How much household income would you need tp raise 2-3 kids and have a decent quality of life in: NJ/NYC area, Austin/Dallas, Charlotte, Boston, Denver, San Diego

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Most dramatically underestimate true cost of living because they are massively subsidized by family wealth and benefit from compound interest and exploding value in assets. Graduate debt free from good schools and get on the property ladder early (2008-2013) and $150-$300k HHI is plenty for a very comfortable life in a top U.S. city with a family. If you still have school loans and don't have property by your mid-30s as is the case for my partner and I, you'll just never be able to afford those things (3 bedroom house in a good school district + vacations + retirement savings + raising 2-3 kids) or you would have to hit around $600k to make it work, or just compromise (we rent, a small, cheap place, have no property, no kids, mediocre/low retirement savings, cook at home, I don't have a car, few/no luxuries, and vacations = visiting parents; all money goes into downpayment fund, retirement accounts, and school loans; HHI = $230k).

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This is so accurate! We felt like we “couldn’t cut it” in the area wanted to live and couldn’t figure how everyone made so much more money than we did...but eventually we figured out they made the same or less but their parents had helped them buy property early and they had been rolling those gains into increasingly better properties, where as we were scraping to save $250k for a down payment and still couldn’t afford a house. And yes, we also realized we were both paying grad school loans that others weren’t. They were living in houses we couldn’t afford and had more disposable income, all on lower income because of these two things and created this perception that we were struggling to get by, even though we made more.

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OP - It sounds like your situation is very similar to mine. Immigrant with two middle school kids. I live in SD northern suburbs, 4-5 miles from the ocean. My wife is a homemaker and we can afford a decent quality of life with my $320K income. Two cars, 3000 sqft home, public schools (we live in a good schools district), two vacations a year (my points cover one of them usually), multiple road trips a year (so many things to see here in California), one family trip to India every other year, dine out/take out once a week, saving $30K/year towards kids college tuition, splurge $3K to $5K on hobbies like kids surfing, sports equipment, impromptu Vegas trips, Temecula wine tasting trips etc

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I am a Director at PwC, an year or two away from Partnership. We live in Encinitas and the school district is San Deiguito Union. We bought our current house for $1.2M three years ago. We moved here from Dallas. We had to sacrifice on home size. We used to own a 5000 sqft home there but it was only $600K but there was no day goes by we thank our stars for living in such a beautiful part of the country. We enjoy outdoors, so there are beaches, surfing, hiking trails, nice weather most of the year, mountains and lakes not that far from here. Of course SoCal is very cosmopolitan and great dining options. Dallas was good for just having a big house and low cost of living but the life was pretty boring and monotonous.

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Ugh I should move to the country and raise some cows.

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Heres a data point. My parents raised 3 kids in nyc on a combined annual income of 15k. 😊

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Haha sure thing. Not that long ago. From 1990.

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In north jersey, with two kids and a mortgage on a $300k house, we are more than fine on just $150k base

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Montclair/Glen Ridge/South Orange/Maplewood area

1.2

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🤷‍♀️ serious ! Although 3.4 is probably better

Charlotte is a much easier one, esp. if you live in the burbs! I’m convinced any income could work, but you’d be very comfortable even with $150k total income. If you want to live closer to the city you’d need to be in the $250-300k range to afford a bigger house in a nice school district, but if you’re willing to go for a smaller house you could still pull it off with $150-200k!! So much easier than other cities in the north and west coast.

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It depends - do the kids play hockey?

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Would like to know for Boston

M1 has nailed it. Areas with good public schools are $$$; housing stock is old but expensive (like Newton, Lexington, and Weston). If you go out ~30m+ from Boston to a good school zone (Wayland, Southborough, Lincoln, etc), things are more affordable but still quite pricy relative to other cities (probably second to Manhattan/SF).

Renting is a great option until you can afford to buy.

QOL = afford a 3-4 bed house in good school district, afford 1-2 long vacations a year, just other regular things. Ans ofcourse ne able to save and invest too

Define what “decent quality of life” means to you! How good of a school district? What kind of vacation?

See above. School rating >=8, 1 vacation thats visiting family overseas, 1 domestic/international vacation to explore a new place

Are you an immigrant OP?

Yeah I know that they are vastly different. So I wanted to know how much would it cost to live in each of them. These are potentially the cities my career would take me mostly

Curious for San Diego! I’d imagine around 250-300k to really be comfortable. My parents got by on a lot less in Chicago

PwC 2 - Thats very nice. Enjoy your new town and home. Pre Covid, I used to travel to Ft.Lauderdale often because of my clients. It’s lovely area as well.

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For a $1.3m house with 10% down plus 1.2% property tax, you’re looking at $6k/month. Should be ok for a 3BD house in a good school district.

If housing costs should be 50% MAX of your take-home, then you’re looking at $12k a month take-home.

So maybe $240k gross HHI as a minimum. I’d say $300k to have less worry about finances.

Ah okay.. gotcha. If its gross income then 240K-300K sounds doable

Don't have kids, it's worse for the environment than anything else you're doing.

If we don't get business travel because "it's bad" then we should start having more stern talks about people not procreating because that's a way higher impact. You don't need kids, go get snipped. Adoption on the other hand is a different question all together.

Austin/ Dallas can still be affordable, outside the beaten path a little...Denver is getting ridiculous, I was checking the market in Denver last year...Cherry Creek specifically, everything is taken.

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