6 mil for retirement in the last 10 years. Could it be more without all of the above? Sure. But you also have to enjoy life. We might get cancer and die young.

What are ya’ll spending your money on aside from mortgage?[/quote]

Yeah your kids are in public school. Most people at this income have kids in private. Sounds like you’d rather burn money on pointless things than give your kids a lifelong gift of solid education.[/quote]

Most people at this income don’t send their kids to private school.  Just look at high income zip codes and percent of kids in public vs private.  At most, it’s 50/50, but more often it’s 60%+ in public.  That’s why they move to say the Langley zip code.[/quote]
I honestly think that where in your "luxury spending" priority list private school education falls is a huge cultural divide (leaving aside uber-wealthy who don't have to think about this at all). My parents are immigrants. By the time I was in MS, they weren't scraping together private school tuition by any means...but even if they were less wealthy they would have sacrificed the big, custom-built house and fancy vacations to provide it. And this was in a nationally-ranked school district...our private (not DC area) was better. They were wealthier than most of their immigrant friends, who all prioritized private school education for their kids before other luxuries.

My DH goes back to Mayflower on one side and several generations in the US on the other. His UMC parents lived in a great school district, and private would never have occurred to them. When we got married, I said we needed to manage our finances such that private would always be an option wherever we lived. Kids did not start in private, but they are both in one now (MS and upper ES).

Statistically, we can argue about the differences...just like we can argue about the difference between some of my high end luxury good vs other things...but for me there are clear differences that matter. It's worth paying for those to me, and I'd live in a smaller house and sacrifice my designer goods for that.[/quote]

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