Ḥeshbon → Where to start
You are newly married and planning ahead
Nobody hands you the bill for a Jewish life in advance. This is what the next thirty years cost, in the order you will meet them: an apartment near a shul, a kosher kitchen, a Shabbos table, and then the tuition that dwarfs all of it.
Read these six first
Short, and each one answers a question you already have.
Community affordability · 7 min read
What does a year of Orthodox family life actually cost?
One household, four children, priced line by line across the map. Tuition is the largest line on the bill, ahead of the mortgage, and location moves everything.
2.3×spread in the all-in cost of the same life
Tuition · 3 min read
Day school tuition rises about 4% a year. Does it track inflation?
Over nine years consumer prices swung across 8.4 points while the median school's annual increase moved across only 1.5. Tuition never really tracked inflation. Two large misses in opposite directions happened to cancel out.
1.5 ptstotal range of tuition growth, nine years
Housing · 7 min read
What does walking distance to a shul cost?
The priciest Orthodox communities turn out to be the mature ones; the fastest-growing compete on affordability. What a rising walk-to-shul premium reveals that a high one cannot.
10–20%the premium on an otherwise-identical home
Groceries · 8 min read
How much of the kosher premium is actually about being kosher?
Across five cities, the kashrut-driven price gap barely moves. The gap driven by geography and channel swings widely, and that is the part a family can act on.
1.9×kosher staples versus the national basket
Groceries · 6 min read
What does it cost to set a Shabbos table every week, and to fill it with guests?
A kosher Shabbat dinner comparable in scope to an American Thanksgiving, priced course by course, and the annual bill for the family that hosts half the year.
$10,839a year of hosting, food alone
Tuition · 8 min read
In a large Orthodox family, which child is the expensive one?
The marginal cost of the fourth and fifth child, and how each community’s institutions reshape the climb a growing family makes.
4thchild, where the cost curve bendsThen the rest of it
Longer, more technical, and worth it once the shape is familiar.
- If a community is cheaper, does it pay you less? Research brief 8 min read
- Does the city tell you whether the neighborhood is safe? Research brief 9 min read
- Is the frum world sorting by politics? Research brief 8 min read
- Where can a divorced Orthodox couple both afford to stay? Research brief 7 min read
- When the tuition bill ends, where is the best place to grow old? Research brief 7 min read
Put your own numbers in
These answer rather than argue.