Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


We are a family of 4 living near downtown Bethesda in a little house on a 120K income. We have family abroad and visit them every year so we live frugally to save for our international trips, as well as for college and retirement.

I understand you're venting, but I still find your vent extremely ignorant and offensive.

Make it work, OP.

Sorry i didn't mean to offend you but if you don't mind sharing, i would be very interested to know you monthly budget. You obviously dont have the 4 kids in daycare? are you renting? or did you buy a long time ago?

I have family overseas too, and that flight alone is $4500 for 3 people in the summer.

PP you responded to.
Two children (not four), currently in public school.
When they were in daycare we lived elsewhere in a one bedroom to save for our house.
House bought in 2010 in the 700K range. Our 120K HHI is recent, prior to that we made much less, and still managed to buy the house.
I hear you on the plane tickets. Last year we had to make THREE trips overseas for funerals and it killed our budget - no vacations this year, no repairs on the house and serious belt tightening.

Ever since we've lived in this country, OP, we have watched our every penny. We could have lived better back home, but there is no real future there in the long-term. We practice delayed gratification and impulse control on all spending. I'm assuming you don't live like this, nor do you want to! I was surprised at the recent thread on DCUM which started bashing frugality, as if it were a bad thing.
Yet frugality has allowed to us to stretch our dollars this far. I'm grateful that we've made things work.

Renovating is probably the main money drain here. It is crazy expensive and stressful in this area. You also have car and student loan payments. We just drive a cheap paid for car. Also, your daycare projection doesn't seem to be taking into account lower rates for older kids. Nannys and au pairs are other options that may or may not save money (nannys probably won't).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do write how expensive all is and it sure is, but you also make a lot of money.
Why are your older cars still $600?
You mention eating out. Stop eating out so much. You toddler (or baby) hardly enjoys. There should be plenty of things to do in Bethesda other than eating out.
$5000 left is a lot. Car payments don't last forever, pre-school payments don't last forever nor do the student loan payments.
You mentioned "older cars". Who cares how old they are as long as they run. Feeling poor is in your head, it's not the reality. Work on that feeling because you are not poor as long as you pull in that income.

I know things will get better but i have been feeling very frustrated with our situation. We moved here for my wife's job and i dont have friends outside of her circle of co-workers yet, so i am using this board to vent a little. i can't bitch to them about the money we are making for obvious reasons. The plan was for me to switch career when she was done with her training but this obviously has to be postpone for several years now.

At least it's nice to see there are some normal people who live around here too (based on posts above), I was under the impression everybody was a millionaire.

But out of curiosity, who buys the $1.5M to $3M new homes that literaly grow like weeds in most of the city?

BTW our 2 year old loves to eat out too...

You put your 2yo in charge of meal planning?

Anonymous wrote:Hello,

My wife and I moved to Bethesda last year and I have really been struggling with this decision ever since.

Together we have a combined income of about $350k and I have never felt so poor in my life. We bought a cheap fixer upper house (800k with reno) and drive older cars but still we are not able to put much in saving or max out our retirement accounts. We have 1 son in pre-school and my wife wants another kid but i am freaking out about not being able to afford it.

Anyways i am just wondering if other people feel poor around here (even on reasonably high incomes) or do they all make $500k+.

Maybe we should move to Rockville or Silver Spring? It's just sooo extremely blend over there, and we are told that the shools are bad.

Yes, because Bethesda is so interesting and unusual, as suburbs go.

Everyone in Bethesda thinks that the schools are "bad" anywhere other than Bethesda. Maybe you should do your own investigation, OP.

Anonymous wrote:


We are a family of 4 living near downtown Bethesda in a little house on a 120K income. We have family abroad and visit them every year so we live frugally to save for our international trips, as well as for college and retirement.

I understand you're venting, but I still find your vent extremely ignorant and offensive.

Make it work, OP.

how much did you spend on your house and when did you buy it?

Anonymous wrote:


We are a family of 4 living near downtown Bethesda in a little house on a 120K income. We have family abroad and visit them every year so we live frugally to save for our international trips, as well as for college and retirement.

I understand you're venting, but I still find your vent extremely ignorant and offensive.

Make it work, OP.

Sorry i didn't mean to offend you but if you don't mind sharing, i would be very interested to know you monthly budget. You obviously dont have the 4 kids in daycare? are you renting? or did you buy a long time ago?

I have family overseas too, and that flight alone is $4500 for 3 people in the summer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Another thing i am trying to do is figure out why this area is so expensive, this way at least i could get something out of living here.

Prices are higher because of the schools, which you might not be using yet.

The schools are the same throughout the county. What varies is the HHI of the students attending the schools. If you want your child to attend schools where the majority of students come from families with high HHI, then move to Bethesda or Potomac. If that is not important to you, then move anywhere else in the county. Schools are not inherently better because they are located in Bethesda.

That may be true, but people are obsessing about school districts around here. My wife made us overlook a house because it was in the Walter Johnson district, and her coworker told her she should aim for Churchill or Whitman.

Well then she needs to learn to think for herself. Does she always base life decisions on what her coworker tells her?

Anonymous wrote:$3,800 mortgage on an $800,000 house? Did you put very little down? 15-yr mortgage? If it is the latter, that would be an obvious place to save. Maybe I have the #s wrong in my head, but that is higher than I would have thought.

The mortgage is for $610k actually, 30 year at 4.25%, it includes taxes etc...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Another thing i am trying to do is figure out why this area is so expensive, this way at least i could get something out of living here.

Prices are higher because of the schools, which you might not be using yet.

The schools are the same throughout the county. What varies is the HHI of the students attending the schools. If you want your child to attend schools where the majority of students come from families with high HHI, then move to Bethesda or Potomac. If that is not important to you, then move anywhere else in the county. Schools are not inherently better because they are located in Bethesda.

That may be true, but people are obsessing about school districts around here. My wife made us overlook a house because it was in the Walter Johnson district, and her coworker told her she should aim for Churchill or Whitman.

We are a family of 4 living near downtown Bethesda in a little house on a 120K income. We have family abroad and visit them every year so we live frugally to save for our international trips, as well as for college and retirement.

I understand you're venting, but I still find your vent extremely ignorant and offensive.

Make it work, OP.

$3,800 mortgage on an $800,000 house? Did you put very little down? 15-yr mortgage? If it is the latter, that would be an obvious place to save. Maybe I have the #s wrong in my head, but that is higher than I would have thought.

It's a great time to refinance btw to lower your Piti.
$600 a month for cars is too much at any income. We make $220k HHI (live in silver spring) and we paid ours off a while ago and are saving cash for when we replace the 12 year old car.
A lot of families where you are bought their houses earlier or with family help so their PITI is much lower. If we had $350k HHI we would want for nothing. As it is we eat mostly at home since going out with the baby is not that much fun and save for trips. We also have a fixer upper but we do one big project a year and budget for that (kitchen last year and bathrooms next year). I'm also pretty handy (dw here) and can fix pretty much anything even minor plumbing and electrical.
This area is expensive because there are a lot of jobs so the housing is in demand and costs more than comparable places elsewhere. You love among some of the most educated people in the country so there's that too.

Anonymous wrote:I do write how expensive all is and it sure is, but you also make a lot of money.
Why are your older cars still $600?
You mention eating out. Stop eating out so much. You toddler (or baby) hardly enjoys. There should be plenty of things to do in Bethesda other than eating out.
$5000 left is a lot. Car payments don't last forever, pre-school payments don't last forever nor do the student loan payments.
You mentioned "older cars". Who cares how old they are as long as they run. Feeling poor is in your head, it's not the reality. Work on that feeling because you are not poor as long as you pull in that income.

I know things will get better but i have been feeling very frustrated with our situation. We moved here for my wife's job and i dont have friends outside of her circle of co-workers yet, so i am using this board to vent a little. i can't bitch to them about the money we are making for obvious reasons. The plan was for me to switch career when she was done with her training but this obviously has to be postpone for several years now.

At least it's nice to see there are some normal people who live around here too (based on posts above), I was under the impression everybody was a millionaire.

But out of curiosity, who buys the $1.5M to $3M new homes that literaly grow like weeds in most of the city?

BTW our 2 year old loves to eat out too...

If you have $5000 left each month and you are blowing it all by eating out and traveling then yes you could cut back.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Another thing i am trying to do is figure out why this area is so expensive, this way at least i could get something out of living here.

Prices are higher because of the schools, which you might not be using yet.

The schools are the same throughout the county. What varies is the HHI of the students attending the schools. If you want your child to attend schools where the majority of students come from families with high HHI, then move to Bethesda or Potomac. If that is not important to you, then move anywhere else in the county. Schools are not inherently better because they are located in Bethesda.

It's not only the curriculum, but the company you keep.

Can you look into an in home daycare?