BP, you left out healthcare costs. Thats generally a few thousand dollars a year in premiums. Then add in summer camp (I’m talking day camp) because both parents are working – daycamp for 5 kids? Has to be at least $5,000 right? I don’t have kids in daycamp yet. And not everyone agrees with the tuition/maaser thing. What we were told was that 100% of our maaser money can go to tuition. It will cover a fraction.
MO schools around here (which are really the only schools in Teaneck) are between $12-18,000 per child. Most people have two working parents on professional salaries (so probably earning between $100-200,000 easily) and tuition is hard to come by. Average family here is around 4 kids – thats $60,000 after tax money. You need to earn $85,000 basically to pay for that. Add in the fact that property taxes are $10,000 a year easily, and most people pay at least $3,000 in mortgage, often more.
I could bus my kids around for 45 minutes away to cheaper options. But am I really going to do that to my son when he is 4 years old? Especially when the schools here have amazing educations (both kodesh and chol).
NNJKids is a nice idea but sort of just relies on the same people who are contributing to the schools anyway.
Our public schools here are funded at $18,000 per child. Can I really complain about $15,000?