Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

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A 1300 sqft apt isn't exactly lux with a family of 4. Plus public schools aren't great in most of the city and private will cost you 50k per kid, post tax. Then you have to ask what you're doing during the summer. Camp will cost you easily another 20-50k per kid. And your naive math of tax leaves out a lot city and state tax.

There are a lot of expenses. The fire stuff you read about people retiring after a few million is often heavily biased towards young single people where you can move to Thailand and live well but falls apart with a family.

People don't retire and live in the city after making a million a year for a few years. Maybe they're all stupid, but chances are they aren't and you're severely understimating how much things cost and how much you're taxed.

If you're making a million a year you'll want nice things for your family, that includes space for your kids to enjoy their childhood, vacations together, good food, transportation, and other things, otherwise what the hell is the point of working hard?

In Manhattan, it's pretty lux :) If you expand your radius to Brooklyn and the other burrows you can get a modern renovated brownstone with 4k sqft for similar pricing and a 20 minute commute to wherever you need to go in Manhattan. Adding in 100k per year doesn't change the math too much Our hypothetical individual would retire in 13 years. However it's worth highlighting that the costs for this hypothetical individual will fall by ~30% following the kids graduation from college.

Now, in theory - there is nothing which stops one from scaling housing costs arbitrarily high. If Musk desired, he could buy the New Yorker hotel and turn it into his house.

Camp cost 20-50k per kid.

Is that lobster camp? What are kids doing in a 50k camp? I am regular European and 50k is like an annual salary. Kids go to camps though but they are more like 700 a week. Let’s call it a grand. For 50k you can get a helicopter pilot license not a summer camp

Likely this is a summer at sleep away camp. Although tbh I've usually seen something closer to ~10k for a summer away. Presumably you could pay more for spending a summer in an immersive camp experience or do multiple high end camps spread over the summer.

The private chefs and specialized tutors for niche subjects add up (I wish I was joking, not that I ever sent any of my kids to one).

Yeah, I’ve been debating the utility on that one. From observation, my daughter does better with a group of strong peers. While she’s still young (3) nothing motivates her to do something like seeing another kid do it.

I went to the Johns Hopkins one way back in the day. It's more like a lite-college experience for 8 weeks (but much more supervised ofc).

Still, I think it cost in the realm of 3k, not 50k. Honestly, not bad for a 2 month stay at a college campus in California.

Found the millionaire ;)

Agreed, nowhere near close to those numbers but kids, school, vacations, life, things just add up quickly.

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