Budget of a family who feels like they've 'made it' earning $142,000 a year

[celticmyst08]

I didn't see daycare there, but guess it might be under the top category. That would probably be most of it (we spend over $15k on it). If not how do they spend $20k on food+gas..?

Some people in the reddit thread pointed out that "Private Preschool" probably means daycare. That expense would make more sense then, since childcare ain't cheap. I'm not sure though, that's just one guess.

[Travis]

I don't think I understand the budget. She spends $2,400 annually on hair and nails but feels she should be spending $3,000?

This looks like the opposite of most budget plans. I guess the idea is to figure out what the think they require to reach optimum happiness and try to earn that amount.

The ideal mortgage budget is much higher than the current mortgage. Maybe he's wanting to pay it off quickly?

They want to move to a higher COL city and anticipate a much larger mortgage (and paradoxically a much smaller property tax).

[Albert]

This sounds like an entirely different scenario than the original topic.  Also how fast do you think a train can start moving? They have hundreds of tons of momentum sitting perfectly still.  It takes an incredible amount of energy to get them up to speed.  I don't see how it's even possible to get caught up while crossing though a box car or even under a rail car unless you are injured or stuck.   It's already been brought up that once a train sees a person/object on the track it is too late to do anything about it other than sound the horn, because it takes too long to actually stop a train because its got the mass and momentum of a train.  The train aint stopping for you because it can't.  They have the exact same problem getting up to speed for the same reasons.

Not very fast, but perhaps faster than you imagine. Modern passenger trains can go from standing to 60 mph in about 40 seconds.

[RootofGood]

Not very fast, but perhaps faster than you imagine. Modern passenger trains can go from standing to 60 mph in about 40 seconds.

If only we had some of those modern passenger trains here in America!  ;)