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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We live in DC and are middle class. Our neighborhood ES is not a good option, at least past the lower grades.  We had ridiculously high waitlist numbers on the OOB lottery. We were waitlisted at every charter we applied to. We are now faced with either sending DC to a fairly crappy public school, or applying to a private and hoping for financial aid. Or moving to the suburbs; even then, we are facing huge public elementaries. I know we are not the only ones in this situation. [/quote]

Yep.  This is why we are moving back to our hometown as soon as one of us can lock down a good job.  The economics of living here don't make sense[b] if you can't pull in $250K a year or more, [/b]which is just insane.  In our case the financial pressure is impacting our family size because schooling (and the cost of it) is such a major issue, and it is a major source of frustration for both of us.  DC's system is fucked up beyond belief.[/quote]

I don't get this.  Our HHI is well below that (This $100k below) and we are doing fine.  We are in the northern Arlington/southern McLean area.  We saved one of our salaries entirely for the first few years of marriage so we could have a huge down payment.    Then we bought a fixer upper and fixed it up. [/quote]

Well, not all of us make enough to save 20% or more, and if we waited until we did, we'd be too old to start having children at that point.  I'm sure that's a circumstance you can judge too, though.
When did you buy, and when did you move here?  That makes a huge difference.  If you are younger and trying to start a family, you are buying shitty houses that cost 1/3 of your take home pay, a ton of savings and time to fix, while trying to pay for daycare (another third of pay), and navigate crappy school systems.  Those who bought when the market was more reasonable and apartments could be had for cheap ( a one bedroom runs $1500+ these days and a 2 bed $3k or more) just don't seem to get this.  Living in DC is not worth the overpriced RE.[/quote]

The key for us was saving for years for a large downpayment  AND not starting a family until we had bought the shitty house and redone it.  When we bought our "shitty" house, it would have cost us 1/3 of our HHI IF we only had 10% to put down.  Since we saved prior to it, we had enough for a more reasonable mortgage AND for reno costs.  I think people want everything NOW and perfect, but planning and saving work well.  [/quote][/quote]

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