On 400,000 dollars a year.
Professor Todd Henderson makes 445,000 dollars a year. That kind of qualifies as pretty affluent by anyones standards. However in the kind of topsy turvy world we live in nowadays-the good Dr. Henderson seems to have trouble getting to end of each and every month.
Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby…. [W]e have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive. If our taxes rise significantly… the (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center…
I had to read that last bit twice. A few hundred dollars a month-when your take home pay is probably in the neighborhood of 30,000 dollars a month? I’d say you have some serious priority problems pal.
Consider this breakdown of expenses:
$455,000 a year of income, of which:
- $60,000 in student loan payments
- $40,000 is employer contributions to 401(k) and similar retirement savings vehicles
- $15,000 is employer contributions to health insurance
- $60,000 is untaxed employee contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles
- $25,000 building equity in their house
- $80,000 in state and federal income taxes
- $15,000 in property taxes
- $10,000 for automobiles
- $55,000 in housing costs for a $1M house (three times the average price in the Hyde Park neighborhood
- $60,000 in private school costs for three children
- $35,000 in other living expenses
The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big expenses in the Henderson family budget–their $60,000 a year in contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars–are simply out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Half of all households make less than $50,000 a year–the Hendersons make nine times that.
And yet-he seems to have a cash flow problem.
The issue here is not that he does not have issues-it is that he tries to portray himself as put upon. And he is not the only one-there have been a rash of articles lately that can only be described as the rage of the rich.
These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t have any sympathy. If I were making that kind of money-I would be set for life.
I especially hate it when he brands his money put into a 401K as expenses-when in reality they are savings. $125,000 dollars a year to be exact. I save 15% of my salary every month and trust me-its going to take me more than a few years to see my savings grow by 125,000 dollars. This guy sees it in one year, every year.
Something is clearly out of whack when this kind of mismanagement can be defended.
My sister is extremely wealthy, lives in Bel Air etc etc.
She hob nobs with the “super rich” and I asked her what sort of character these folks have..she replied that the money just makes them more of an a**hole.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/oktoberfest_2010.html
This has nothing to do with the post but knowing how much girls and beer mean to you..#38, the young lady on the far right(no pun intended) is quite fetching…, might I say, even comely…nubile young wench…sigh
They should get rid of the gardener. Since he has less money to spare, he can cut the grass himself. Back in my days, any teenage boy with a lawn mower and garbage bags would do it.
Raise your own kids instead of a nanny.
I am guessing the good perfesser has never heard of a blanket party, but he (and others like him) need one…
Ah, the perils of plenty….
No doubt another democrat waiting on a government program to pay off his student loans, free health care, guest worker program so he can hire a cheaper gardener and nanny and a bailout for his mortgage, cause he’s upside down.
Or he is just another Republican whining about how tough he has it-as the rest of the country loses ground economically. P.S. Free health care is the way it is supposed to work-or at the least it should be paid by his employer.
Skippy,
Is he paying the “Free Health care” for his Polish housecleaner that comes in or is that paid by her temp agency that hires her out?
Whether they are Dems or Reps (I am going to say Dems just by the fact that he is a law professor in Chicago), what they need to do is look at their own expenses and start there. I think that their legitimate complaint of a high tax burden is a valid one, but paying that much for a private school ($60K is more than I make a year), $35K in living expenses is probably where he needs to start looking.
Keeping up with the Jones’ and buying a million dollar house in Hyde Park was not mandatory. He could have been like the other millions who live in the area, and bought a home in the suburbs and commute like the rest. A cheaper home in a better suburb with great public schools would save a lot. Sure they will have to commute, but they are paying for a housecleaner now, so they would just have to pay a little more for her to do the job that they are supposed to be doing themselves (seeing after their kids and cleaning their house). As far as that goes, the ages of the children are not listed, but if they are teenagers, the cleaning lady can go, as well as the yard person. Teach them to get off their “arses” and clean up around the house and learn a skill instead of waiting to the tended on.
If I made half as much as these two, I would be happy. So if they are either Dem or Rep, I think that they should count their blessings and make cuts and move on. By the way, for the doctor wife, a good way to reduce some of those student loans is to do work for the Public Health service in depressed areas. A year or two of treating patients on Indian Reservations or in the Mississippi Delta could take a lot of those loans away, but I guess that would take away from their chance of entitlement.
Skippy,
Please allow me to rant further. The spending of $60,000 for private schools is a prime example of why we need to take back the educational system from the NEA.
If you live in an area that has million dollar homes, your public schools should be stellar. After all, supposedly the millage taxes and property taxes you pay are going to the local schools.
But if you have to pay because the local public schools are crappy, then that is the problem. Probably the far left NEA has mandated that children from “under priviliged” areas should be bussed to the more affluent areas to get a better education, and those from the affluent areas are shipped to the less affluent schools, under the guise of “fairness.” Becuase of a lack of accountability in discipline in public schools, they are totally out of control, so I don’t blame the parents for sending the kids to a private school. But they shouldn’t have to, if they have public schools that are functioning and not over run with PC crap and a lack of discipline in them that should be the way for them if they are stessed out financially.
Just my 2 cents.
My little sister went to UCHI and lived a couple of blocks off campus in Hyde Park.
I visited her a couple of times. Remember the movie Apocalypse Now and the journey up the River? That was similar to the journey to Hyde Park from Springfield. Surrounded by the Heart of Darkness.
There was something surreal about visiting the University and finding a grand total of zero students or faculty with a a;gh9qpbdkdgth392g,5bhq and thenlo4tyh0oh
curtis, that is what I meant in my rant above. These people have no one to blamd but themselves for paying for a million dollar home with a public school system that sucks. I have relatives that live in Memphis, and rather than pay hig fees for private schools, they moved out to Germantown where the school system is better. Sure they have to drive to Memphis to get to work, but they aren’t paying for a school district that they don’t use.
I guess the same can be said for people moving back into Harlem. Overinflate the prices of the homes and you have the upper classes moving there, and those that had to live there just have to suffer.