I

just went on a really long walk, and I went and walked around all these fancy neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And I started, you know, I do what what people do. I pull up Zillow as I'm walking. And I'm like, you know, I wonder what it's like to live here. And the houses that I like, what I usually will do is I see a house and I go, oh, I would like to live there, and I pull it up and it's eight million dollars.

And eight million dollars, that's one number. But then you actually look at how much money you need to come up on at closing, and then you look at how much money you need to, spend each and every month on the mortgage and on your interests and on maintenance and things like that. And I started thinking

I think I'm gonna live over here in Brooklyn, and I wanted to, like, map out how much money I would expect, I would spend to live the lifestyle I want to spend. And it is astronomical.

And I wanted to talk about some some of those expenses.

You wanna talk about some how much Walk me through it. Okay. So listen to this. First of all, I'm gonna talk about the life that I'm gonna live when I moved to Brooklyn. And all the listeners, there's gonna be a bunch of them that's gonna say, oh, Sam, no one needs an eight million dollar house. Yeah. I get it. You know, like, all I need is, like, a bucket of water and, like, some apples and, like, a pair of crocs that I'm happy. But this is the life that I choose to live. So, like, I get it. No one needs this, but I'm picking this. So get off my back on this hypothetical case that might be a reality in two years. So I just gotta get that out of the way. But in terms of hypotheticals, it's not entirely hypothetical because I went and talked to a couple friends who do this. But listen to this shit.

So I found a home that I wanted to buy, and I actually linked to it on the the MBD Master doc. Okay. So it's a street ease it's on street easy. It's a nice house. Okay. It's only three thousand square feet though, but it's a Brownstone in my favorite neighborhood of Cabill Hill. It's five million dollars. I actually think the range of things I want are between five and eight, but this one I just found it was available. It's five million dollars, which basically means I gotta come up with one point one million dollars as my down payment, and then I'm gonna spend around twenty thousand dollars a month in mortgage and interests and and things like that, not including maintenance, which is gonna be expensive. It's gonna be probably another two or three thousand dollars a month.

Then

I think it would probably cost on the low end fifty thousand on the middle only end of like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to furnish it the way I would like to furnish it. Right? Have you ever furnished a house? Yeah. Yeah. It depends. If you go, like, like, my wife, she's like, oh, yeah. I'm like, what do you like? She's like restoration hardware. I'm like, geez. Like, you know, every item in the stores, like, you know, five thousand to ten thousand dollars.

And so, you know, you just add that up per room you're putting in, like, twenty to twenty five grand worth of stuff per per room, in the house, which is pretty nuts. Yeah. Totally. So, like, a hundred fifty k is just kinda what it would cost. If you wanna go that route, if you wanna go west ham, west elm, then, yeah, you're you can maybe get it done for a hundred seventy five thousand, but it it's quite expensive.

Then

If I'm gonna get this fat house, I'm getting it because I have two kids or a couple kids. So I need my forty thousand dollar fifty thousand dollar a year nanny. I imagine I would spend around thirty thousand dollars a year in food. And so, basically, it comes up to where I think I'm spending

six hundred to seven hundred thousand dollars a year to live the life I wanna live in Brooklyn.

But

here's the kicker.

If you're making over a million dollars a year in Brooklyn or or for sure in Manhattan, even more than this, half of your money goes away to taxes.

So basically if I'm spending around six hundred thousand dollars a year, I need to make one point two million dollars

just to cover my my monthly note. Break even. Just to break even.

And if I if it's and and I I talked to two friends, one friend who lives in Brooklyn, He told me that he spends around five hundred thousand dollars a year. And then another friend that also lives nearby, and he told me he spends eight hundred thousand dollars a year. And he spent me He sent me his, list. But he goes, I have an, an additional house in North, Rhode Island, but if you take that, vacation home, we are spending around six hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. So to to live like this, it's crazy.

And when you go and walk on these streets,

You know, there's a house every block. If you go in Manhattan, there's this fancy apartment every block.

How on earth do you think people so many people afford this?

It's crazy. Like, when you actually think about the logistics, right? Well,

well, a lot of the people who own these homes, they own them before they were worth five million dollars. So go look at the, you know, the Zillow history of this thing. Ten years ago, what was this home worth? You know, I'm guessing it's less than you know, less than half of this, maybe thirty five percent of this price ten years ago, thirty percent. And so you're what you're talking about here is, like, you know, a home that will that they bought in, their basis

is a million million and a half dollars, something like that instead of five. So now the monthly payment is less. And now the property taxes are less. And so, you know, you cut out your biggest expense in this case.

You you trim that down. So I think that's that's the answer for how a lot of people have this is inheritance

or,

or buying in, you know, twenty years ago, fifteen years ago

when these were worth a fraction of what they're worth today. And so that's why they can afford to kind of live above their Well, so I had four takeaways when I started thinking about this. The first was that there's a story behind everything. So all these people, like, a simpleton like me is like, oh, you just gotta earn this much money it by starting a business. It's like, no. That's not the reality. And Zach Crockett, who works at the hustle. He basically we're talking about this, and he was gonna write a story on this. And he said, that he researched a bunch of these homes. And what he did was he,

for all the five million dollar brown or for a bunch of five million dollar brown suits at NYC. He used tool called Melissa, and he looked up the property records, then he googled the names,

of each person who quote owned it And then he, like, looked at their family records, which he just did this all through just sleuthing and, like, look at their stuff. And he found out that a bunch of them, like, seven out of ten of them were like teachers or artists or

or or a professor, things that you basically, like, you can earn a bunch of money, but you're not earning enough money to buy this home. And what he surmised and came to the conclusion was, like, they just get a lot of help. And so, like, it's hard to own a five million dollar Brownstone when you're a reporter at the New York Post or something like, you know,

hundred and twenty thousand dollar a year job. So I think there's a story behind everything. The second thing is, I think you just have to earn a lot of money. Dude, listen to this. If you earn,

one thing

Hang on.

That was a

killer insight.

What?

The you gotta earn a lot of money?

Yeah. Where'd you come up with that? That you gotta earn a lot of money. But listen, let's let's put the math on this. How many how many years do you think you need to how long would it take you to save ten million dollars if you lived in New York? To save ten million dollars? Yeah. To get a portfolio of ten million dollars.

I have no idea. I don't know. Let's say twenty years.

Okay. So if you make one point five million dollars you're spending around twenty five thousand dollars a month in living expenses, it's gonna take you around fifteen years to be able to save

ten million dollars,

which is pretty crazy. Now you've gotta figure out how to earn at least a million and a half for ten years.

Or for thirteen years, which is, like, it that in itself is impossible

or not impossible, very, very, very challenging. And so the hold on. Your fur your first thing was, like, these people are teachers and artists and you said they gotta have some help. You're talking about, like, family help. You're not talking about, like, there's nothing else. Right? You're saying you have rich family.

Yeah.

Okay. Alright. Sorry. Carry on. I think that I think just having a re like, I underestimated that. When I think about this, I'm like, whose parents would give them two million dollars for a down payment on a home. And I think the answer to that is actually a lot.

I can't I I can't imagine that, but the like, that that was hard for me to because, you know, I don't fucking know that. My mom and dad, like, the best gift they ever gave me was when I turned twenty one, they gave me a thousand dollars. And I was, like, birthday present I ever got. I I don't even think it's a down payment. It's okay. You're a teacher. Great. Your down payment is covered. Where are you coming up with twenty five k a month of your monthly monthly payment? Just for your home. Like I think it allows. I think. There this is a and this is an all cash.

Here's your house free and clear. You get to live here. And you cover your life expenses. If you're paying for a latte, that's you. But,

I'll buy you this Brown stuff. I think I think that's gotta be what it is. I think that's it. That that has to be what it is. Or the second thing is you gotta earn a lot. The third thing is I think you gotta I want how many of them do you think sell a business? I think earning a lot, like, a big nut of ten, twenty million dollars,

it seems like impossible to do without selling an asset.

You gotta be in finance,

law,

maybe medicine or consulting

to be pulling in a million dollars a year of income. I don't I don't think there are many other jobs

that do that. We're not talking about athletes, entertainers because that's just a small such a small portion of the population. But if jobs that a normal person can get, that's gonna make you a million to two million dollars a year, I'm pretty sure you gotta be either a banker or a banker consultant if you're employed, or you gotta be self employed as a doctor or a lawyer or something like that to be able to pull that in. So that's like Am I missing one? That's like Those are non those are yeah. Those are non entrepreneurial jobs. Like, the other way, and then you could start small business. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You own a small business. You own a big business. You, you know, you own a contracting firm. You do construction around the city, whatever it is. Those are the other way where you can do this, and that's usually,

you're not earning some steady one point five million per year. You're earning like nothing, nothing, nothing, a lot, a lot, a lot, huge then back to nothing. You know, like, that sort of thing. It's just it's this lumpy curve that an entrepreneur has where you're basically broke till you're very unbroke.

So, yeah.

But, okay, yeah, what else you got to say about this? And my third and final takeaway here is basically

There's so much out there. There's so much money out there. There is so much opportunity.

You walk by all these places. And again, Ben's laughing at me. This is obvious. But it when you see it in real life, I walked down the street and I'm like, oh, that apartment, that cost twelve thousand dollars a month to rent in that top floor of that Brown store. Sone, and there's three of those in there. So, like, there's three people each paying twelve thousand dollars, and there's just like, home, home, home, home, home, home, home, it's astronomical.

There's just so much money out there to be made. It's just so much opportunity. So anyway, I did this three hour walk yesterday and I just

I felt enlightened, and I just wanted to come to the table and and fill you in on that.