Shouldn't Teachers know better? Denver is Expensive!

www.cnn.com...

"She moved to Denver in 2014 and started making well over the $28,000 she had before. One day she realized the extra money wasn't adding up as much as she had hoped."

Are we concerned that these are people teaching our kids? I love teachers, a huge majority of my friends are teachers, but a lot of these stories are disturbing. These stories make it seem like it is just teachers are struggling in areas like these, but that's far from the truth.

Some areas are just freaking expensive. People see that they pay is higher and they get excited and move there, but they do not take into the account the true cost of living in these place. Then, when they do realize it they don't want to move, they want taxpayers to pony up. For this articles example, teachers are making average wages for Denver. There is nothing unique to their situation other than the media's sob story.

a reply to: JAGStorm


"Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."
-John Wayne?

a reply to: JAGStorm

yeah, theres perhaps a zillion cost of living calculators out there...I use them. Wife and I ran a budget against my Salary before moving to Southern Oregon from Ohio.

Teachers, and pretty much anyone old enough to hold a job should know better.

Just way easier to complain these days

originally posted by: JAGStorm
www.cnn.com...
"She moved to Denver in 2014 and started making well over the $28,000 she had before. One day she realized the extra money wasn't adding up as much as she had hoped."

Are we concerned that these are people teaching our kids? I love teachers, a huge majority of my friends are teachers, but a lot of these stories are disturbing. These stories make it seem like it is just teachers are struggling in areas like these, but that's far from the truth.

Some areas are just freaking expensive. People see that they pay is higher and they get excited and move there, but they do not take into the account the true cost of living in these place. Then, when they do realize it they don't want to move, they want taxpayers to pony up. For this articles example, teachers are making average wages for Denver. There is nothing unique to their situation other than the media's sob story.

Yeah a lot of people dont understand that cost of living varies and that what may seem like a lot of money in say rural America is barely middle class in some urban areas.

$300k a year would be a lot of money in many areas while say in Manhattan youd be living paycheck to paycheck if you tried to have the same lifestyle that 300k coukd afford in Alabama.

Wife and I sometimes look at relocating but we've found it would probably be a net loss to us to do so because of cost of living in the areas we like when we compare housing costs and schools.

We have relatively low housing costs right now and we also have top public schools k thru 12. In many areas wed move our mortgage would more than double and wed also probably have to pay for private school. Not too mention we are in a walkable town. Simply can't replicate what we have without losing money unless we find jobs that pay substantially more than what we make now which is unlikely.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Not a John Wayne quote ...

Quote Investigator: QI and other researchers have found no substantive evidence that John Wayne crafted this saying. The earliest strong match known to QI appeared in the 1971 novel “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” by George V. Higgins.

quoteinvestigator.com...

And this is also what people don't get about life in flyover. A lot place out here let you live substantially better on much lower salaries and hourly wages than some of the areas where people look at what we make and sneer at how "poor" we are.

We know, for example, that if we moved to someplace like California, husband would have to make half again his annual salary just for us to break even on our current standard of living.

a reply to: JAGStorm

The other part of this whole thing that really bothers me is them talking about the super long hours:

"She gets up at 4 a.m. on school days, goes for a run and does not get home until after 5 p.m. "We live for the weekends," she said."

If she gets up to run, that is not part of the school day. That is a personal choice.
How many people do not get home until after 5pm, pretty much every working adult. My guess it's a lot later for most!

originally posted by: Edumakated
Wife and I sometimes look at relocating but we've found it would probably be a net loss to us to do so because of cost of living in the areas we like when we compare housing costs and schools.

We have relatively low housing costs right now and we also have top public schools k thru 12. In many areas wed move our mortgage would more than double and wed also probably have to pay for private school. Not too mention we are in a walkable town. Simply can't replicate what we have without losing money unless we find jobs that pay substantially more than what we make now which is unlikely.

Everything you said. Sometimes it isn't about money, it's about wanting to be by the ocean, or mountains and taking that into account. Which is fine, but don't ask taxpayers to spend more than average for your choice.

I seriously think these teachers strikes are getting played out, it is going to be a boy that cried wolf scenario real soon.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: JAGStorm


"She gets up at 4 a.m. on school days, goes for a run and does not get home until after 5 p.m. "We live for the weekends," she said."

a reply to: JAGStorm

She can stuff a sock in it.

Husband gets up at 5:30 and doesn't often get home until around 5. He spends two hours in the car on an average work day. And now on some of those days, he gets home throws on some jeans and we all turn around and head out to son's activities. So he doesn't actually get home until later, and we cook supper then.

She thinks she lives for the weekends? But he doesn't go on strike. This is simply part of the commuter lifestyle and we both accept that this is how things are unless we take steps to change it.

a reply to: ketsuko

She can stuff a sock in it.

Oh what about this one

"Little products at home, like cleaning supplies, we'll go to the dollar store instead of Target or even Walmart," the third-grade math teacher from Ashley Elementary School told CNN."

Oh the HORROR, how dare we expect teachers to use generic cleaning products!!

Strike strike strike!

a reply to: JAGStorm

Learn To Code

&

Move to a place with a cost of living you can afford.

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Edumakated
Wife and I sometimes look at relocating but we've found it would probably be a net loss to us to do so because of cost of living in the areas we like when we compare housing costs and schools.

We have relatively low housing costs right now and we also have top public schools k thru 12. In many areas wed move our mortgage would more than double and wed also probably have to pay for private school. Not too mention we are in a walkable town. Simply can't replicate what we have without losing money unless we find jobs that pay substantially more than what we make now which is unlikely.

Everything you said. Sometimes it isn't about money, it's about wanting to be by the ocean, or mountains and taking that into account. Which is fine, but don't ask taxpayers to spend more than average for your choice.

I seriously think these teachers strikes are getting played out, it is going to be a boy that cried wolf scenario real soon.

Exactly... we all make choices and have to decide what we value. I purposely don't live in CA or NYC because I think the cost of living is absurd. I refuse to pay $1.5 million or more for a small 1000 sgft condo that I could buy here in Chicago for say $400k. My salary would not triple or quadruple in NYC. Or some crappy ranch house for $2 million in Silicon Valley.

Chicago has been a nice compromise for big city living and a relatively low cost of living (cheapest of what I'd consider Tier 1 big cities are concerned).

Some people rather complain than just accept the fact they can't afford to live somewhere. It is simple... move. There are a lot of places I'd love to live, but I will never be able to afford so I just visit instead. Or you have to accept you will need to make sacrifices like living a little further out to afford to live in certain areas.

Everyone is too entitled these days...

a reply to: JAGStorm

Any bets on what her smartphone looks like or if she has more than basic cable/internet?

a reply to: JAGStorm

So wait... is everyone implying that we should just not have teachers in Denver because it costs too much for them to live here?

I'm not understanding the take-away here. How is don't teach in Denver a solution to this problem of people just trying to make a living wage?

The sad thing about living here is that the cost of living vs salaries was really outstanding about 10 years ago. Everything has gone up but salaries.

a reply to: zosimov

We're saying that if you don't do the research and realize what the cost of living is in a place before you move there to take a job, then that's on you.

Just because she saw a number on paper and it looked wonderful and she judged it by her circumstances in her old place of living doesn't mean she gets to move to Denver, realize that she got in financially over her head, and think it justifies her whining for more money.

I'd love to accept a job in some other city that looks like a financial windfall compared to my current job market's standards, move there and realize it's small potatoes compared to what I was enjoying, and then demand my new employer suddenly grant me a raise too, but that's not how it works for most of us in the real world. Adults are expected to do their due diligence and figure this one out.

What CNN is doing is trying to make you feel sorry for her because she was basically irresponsible.

a reply to: ketsuko

I can see what you are saying but that doesn't solve the very real problem of low teachers' wages. Locals are suffering too.

This is just a story about financially illiterate people.

My favorite quote from someone making $56,000 for 10 months of work (not including holidays and personal/sick days) is "...I still don't know where my money is going."