How Much Does It Cost to Live Like This?

When it comes to private schools, tuition is just the beginning. At Brooklyn Friends, it’s ​​$56,100 a year, but there’s also the enduring pressure to give to the endowment fund. During his child’s first year there, “one of the parents was essentially hounding me to make contributions,” says a father of two who affords tuition through financial aid and help from the grandparents. “It was pretty tactless.” (He ended up giving $500 for both children.) Plus, he said “the school recommended both of my kids get outside-of-school tutoring, and get neuropsychological evaluations, which typically aren’t covered by health insurance, to find out if they have ADHD.” Said another private-school parent, “The schools are like clubs: If they think they can get money out of you, they’ll gladly host a multi-cultural night with an auction.” Several parents spoke about the pressure to spend so their kids can “run with the pack” — to say “yes” to friends’ invitations to Nets games ($150), to throw parties at the private-school-popular Urban Air Adventure Park ($849, which includes a VR experience, plates, decorations, and three pizzas). “When you send your kid to a school and everyone is very wealthy, their lives are hard to keep up with,” says a father who sends his children to Berkeley Carroll. That father of two at Brooklyn Friends agrees: “When your kids hit that 10, 11, 12 age, they start to realize the disparities. A friend and his wife are both attorneys, and their daughter came back from a playdate and was like, ‘Dad, are we poor?’” As for someone to pick up Aliya’s kids from school, take them to activities ($250 a month for music lessons per child), and drop them off, it probably won’t be less than $30 an hour. And though the children could run around in the backyard all summer, odds are she’ll want to send them to a day camp their friends are going to, like New Country Day Camp in Staten Island ($6,700 for the summer).

Plus a monthly deep clean ($360), the weekly date night at Felice or Ingas Bar ($214) plus babysitting ($120 for an evening with the sitter’s Uber home), a Trader Joe’s grocery haul ($400, the weekly bill of a Brooklyn family of four we spoke to), supplementary Sahadi’s trips (let’s say $150), membership at the Life Time fitness in Dumbo ($259 a month) because the nearby Equinox lacks a sauna, twice-annual visits to Aliya’s preferred brow artist Azi Sacks ($250 before tax and tip), a vintage-clothes-shopping habit (accounting for $30 steals and occasional $800 Saint Laurent jackets), six weekend solo or girls’ trips to cities like Nashville (only six because she’s a corporate lawyer with three kids, and let’s say $1,000 per trip), plus a monthly slush fund of $3,400 (the household estimate of one Brooklyn tech worker who described herself and her husband as “those people who make a lot of money but live paycheck to paycheck because we also spend a lot, mostly on our three children”) that might include things like a visit from the lice lady for the 7-year-old, new sheets, and gifts for other children’s birthday parties.

.

The Total Cost: $712,329 a year

After a onetime payment of $1,252,401.

A two-household marriage definitely offers advantages (interior-design freedom, more independence), but it eliminates one of the primary pleasures of romantic relationships: splitting the cost of housing. We found Tarek a two-bedroom condo a few blocks from the park with a private outdoor space at 508 Lexington Avenue, No. 2, for $788,300 with estimated closing fees of $26,477 and a mortgage of $3,781. The building is new and all electric, so utilities will come out to $250 a month, and he’ll presumably enjoy a couple of years before things start breaking. We can’t be sure how his neighbors would respond to his “absurd parties,” but each will probably run him $1,000 (that’s for 26 bottles of wine, 13 bottles of liquor, and 125 bottles of beer). Garage parking for his Chevy Volt ($7,000 down; $1,037 monthly for car payment and insurance) will be $300 a month, though he could “just park on the street,” as one Park Slope dweller tells us. “We’ve gotten tickets, but it’s only $75, so it’s like, Hey, if I get a ticket, it’s less than paying for parking.”

For his monthlong jaunt through Switzerland and Germany, let’s say Tarek stays in $200-a-night Airbnbs. And a lot rides on how much he’s eating out. “I’m at an age where my friends can go out for expensive meals, and if I’m on holiday with a group, I want to participate in that,” says one gallerist and curator who travels three months a year. “Whereas if I’m alone, I might just go into a coffee shop and get myself a ham sandwich.” So let’s give Tarek a range — some days cooking ($70 a week in groceries), others going out for a nice dinner ($225 a week, say). And if Tarek’s husband joins him on his travels, he’ll have to pay to make sure his cat is taken care of. For $199 per year, he can get a TrustedHousesitters “standard pet parent” membership, a home-exchange platform that connects pet owners to travelers looking for accommodation. Once he’s paid the membership fee, he has access to unlimited pet sitting from “verified sitters.” (In total, that monthlong trip, including cat accommodations, will come out to $9,579.) As for the cat’s “tubelike structures” — Myzoo, a Taiwanese brand, sells aesthetically pleasing versions for $100 per 23.5-inch section. (Its wall-mounted “capsule-like cat bed” with a massive convex window is an additional $155.) A Tasker from TaskRabbit can install it for about $62 an hour.

Plus his general cat costs ($1,200 a year for litter, food, checkups, and insurance), his weekly shopping at the Park Slope Food Coop ($120, assuming his husband shops for his own groceries), and a dinner at Macosa Trattoria ($50), an accountant (one New Yorker we spoke to with a “complex tax situation” like Tarek’s paid $1,600 for tax help), twice-a-week training sessions at the Vita Wellness Center ($158 a week), weekly in-network acupuncture (a $35 co-pay) and a few sessions with a nutritionist ($95 each), membership in a co-ed soccer league ($180 at Bedford Armory), the Broadway tickets ($130 each) and nights at Birdland jazz club ($50 plus a $20 food or drink minimum), weekends in Fire Island and Maine (for the latter, assuming he splits a $900-a-weekend log-cabin Airbnb with his partner and spends $80 a day on food, it’ll be $900), as well as a monthly slush fund of $2,200 — the estimate of one fun-loving New Yorker we spoke to — which includes things like movies at the Angelika, a trip to the cobbler, a new pair of jeans, and spontaneous drinks out.

.

The Total Cost: $127,540 a year

After a onetime payment of $192,178.

We spoke to six dedicated dog owners across the city whose canine charges range from a low-maintenance terrier to an elderly dachshund to a Brooklyn Heights Labradoodle with so many health conditions that his family nicknamed him their “million-dollar baby.” Most of them spend between $1,000 and $2,000 a year for each of their dogs’ basic needs: food and treats, checkups and insurance, vaccinations, and anti-flea and anti-heartworm medications. Those regular appointments with a groomer will be $80 each. But with a dog, anything can happen, very little of it cheap to deal with. Debbie, a senior Chihuahua with a heart murmur, costs her owner an additional $600 a year in prescriptions (Proin for urinary incontinence, Denamarin for liver support) and $1,100 on medical visits (a cardiogram every 18 months, the occasional upset stomach, anal-gland expression every three weeks). Debbie also has a sensitive stomach, so her owner springs for fresh food from a company called Nom Nom Now — Chicken Cuisine and Turkey Fare — which comes to $1,600 a year (“This is insane,” her owner acknowledges). Yet another dog owner we spoke to says hers had to unexpectedly have a mass removed last year; the final procedure cost around $2,000, and because the mass was on his shoulder, he couldn’t get up the stairs at her walk-up, so she had to rent a ground-floor Airbnb for a week. “I’d rather not think about that expense,” she says. Let’s assume one of Chen’s fluffy dogs is healthy and the other, like Debbie the Chihuahua, has a heart murmur.

Plus a birthday party in the park ($300 for pizzas, lemonade, balloons, and a cake), an annual trip to Europe ($6,500 in all, according to one Brooklyn family of three that recently traveled to Spain — including a ticket for the 2-year-old, who will now need her own seat), planting a garden and keeping it nice ($1,000 up front, $80 a year in supplies), plus a monthly slush fund of $1,200 (diapers, wipes, a new stroller, a 2-year-old’s clothes, fishing gear, hiking boots, and, per a Windsor Terrace mother, the exorbitant surprise fees charged by her son’s pediatric dentist: “We cannot get out of there without spending $200. They fill every single baby-tooth cavity. My 3-year-old now has three crowns”).

.

The Total Cost: $153,504 a year

After a onetime payment of $323,683.

The elementary school at Hunter College is extremely hard to get into — admissions offers are made to only 50 candidates per grade after two rigorous rounds of testing. If this doesn’t work out, Audrey’s Zip Code means she has access to one of the best public schools in the entire city: P.S. 6, Lillie D. Blake. (Some parents attempt address fraud to get their kids into this place.) As for someone to ferry them to their activities — piano lessons for all three kids ($3,000 a year for each, according to one UES parent of three), dance for the 9-year-old ($1,115 per semester), and soccer for the 7-year-old ($2,000 a year) — there’ll be Audrey’s nanny. Many full-time nannies are paid between $60,000 and $100,000 a year. “Essentially, she’s a second mom,” says one parent of three under the age of 7. With the frequency of holidays, kids getting sick, and her and her husband’s extremely inflexible jobs, it feels worth it. “You panic about your job, and you panic about your kids, then you have enough weeks like that and you panic about your marriage,” she says.

Audrey’s second home — let’s say it’s on the North Fork — will start at around $800,000 if she picks a place inland, like 45195 Route 25 in Southold. Closing costs could be $38,291, the land-preservation tax will be $16,625, water and electricity will be $2,000 a year, and as for heat — well, “you have to keep it running all winter so the pipes don’t burst,” says one media executive. Their winter heating bill comes out to $2,000, so let’s say $3,000 for the year. And given how old these homes are, things can go south at any time; one artist on the North Fork estimates she spends an average of $6,000 a year on repairs. Lawn maintenance and trash collection will cost, in total, $140 a month.

Plus a splurge-y family vacation at the beloved-by-fancy-uptowners Four Seasons Anguilla ($22,250 for flights and exorbitant hotel meals), three trampoline-park birthday parties ($849 each), membership at Central Synagogue ($4,400) along with the cost of Hebrew school ($2,400 per child), ten weeks of summer day camp in Southold for the two younger children ($525 a week at the Child’s Garden), sailing camp at the Southold Yacht Club for her oldest kid ($1,260) and a required membership ($600), FreshDirect groceries (around $1,200 a month based on the budgets of two similar families), a weekly dinner at Cafe Cluny–esque spots ($200) and two nights of takeout from Caffe Buon Gusto ($180 each), a new Audi Q7 with insurance ($1,656) and UES garage parking (a whopping $999), Audrey’s personal maintenance regimen ($5,500 for a year’s worth of manicures, haircuts, highlights, facials, and an Equinox membership), two season tickets to the Jets ($7,000), and the monthly slush fund of $4,000, which is the amount one Brooklyn mother of two estimates her own to be, and which would include a healthy cab budget, weekend lunches with the family, iPads for the children, and holiday tips for the doormen).

.

The Total Cost: $521,934 a year

After a onetime payment of just under $2,019,582.

The Moto Guzzi V7 is a solid mid-priced bike; a new bargain-basement edition starts at $8,990. He’ll want to park it in a local garage because motorcycles are easy to steal. That’ll cost $225 a month, though Ian may run into a supply problem: “In Washington Heights, there’s not a lot of motorcycle garage parking,” says one longtime biker in Manhattan. “You hear all these stories of people going to garages: ‘Excuse me, do you take motorcycles here?’ ‘No, get away.’ You feel like Jesus Christ. Like there’s no room at the inn.” The Manhattan biker lucked into a motorcycles-only parking garage called Ryders Alley, which comes with Wi-Fi, a bike lift, and a cubby for his jacket and helmet, but these garages can have waiting lists. Ian is probably also looking at an up-front purchase of locks and alarms ($400 to $500) and a full set of gear ($700 to $1,000): a good helmet and boots, gloves, and abrasion-resistant pants and jacket. Every year, he’ll need insurance (our biker source pays $650 a year) and gas ($38 a month for commuting April through November) and new tires every three to four years ($500 total). Ian’s other set of wheels will be lower maintenance in comparison; let’s put him on a 4130 steel State fixie ($550), which will cost around $100 in yearly tune-ups.

Ian and his partner’s Trader Joe’s shopping would be $150 a week, and their social outings — burritos and margaritas at a local Mexican place like Refried Beans ($33 per person), Chinese food from the Handpulled Noodle ($25 per person), cocktails at Penny Jo’s ($15 each) — would come out to around $1,000 a month, including tax and tip. Their game nights will cost about $55 each, assuming they’re burning four Ikea candles per night and drinking Beefeater gin martinis. As far as other socializing costs go, one married Washington Heights resident points out that a big expense could be spontaneous transportation. “Living in Washington Heights means coming to terms with spending money getting downtown and uptown, either because we can’t deal with the subway at all or because we can’t face taking it twice in the same day,” he says (he and his partner spend $250 a month on Uber and Lyft, though if Ian is dead-set on avoiding lifestyle creep, he may just default to the subway).

Plus setting up his modest garden ($1,000 up front, then $80 a year for supplies and upkeep), utilities ($200 a month), the kayak ($570), the two cats ($2,400), the RV camping trip for two people for one week ($2,300, according to a Brooklyn resident who did something similar recently), a five-week class on spring trees and shrubs at the New York Botanical Garden ($340 for nonmembers), a sailing lesson at Hudson River Community Sailing in Inwood ($125 for a three-hour intro class), drawing lessons at the Art Studio NY ($275 for a six-week course), a trip to Chile ($1,500 per person), and let’s assume Ian has a friend who can crash at his place and take care of the cats while he’s gone), his monthly barbershop haircut ($40 each), ten solid pieces from Beacon’s Closet ($450), plus a monthly slush fund of $500 for him and his partner, which is the monthly “random stuff” spend of a child-free Washington Heights couple in their 60s we spoke to who purchase things like vitamin D, bulk floss and toothpaste, a year’s supply of garbage and recycling bags, and garden supplies and plants.

.

The Total Cost: $86,974 a year

After a onetime payment of $12,410.

Broker Tom Crimmins says St. George, the neighborhood along the waterfront where Louise wants to live, is one of the more average-priced neighborhoods — but Victorians in St. George are low turnover and rare to find, so those can get into the seven figures, especially if they’re landmarked. A good fit (since Louise is okay with her children sharing rooms) would be this four-bedroom house at 122 Hamilton Avenue, about a 15-minute walk from the Ferry Terminal, that’s currently going for $798,000. Closing costs could be $26,764. And, of course, there’s going to be lots of upkeep — according to a contractor who works frequently on old Victorians, they need something every year. The cedar shake requires treatment with an oil-based stain (which recently became more expensive), the windows need replacing, the tongue-and-groove flooring on the porch goes out, the heating system gives. Let’s say the last happens to Louise this year — it’ll be $14,000.

The Staten Island parents we spoke to tend to fill their gas tank once a week; Lea, who drives an eight-seater minivan, spends around $400 a month on gas. (Let’s add another $350 for the gas to visit family out of state.) “Tolls are a hidden cost of Staten Island if you’re doing a lot in Brooklyn, Manhattan, or New Jersey,” Lea says. “My kids used to do dance in Brooklyn six days a week, and my husband used to work there, so there was a time when we’d average 22 tolls per week. Even with the Staten Island discount, we’d spend hundreds of dollars per month.” Let’s assume this year Louise sticks closer to home and averages four tolls ($11 total) a week. And as for her clothing budget: One person we spoke to who used to work in events tells us that a senior events coordinator may need to refresh her wardrobe every year with a few new shirts and dresses, a new pencil skirt and blazer and suit, and pair of shoes ($1,500 at Macy’s).

Plus the monthly payment for a 2021 Kia Sedona ($772), enrollment for Louise’s four children at the Spotlight Theatre Staten Island summer camp for two weeks each ($ 2,100 total) followed by four weeks of day camp at the Staten Island Broadway YMCA ($6,954 for the whole clan), four birthday parties ($300 each for pizza and cake at home or at a park), annual school fees ($900), a weekly lawn-mowing service ($50 a week), groceries for a family of six between a few Costco runs and an every-other-day trip to Stop & Shop reaches up to $2,000 a month (adjusted from the budget of Louise’s mother), occasional themed parties for 30 (one meat-and-cheese platter from Costco is $27; Louise would probably need two), dinners and date night ($120 per week), occasional tickets to the ballet and Broadway ($850 a year), utilities ($500), and a monthly slush fund of $1,880, which is how much Lea, Louise’s mother, spends on new kids’ clothes, holiday decorations, field trips, and ice cream after dinner.

.

The Total Cost: $175,504 a year

After a onetime payment of $192,364.

“We’ve had a lot of things, well, I don’t want to say go wrong,” says Kat, who bought an old Victorian in the suburbs in 2018 after seven years in Queens. Many of those problems relate to the local fauna. “We paid $5,000 to a pest person to close up all these holes, because we had squirrels running through our attic,” which we absolutely think will happen to Rachel. Termite prevention (“Important with all the old wood houses in this area!” one Westchester homeowner pointed out) might run $1,600 for installation, then $350 a year for annual upkeep and service visits. Heating and cooling a whole house adds up, too. “This is the big one, and this is the one I fucking hate,” one Chappaqua transplant told us. Here, her utilities (natural gas, water, and electric) will be $638 per month. Plus: “Westchester is wet,” the Chappaqua homeowner warned. “I had to waterproof my basement last year, which is a pretty common thing people end up having to do,” she says, an improvement that cost her $15,000.

Like so much else, the cost of maintaining her idyllic suburban lawn depends on how much Rachel wants to do herself, but if she outsources mowing, she’s looking at $60 a week, although the more they do, the more it costs: One homeowner in Hastings-on-Hudson told us landscaping — mowing plus “some minor gardening and whatnot” — runs him $150 a week. “My wife and I don’t do any of that stuff. We’re city folk,” he says. That doesn’t include a biannual lawn cleanup ($500 once in the spring and another postseason cleanup in the fall for $600). In the winter, one’s landscaper often transforms into one’s snowplow guy, charging $100 a pop. And if she’d like to actually use her lawn on balmy summer evenings, one easily bitten homeowner recommends spraying for mosquitoes for the course of the summer: For her, nine visits from Mosquito Hunters came to $720 a season, or $80 per session. And if Rachel does want to join a club nearby, most have extremely hefty initiation fees. They range from $45,000 to $125,000. (The upside: “I think it was good for my husband,” one Westchester mom told us. “I have found many men in the suburbs, they have a harder time meeting other men.”) Fortunately, she can play paddle tennis locally for much less — a recreation permit to use the paddle courts is $540 a year for a family.

An au pair is way cheaper than a nanny, though Rachel would effectively be adding a member to her family. The minimum weekly stipend for au pairs, who can work up to 45 hours a week, is $195.75, plus the program fee, which might be $11,000 a year. But that doesn’t take into account the less-easy-to-quantify stuff. One Westchester parent with three children says she pays for her au pair’s gas ($75 to $100 a month), car insurance, and cell-phone line with unlimited data. And, she says, having her in the house means the family grocery bill goes up about $200 a month. “Plus, for Christmas, obviously I’m not going to have the kids open their plethora of presents and have the au pair only get, like, a gift card or something. Especially because most of our au pairs have been from Italy, so a lot of them are Catholic, and Christmas is a huge deal.”

Rachel’s kids are in public school, which costs nearly nothing (that’s what the $27,500 a year in property taxes is mostly for), but activities still do. Tennis lessons will be $80 each, and weekly piano lessons $1,950 a semester. And God forbid her children want to do travel sports. Let’s say Rachel’s 10-year-old wants to join a club baseball team that travels: If they play spring and summer, it would probably cost $3,000 a year for things like tournament registration, access to the training facilities, umpires, an actually good coach (“You may have former major leaguers that are coaching the club team,” says the founder of a local baseball league. “And for the town programs, it’s usually investment-banker dads hustling up from Manhattan.”) But all of that pales in comparison with the costs of tagging along to games. If Rachel’s baseball player has ten tournaments a year, a handful will be far away, and those weekends, per one Mount Kisco training-center owner, could cost parents around $750 each.

“I have no regrets about being a suburbanite,” one Westchester parent told us. “But, you know, it is amazing how much money suburban life costs.” “We easily blow through an unbudgeted and shocking average of $1,500 a month on nothing,” another local said. “It’s not, you know, like living in New York City, where you feel like you walk out the door and $50 flies out of your pocket. I don’t feel like I have that same experience here. But also I don’t have sidewalks,” said another.

Plus the weekly grocery-store run at the nearby Acme ($350, based on the budgets of two similar Westchester families), three birthday parties ($900 a year), town camp for the two younger kids while their oldest sibling plays baseball during the summer (“The best deal around,” according to one Westchester parent — it’s $1,395 for six weeks), the week on the Jersey shore ($3,600, according to one New Yorker who recently rented a house on Long Beach Island, counting the house, plus “food, alcohol, restaurants, many ice creams, and also one of those beach-wagon things”), a weekly visit from a housekeeper ($150), a used Subaru Outback ($2,243 down, then $561 a month, including insurance for the au pair), gas for the car ($200 a month), basic care for her two dogs ($3,000), and a few family trips to Florida (one Brooklyn parent said a recent trip to Boca to visit grandparents cost $6,000, but Rachel wouldn’t pay that much), basic homeowners insurance ($1,500), plus a monthly slush fund of $2,000 like that of another parent of three we spoke to, which includes things like neighborhood fundraisers and booster-club events, Girl Scout cookies, trips to the plant nursery, book fairs, gifts for coaches, unplanned trips to Home Depot.

.

The Total Cost: $262,367 a year

After a onetime payment of $359,141.

Regarding the other members of Charlotte’s family, we spoke to two Brooklyn-based cat owners (one of whom requested that we “let the record show they get only the fanciest wet food”) who each spend just over $1,550 a year for each cat’s basic vet checkups, litter, food, and insurance. Let’s say, like one of those cat people, Charlotte has one healthy cat and another plagued by medical issues. That cat owner spends an additional $500 a year on prescriptions and — between the blood work and the annual echocardiogram for the cat’s heart murmur —  $2,500 in vet expenses (though pet insurance reimburses some of it).

The three-bedroom, two-bath in Park Slope will be, at the very least, $5,000 a month. We found one at 462 Seventh Avenue, No. 2, which was recently on the market for $5,900. It even comes with a parking spot ($200 a month) for Charlotte to park her 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 SE (she’ll put $9,000 down and will pay $880 a month, including the car insurance). Finding an in-network therapist whom you actually like is akin to finding a below-market-rate apartment without a broker’s fee (which, by the way, would be $10,620 for that Park Slope apartment) — it’s equal parts luck, timing, and extreme perseverance. If she doesn’t find such a person, therapy can cost between $150 and $400 a session. The rest of Charlotte’s health-and-wellness routine will come out to $333 a month (the sum of a basic membership to Shambhala Yoga & Dance Center, in-network physical therapy and acupuncture, and membership to the South Slope Crunch). Let’s add $1,070 for a ten-pack of massages from Melt Massage & Bodywork. And the monthly hair care, assuming Charlotte is doing a wash-and-go and no styling, would come out to around $150.

Plus dinner out once a week ($150 at a place like Pasta Louise), laundry (one New Yorker with a family of three washes five loads per week, which would cost about $32 at a Park Slope wash-and-fold), a birthday celebration at a local skating rink ($660), weekly shopping at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods ($200, based on the grocery bill of one Manhattan mother of two who frequents both) and weekly pizza from Emily ($72 including fee and tips), housecleaning ($200), utilities ($250 a month), the occasional Rachel Antonoff dress ($275 each), the every-other-year trip to Japan (around $11,000 including souvenirs and meals, according to a parent who recently took her family there), plus a monthly slush fund of $1,200 (which might pay for some hardcovers, records and retro video games, a few $30 tubes of mascara, and a new winter jacket for her teen).

.

The Total Cost: $177,196 a year

After a onetime payment of $19,620.

Unless she wants to go use the Metro-North station in Poughkeepsie (an hour away), Bri is stuck with Amtrak, whose prices go drastically up and down like airplane tickets. Locals say it’s an unavoidable expense when living in Hudson; a ticket to the city might cost $56 each way. Plus, in Hudson, “you have to drive everywhere,” says another local. A nice Mini Cooper with about $5,000 down will cost about $700 a month, not including insurance, and gas is about $70 a week. “You really are filling it up once a week, at least,” they say. (Not to mention the fact that the Mini Cooper will be a bit of a squeeze with two kids.) That’s especially true if she chooses to regularly drive the 120 miles to her apartment in Greenpoint (we found her a no-fee one-bedroom at $3,850 a month).

We spoke to several recent Hudson arrivals with children, and many sounded surprised to find that the upstate city didn’t have quite as robust a raising-a-child infrastructure as, say, Park Slope. There are good activities, but supply is low and they can be competitive to get into. Says one parent about private baseball lessons ($40 a week for each child), “It’s in high demand and hard to even get an appointment.” And things one takes for granted in Brooklyn are difficult to come by: “Everyone’s like, ‘It’s so great up here.’ Unless you’re trying to get a math tutor,” one father tells us. The six-week camp at Art Omi is so popular that it once “sold out in an hour” and costs $500 per week. Other residents spoke about how Hudson’s gentrification (“The streets are lined with Teslas,” one ex-resident says) means city-high prices at restaurants and the many specialty grocery stores (like Talbott & Arding, where some honeycomb costs $25) that line the main street. Bri could do a haul of her staples at a grocery store like ShopRite (“Around $120 for pantry stuff,” estimates a Hudson father) and supplement with stuff from the farmers’ market (another $120). The dinner parties will be around $200, assuming guests are polite and bring wine.

Plus utilities and maintenance ($1,326 a month for heating, electric, pest control, lawn care), dining out three nights a week (sometimes at a cheaper place like Isaan Thai Star, sometimes at more expensive spots like Lil’ Deb’s Oasis), music lessons at Bard (it’s a 25-minute drive, and parents pay around $30 an hour for private instruction), the occasional babysitter (Bri and her husband will both be working full time, so let’s say $450 a week), clothes (sometimes a $120 top from Paloma Wool, sometimes $400 MNZ pants), a $5,500 trip to Mexico City, and a monthly slush fund of $1,200.

.

The Total Cost: $248,442 a year

After a onetime payment of $963,909.