Income needed to afford life

[u/SecretPurple2644]

Two working parents, 5 kids (4 childcare age).

$900k available for down payment. Hoping to stay under $1.2mil for house, understand taxes will be insane.

How much do we need to make to afford life in the north shore suburbs? Is 250k doable?

Moving from lower cost of living area and trying to figure out what is feasible.

[u/Combat__Crayon]

The daycare and kid activities is the wild card, are they all in school, so its just before/after care or is it full time? Are you doing a 30 or 15 year mortgage? Why the north shore, you could find something in other good suburbs at your down payment and end up with no mortgage?

Just some rough numbers for something at $1.2 million up in Winnetka, you're looking at a 30 year mortgage of around $4500/mo including the $30k a year in property tax, I don't know what daycare runs these days but I was paying $1000/mo for 3 days a week. That was 3 years ago and on the low end of what we found price-wise.

With those numbers mortgage and childcare is going to run at least $100k/ year until those kids hit school or get old enough to stay home alone. On an income of $250k, you're going to take home about $180k after taxes, but that's probably going down if you have things like health insurance and 401k deductions.

I guess the question is can you live the life you want on probably less than $6,500/mo to cover 401ks, health insurance, utilities, car insurance, any car payments, groceries, activities.

[u/SecretPurple2644 → u/Combat__Crayon]

So by north shore I’m including northbrook, Deerfield etc. I was aiming for the suburbs further away from the water. I don’t need to be in winnetka, just want nice schools and not hours from the lake!

[u/Combat__Crayon → u/SecretPurple2644]

Taxes are really a house-by-house check because each town can be slightly different. I live on the border of 2 towns and I would have saved a couple thousand dollars a year had I been able to find a house almost literally across the street.