I've been thinking about this a lot lately- the cost of living is getting expensive as fuck. Many people on here are front office finance professionals who will surely make $500k+ by the time they are in their 30s. But most people aren't on that path, and many who start on that path don't make it big like they thought.
Honestly even though I'm still young, I look around and I don't know how people do it. Browse Zillow and its hard to find a 4 bedroom single family home in a safe NYC suburb that's not $800k+. Car prices have skyrocketed (average new car price is almost the price of the average US income), and college tuition is insanely high. It's hard to see how a middle/upper-middle-class family can get ahead/save money these days.
What income would it take to live/raise a family in a comfortable upper middle class life?
By that I mean owning a home, sending kids to public high school, paying for most of kids' college, saving for retirement, taking 1-2 vacations/year etc... in a nice NYC suburb (not an extremely wealthy area like a Short Hills NJ, Greenwich, or Great Neck- but a safe area within reasonable distance from the city)?
Look at Millburn, NJ. One stop closer to the city than Short Hills. Low property taxes for NJ standards, and some of the best public schools in the country. Most homes top out at ~$1M.
It’s crazy man, I’m moving to Westchester and my real estate taxes are gonna be 75k a year lol.
I've been taking a hard look at the NY burbs lately as a move may happen in the near future, and it's crazy what a different world it is when it comes to housing prices. Northern NJ seems to be the most affordable on a relative basis. If you're working in midtown you want something that has a direct train to Penn Station: [arranged from west to east]: Madison, Chatham, Summit, Millburn / Short Hills, Maplewood, South Orange. An express train can take you from Summit to Penn in ~45, and I think it's ~30 on an express from South Orange. Property taxes vary by county as well so keep that in mind. Montclair is on a different line but also has direct trains to NYP. If your office is downtown, there are other nice towns like Westfield and Ridgewood that will take you to the PATH.
Westchester is generally more expensive, and with higher property taxes (e.g., holy shit @ Smoke Frog paying 75k/yr). Metro North is supposed to be a much more comfortable/reliable commute than NJT though, and obviously more advantageous if your office is closer to GC than NYP. I don't know much about CT/LI as those aren't an option for us for personal reasons.
Late bump but this is interesting. I'm finding Westchester to be significantly more affordable than North Jersey. Long Island is tricky, taxes can get crazy in great neighborhoods (some of the school districts there are nationally ranked). Required household income to get by comfortably without kids? Easily 200-250K for most parts of it. For the nice / great school districts, anything less than 300K with kids would be very tough. Crazy because that was very doable in the area 10 years ago.
If you are fine with a little longer commute (45 min - 1 hour and a half) and a little cheaper cost of living, I would suggest the central Jersey area, Princeton (direct to PABT) Monroe, East Brunswick, Edison, Freehold etc. These are higher income places but house prices and taxes arent as insane as Bergen County.
"we're comfortable" is the equivalent of "I went to a small school in Cambridge"
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