Investment Banker
$1,000,000

Justine and her husband look very much like a young couple who have figured it out. In their early thirties, they own an apartment on the Upper East Side. They rent a place in the Hamptons over the summer. They lease a Jeep Cherokee. When she gave birth to her son a little more than a year ago, she quit her job indefinitely to stay home with the baby. Her husband supports her and pays for a nanny, too. And they are saving steadily to prepare for whatever uncertainty may lie ahead.

What does it take to live like this? Her husband, an investment banker, brought home more than $1 million last year, and, at another Wall Street firm, she made about $500,000 before she quit. "Even if my husband is making over $1 million, that's not much, you know, compared to a lot of our friends," Justine says. "Especially when you realize that he gets more than a third of his compensation in stock and we can't flip it for five years. So the opportunity cost of me not working is high -- half a million. But I just can't imagine not being home with my son."

Welcome to the Park Avenue middle class. "We have a nice apartment on the Upper East Side -- we paid over $2 million, for eight rooms -- but it is not a mansion at all," she says. "You would be shocked. It is not at all palatial. We have a house in the Hamptons, a very basic thing, again, nothing palatial, not on the water. We pay $40,000 or $50,000 for the summer, for three months."

But housing is just the beginning. When you move into the rarefied world of $2 million Upper East Side co-ops, the little things in life turn out to be pretty pricey, too. Living surrounded by others whose pockets are even deeper raises costs all around. When they dine out with friends -- which happens two or three times a week -- it is at places like Cello or Pastis, and often tops $100 a head. If they are alone, though, they'll just have "something simple," like sushi, for $40 a head.

She has to have a cell phone, of course -- $200 a month. "I make a lot of calls from cabs, because that is the time I have to talk," she says. Clothes add up, too -- about $20,000 a year. "With women's fashion, you have to change so much," she says. "My husband just takes off his jacket and tie, and it looks like a completely different thing." Keeping up with her friends in maintaining her appearance is a job in itself. "A lot of my friends get their hair blown out or get manicures or pedicures and stuff. Thirty or $40 for each -- you can easily spend more than $100 a week. And everybody gets a massage for $100 a week. Usually they come to your house."

She belongs to a gym, of course -- $1,100 a year, and $150 for each biweekly session with the trainer. And while Justine is out doing errands and taking the kids to their classes, someone has to clean up around the house, so she has a full-time housekeeper -- about $450 a week.

Even for Justine, the cost of child-care is eye-popping. "The nanny -- oh, God, you don't even want to know what that costs!" She and her husband pay about $800 a week, or $40,000 a year -- a baby-sitter who's working on the books is considerably more expensive than one who isn't. The cost that really pinches is child care on vacations. "Anguilla," she says, "is the island where a lot of our friends go." Bringing the nanny adds not only another plane ticket but a whole other room -- as much as $10,000 extra for a two-week vacation.

What Justine doesn't have is a car and driver, although a lot of her friends do, and she wants one: "A driver is a big help if you have kids. It is just sick and wrong to have babies on the subway, so I take taxis. It could easily be $30 a day for play dates and things, and a driver can pick up the kids, drop them off at school, get packages, take the nanny to the Hamptons. Why not? Once you have got the nanny."

Still, Justine knows she is lucky. "Our life is middle-class," she says, "but it's not like the real middle class -- we're in a world where people make at least $200,000 a year."