Decades ago we used to attend polo matches near where we lived in Maryland. The upper middle class attended in luxury cars. The really rich drove old beaters.
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Does Warren Buffett’s 2014 Cadillac XTS count as a “luxury car” or “old beater”?
Definitely an old beater. 
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Westchester County has been known as a very pricey area for as long as I can remember (I grew up in a neighboring county). They could try other neighboring counties (Rockland, Putnam or lower Dutchess) and take the train, like many others do or look at some of the towns on Long Island that are closer to the city and White Plains area.
H & I are from NY (H is an upstater) and we recently approximated what the NY taxes would be on our current NC house and it was as much as a very nice car.
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Long Island is very expensive, and it only gets more expensive the closer you get to the city.
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Portchester, Fleetwood, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, parts of White Plains… there are cheaper suburbs even in pricey Westchester.
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I spend very little time/energy thinking about what others have. I grew up in a small town where you generally knew everyone’s family history etc. and you knew who had family money, certain jobs, etc.
We had a sad situation in my last suburban DC neighborhood. A couple on our street built the largest house, put a pool in , etc. and bragged a lot about it. They frequently talked about lavish vacations, jewelry purchases, etc. He once declared that they were the richest people in the neighborhood! ( I did a smile and nod). Then he lost his job and she quickly left him. He held onto the house but he ended up working multiple jobs and taking in boarders. Then he passed away. She told me she was moving back into the house with their child (his only heir, who now owned the house). Well, she then discovered the house had multiple mortgages and she had to sell. It was a sad story, but clearly it was all a house of cards.
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We had friends/acquaintances who seemed to have it all and I will admit there were times when I asked DH, “I wonder how they manage their money to be able to afford their life (private school for the kids, 2nd home, big boat, multiple vacations a year requiring flights)?” I was legit curious, but my question was more like - I guess they make a lot more money than we do…cool, moving on.
Well, come to find out years later - the answer was literally embezzlement. Found out by reading the morning paper. Totally blind-sided the wife, she had no idea and obviously life was never the same for the family - prison time for the breadwinner will do that.
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We bought our current home in 2004 as new construction. My husband and I are very conservative with money, so this home was well within our means. We saved for a couple of years to put in a pool, and upgraded the property as we were able. Many of our neighbors seemed to be rolling in money, new cars, 200k backyard pools, rvs, boats… We were a little baffled, but whatever.
2008 financial crisis hit and all of a sudden the foreclosure signs started going up. Nearly 50% of the homes on our street foreclosed. As property values went up steeply after our purchases in 2003-2004, our neighbors were pulling out cash left and right. Many were also carrying crazy negative amortization, 40 year adjustable rate loans with balloon payments. Property values dropped, they were upside down in their homes, couldn’t afford the payments and couldn’t refinance. It was such a sad time. We were a tight knit group that all moved in together, everyone with kids the same age and suddenly half the houses were selling.
Goes to show, things may not always be what they seem. This house is now worth 1.3 million and we owe less than 300k while our neighbors lost everything.
Fun side note about taxes- we have 20 year school bonds that expire soon. Our property taxes are about to go down by $3,500 a year. We’re giddily waiting for the next bill!
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I have a friend who lives in a somewhat more upscale part of town than I do. She claims that the best economic indicator (tongue in cheek) is when the trucks show up to repo the fancy SUV’s and hybrids. This is generally 60-90 days before there are any indications that the property is underwater or that foreclosure is next. I’ve asked her “what does someone do when their vehicle goes bye-bye?” and she explains that first the fancy hybrid goes, then the nanny loses driving privileges to the 8 year old Volvo, then the nanny goes, and it’s a whole long chain of economic spiraling.
Fascinating. We drive clunkers (pay cash, keep them well maintained) so the notion of a splashy car which you cannot afford is foreign to me. But I feel for people who have been living on the edge. It must be fun until it’s not.
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This sounds about right!
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I would be uncomfortable being so overextended. But many of the folks I know who live in expensive cities did that at some point. They were dependent on keeping their jobs and often, on those bonuses, to keep making their payments. A sudden job loss and it was all coming undone. But having taken that and having not lost their jobs or bonuses, they ended up with very valuable properties in NYC or SF. And those of us who were more conservative - and possibly responsible-- missed the boom.
I realize this is different from living large, but it’s a variant.
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Here’s a hilarious classic commercial from Lending Tree that explains how the Joneses are doing it 
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During the housing crash downturn, there was a house with some relatively new vehicles in front. At the time, temporary registration for new vehicles was a small paper taped to the windshield, and car dealers would put advertising where the license plates would normally be. The vehicles in question bore dealer ads for a dealer that had gone out of business long enough ago that the temporary new vehicle registration was long expired, suggesting that the owners were behind on vehicle registration fees but trying to pretend (to any police behind them that may look at the license plate) that the cars were new instead of showing license plates with expired stickers. Not long after, it looked like the house got foreclosed.
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Same here…we could buy a house twice the size as what we have, but choose not to for practical reasons. All the houses we bought were modest, and we were able to survive several layoffs and a pandemic over the years. If someone is looking down on me because I don’t have a bigger house or fancier car, I’ll take it as a huge compliment. But I’m pretty sure people aren’t doing that anyway, because they have better things to do.
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We have always paid cash for cars or CC and paid them off before we incurred any finance charges. When we bought our house, we put 60% down, so no mortgage insurance and proceeded to pay it off before H retired (before the term was up). We got a heloc but never used it and never paid anything for having one until the bank finally closed it after many years because we never used it.
We seem to have trained our kids pretty well because they also abhor finance charges and like to pay cash outright for things whenever possible. We are relieved none of us are compncerned about the repo person dogging us.
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I often wondered about this. We bought a house 28 years ago, give or take, in an affluent burb with great public schools but we bought in the much less affluent neighborhood. That meant folks who worked at the public radio station or folks who worked for the state government or English professors at local universities or middle-level administrators at private schools and later on software engineers as opposed to the CEOs and CFOs of biotech companies and venture partners etc. who lived in the more affluent neighborhoods. We did so because I wanted my kids to grow up with more normal people and not kids who thought that going to the Cayman Islands over spring break was a birthright.
From the job categories of people, I had a pretty good idea of their incomes. In general, my income was multiples of what I’d estimate most of theirs to be. But, what surprised me was that they often had newer cars and their children had nicer clothes than ours. They took nice vacations (as did we). We were saving substantial amounts every year, but it did not appear that they were spending much less than we were. When it became time to think about college, we had full 529 Plans and they were talking about financial aid and scholarships or only going to state schools.
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Is there something wrong with “only going to state schools?” That’s actually where the majority of kids go, as far as I know.
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We are the same way, and while I’ll never miss the cars or clothes and am ecstatic that we can pay for our kids’ school and retire early, I do wish that we had taken more vacations with the kids. We might have been too conservative (a few more vacations wouldn’t have set us back much). That’s time we won’t get back and it would have been great family time/ memories.
I’m probably just second guessing myself as we are in the midst of packing for college and all of the emotions that entails.
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It isn’t necessarily that there is something wrong with state schools, but that looks like a contrast between @shawbridge having the kids’ college well funded, while the neighbors were price-limited in what colleges their kids can attend.
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