Open the books! Here is week two from the Lakewood piece for us to discuss. All the comments on the last one have been really helpful for us building out our own community crowdsourced version of this the way we'd like to see it. Send all your ideas to me so we can use them in our upcoming series where we open up all of our books in frum.finance! #C04SF2U3WSC

This is a nice example of how subsidies work for low income families. It costs more if you have more. Preschool tuitions, health-care, utilities, and food are all big spending categories, budget would be great without them!

I imagine they won't need to be paying another 5k,it'll likely lower.

They'll probably be in at least 3 different schools at that point: a high school, and assuming a girls and boys elementary

They each will have to coordinate using whatever money the family has. They can't charge something that doesn't exist

So do they stop saving at that point?

So I'm still looking at expanding into this space (I'd hope to offer a service to schools soon that helps them allocate scholarship funds), but based off my current view, I would say they should get reduced tuition and continue to save.

My understanding is that yeshivos and seminaries are much harder to get tuition reductions for. Anyone have personal experience with this?

I can say most frum.finance clients are out of town and I have only met one family that couldn't get tuition reduction that qualified.

I've heard that Lakewood doesn't offer tuition breaks - they offer a lower tuition but everyone is expected to pay. Not sure if this is true or not.

Lower for a family that needs or lower in general?

Lower in general, for everyone

Can’t speak for yeshivos, but Lakewood girls schools do offer tuition breaks - I know of one girls school that has 3 tuition levels (and they may even go lower for qualifying reasons).

Thanks @melodic-raincoat-4306, good to have some actual data and not just rumors I've heard:)

With 8 children shouldn’t they be making some nice profit off tax returns?

moneyparrot money money

This one showed me just how much the government programs pay out. I calculated it to be close to $120k in value from the programs alone. Essentially, they aren't living on $50k/yr, they're living on $170k/yr. Considering that they wouldn't be paying taxes (assuming they arent getting anything back either, which they very well may be), this is the equivalent of someone who is making about $250k/yr at a standard w2 job.

Okay so why should I be working as hard as I do? Honestly.

Do you have 8 kids? If not, the amount you get would be lower 🙂

I mean I'm talking about in the long term lol

• Having a job is much lower risk. You could always fall back on government programs if the job doesn't work out, its much harder to go the other way. • You might beat the govt programs with a job, impossible to beat them without one. • Your morality telling you that being productive is valuable, and that relying on government programs isn't the right way to live

Okay but something about this reality is broken that we need to fix somehow.

I had this discussion many times with my wife when I left Kollel - she was very bothered that, after losing all of the benefits, I was not coming out that far ahead with my full-time job. But after you get to a certain point, you do end up beating the programs. Especially if you're not living in a welfare state like NY/NJ.

ok, yes, so that 250k pretax equivalent total that they are living on, while pinching every penny, and not really saving, is exactly why I said you need 300k to live a basic lifestyle. (not to reopen a can of worms 😬 ) And yes, I too often wonder why I bother. And I wonder how the system can be updated such that a safety net exists for people who need it, but isn't able to be chosen as a preferred lifestyle choice

so many questions.... • Her salary: presumably she's working for 15 years. Can't she be making a lot more even as a secretary. • Rent: is rent guaranteed not to go up? • Why 2 cars if living in central Lakewood for him to walk to BM? • How did they get two late model cars on this budget? What's the plan to replace them? • Life insurance? • Clothing: What's the real amount? Do they get hand-me-down shoes? Suits, hats? • Yom Tov: What about things like Lulav, esrog, Are there programs for kollel yungerleit for this? • Free pesach food: is that based on income, being in kollel, etc? • House phone: They should be able to get free service via Lifeline/ACP • Groceries: If they have only a $5000 surplus from pandemic SNAP, are they getting enough to cover their food going forward? It would be helpful to know how much they are actually getting. @curved-toothbrush-84425: I'd be curios to see how you got to $120k. • What's the plan for other Bar Mitzvahs? • What's the difference between "savings" and "emergency fund". • Is overnight camp an emergency? • There are grants for first time overnight camps (PJ Library/One Happy Camper) • The numbers don't add up... about $166 short per month. • Is the deficit covered by savings? or perhaps a $9000 tax refund?

Her salary is based on working part time as a secretary. I'd assume the sub teaching isn't as consistent 🤷🏼

Btw the following week, the person responds that some of the details were made up/changed. So its not wholly accurate. The guy whose wife was interviewed explicitly says they aren't a family of 10 living in a 4 bedroom apt driving 2 late model cars. They don't say what their situation actually is though. Here my calculations for $120k: Health Insurance: $45k/yr (at least, medicaid is better than any you can buy) Daycare: $1.5k/mo ($18k/yr) SNAP: $2.1k/mo ($25k/yr) (based on https://www.lsnjlaw.org/legal-topics/government-aid-services/food-hunger-nutrition/food-stamps/pages/snap-nj-food-stamp-program-aspx) WIC: $100/mo ($1.2k/yr) Summer Camp: $9k/yr (6 kids * $1.5k) Utilities: $200/mo (2.4k/yr) - this was a guess Seems I was a bit off. Its more like $100k/yr

Their twins are infants, their living situation may not have adjusted yet for them

This is what I meant in my original comment in the other thread - these are so vague and so altered for identity protection that they aren't very useful.

I hope they didn't use their real names...

They don't. They also changed the jobs and such. I would have thought they kept financial details exactly the same though. Not sure why they wouldn't...

I'm really surprised how they are doing such a poor job at anonymizing. I'm working on the same thing with frum finance families and I don't see why I should change things like the number of kids... I was just going to change identifiable things, not obviously important things like number of kids or salaries haha. What am I missing? Do I need to be anonymizing more or are they just doing a poor job?

If you mention their jobs, number of children, housing arrangement, child with special needs, major family event, etc. they might be easily identifiable. The question is if the families are aware and consent.

I was going to do job (not exact like not what kind of doctor just doctor) Number of children Housing I didn't intend to do children's special needs. The families will review everything before I publish and give reshus.

how about age?

How about location?

Hmm. Does age help? What do people think? Should it be included? I'm not sure age adds much value. I definitely planned on adding location.

There are going to be tradeoffs in value added vs. anonymity. No doubt about that...

Isn't age a huge factor in finances? It defined how many years to normal retirement, and it places a person on a typical career path. A 25 year old making 50k is completely different than a 50 year old making 50k in terms of whether you'd typically expect their income to go up

I will be including the Monte Carlo, so you'll see how many years until retirement.

If the question is regarding "at this point in time" then age isn't as relevant, but if it's a multi-year extrapolation I would think age matters

I'm not including age by including the Monte Carlo.

Isn't number of years to retirement equal to 65(or so) minus age?

Let's try it out. My monte Carlo says I retire in 30 years. How old am I?

Got it. In that case maybe make that transparent so people don't go trying to guess ages like I just did lol

Haha will do!

Ages of kids matter, they get more expensive as they get older!

I plan to include age of kids.

How about including "number of years in this profession" or something about whether you expect your income to remain steady or grow

(everything I am saying I plan to do is just my current thoughts, please share your thoughts)

Lol I only mean up or down a year

Unless someone has quadruplets I'll just say they are two sets of twins lol

I also think that there is a different expectation for younger parents still trying to figure it out. A young family with 2-3 kids can still be switching jobs often and hustling to make it work, but then settle into something lucrative after a few years. Yes they then need to play catch up with savings, but it almost seems wrong to put someone onto a trajectory before they know what they're doing.

@bumpy-minister-26192 surpringly, I'm seeing the opposite. Granted just anecdotal, but I've seen again and again the younger families once they see the projections they switch into more lucrative careers quickly, while people in their 30s feel like they are already career locked and end up making much fewer changes to improve their situation when I show them the numbers. Basically, the earlier I can get to a family the better.

That is the same idea, young families are trying to make it work and trying to figure it out still. This sounds like career coaching, once they come to you they're already ready to make changes to get more lucrative jobs, they just need the ideas of how to. Are the projections really so necessary? The exact amounts of money you need for life can change so easily and fast (more kids, whether you want to support married kids, whether they want it if you can afford it, maybe you decide to do some construction at some point, etc), that predictions can give you an idea, but is it really so accurate?

It gives you a very accurate picture of everything you plan now. Things change. But the question is are you setting yourself up for success given everything you know today. If not, let's make changes. It's very accurate depending on your goal. If your goal is to approximate to the best of your ability to figure out if you're laying the right foundation for success I would say it's perfectly accurate. Will it be accurate when you look back on your life and compare it to the projects? No it will be very inaccurate

Are frum families really expecting life to be so uncomplicated 🙈

Yes lol

Younger families also have a much higher risk tolerance, their responsibilities are much lower so they a) have the time to switch careers more often and b) can afford to risk it not working out as planned.