Sure, I'll go through what Im comfortable with.

I'm currently an educator in a high income area, teaching students of significant wealth. I make about 450k a year.

We are required to live within a specific radius of the campus, which significantly limits my housing choices to high income, low space options. I'm around the middle of housing costs among my peers, and I'm paying 5k a month for 600 sq/ft.

We are expected to provide all resources for our courses, as is fairly normal in the primary/secondary teaching profession. Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff. We are expected to bear it based on the idea that we're "over compensated" for our position, and that this "gives us flexibility to provide tailored education experiences". Nonsense, but I do love the job.

Taxes and health insurance take a bit over 100k a year.

That puts me around 90k gross for a family of 4 (which I have). "Very low income" level for a family of for in my area us 58k. That puts me at 55% above the VLI line. My original estimate was 75%.

I have a significant medical issue that puts a financial burden on us in monthly prescription copays, plus 4 three month specialist checkups, plus the cost of 2 children.

I am NOT saying this is normal by any means. My single healthy peers live fairly well.

I also expect most people to think, "Just get a new job!", which is understandable. However if I were to move back to my previous southern US appointment, doing the exact same job, Id have less net income and not be working in such a cool place.

Thanks for the details, this is very interesting.

> Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff.

That certainly explains everything. I'm curious where that money goes? If you're teaching a class of 30 students, you could buy each one a laptop and go on a two-week field trip with individual hotel rooms and still have 100k left from that budget.

I cant go into detail much because itd make it easy to google my place of employment.

We pay for trips, electronics, "lab kits", license fees, PPE, raw materials, rental fees for heavy equipment and due to the nature of the content we pay probably more than we should due to inflated costs related to the specialized nature of the topic and school contracts.

AND we pay sales tax on all of it, which isnt insignificant on already ridiculous costs.

What is the 200k paying? Is there any way you could chop it down to 100k?

Yes. I could certainly bring the costs down, but at the expense of the experience of the students.

I don't believe that is an ethical choice, even if the students are already extremely privileged.

I do struggle with this every few months though, it is a difficult concept to grapple with, but I always side with trying to provide the best educational experience that I can.

And FWIW, among the other instructors, my costs aren't even particularly high.

Anything medical could easily get that high. Cancer, trauma injury.

If you're paying out of pocket, sure. But you can get a very good family insurance plan for $2k per month that should cover everything.

I have quite decent medical insurance, and copays still exist.

I dont want to discuss my medical costs directly, but the uninsured cash cost for my monthly medications is about 5.5k month. Insurance does help significantly, but the final cost is still greater than 10% of cash price.