One couple, up to six children, thirty-five years: 2026 to 2061, from your early thirties to your mid-sixties. Set up your family, make every call on the trail, and read the ledger when you arrive.
The nominal column is dollars in the year they occur. The 2026 column deflates each figure by 2.5% a year, so you can read your 2061 results in today's money.
| Figure | Nominal | In 2026 dollars | Inflation drag |
|---|
One household is simulated year by year for 35 years. The couple begins around age 30 and ends near 65. You set each partner's line of work and starting salary, the number of children, and the savings you carry to the trailhead. Both incomes grow 3% a year with promotion bumps (years 6, 14 and 22 for the higher earner; 10 and 18 for the lower), a part-time parent trims the smaller paycheck in the baby years, and your wind-down choice cuts late-career income. A job sets a typical starting salary and nothing else, with one exception: a day school teacher, rebbe or administrator brings 50% faculty tuition remission, which replaces the 15% aid discount for as long as the children are in a day school. Children arrive in years 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 14, as many as you chose. Each year subtracts income tax (federal plus state), the mortgage, property tax, car ownership, childcare and preschool, K-12 tuition (net of a 15% aid discount and any state scholarship), summer camp, a year in Israel, college, weddings and everyday living. The surplus is invested at about 5.5% a year and the home appreciates at a sustainable long-run rate (3% to 3.8% depending on the city, deliberately far below the 2015 to 2025 boom). Everyday living scales 8% per child above or below the four-child household. Homes scale by bedroom count (3BR base, 4BR at 1.28 times, 5BR at 1.62 times). Cars cost about $9k a year each new, $5.5k lightly used, $3.5k kept long, with a third car once a teen is driving. Net worth is investments plus home equity. The today's-dollars view deflates every figure by 2.5% a year to 2026 buying power.
Communities. Home prices are a starting point for a single-family starter home near the shuls, from 2026 Zillow values. Near-shul homes often run higher. The six original communities carry hand-checked figures. The fourteen added in this edition draw home prices, property tax, state and local income tax curves, tuition and scholarship status from Ḥeshbon's Community Database, with local adjustments; treat them as modeled estimates. Tuition ladders (preschool, elementary, middle, high school) scale from each community's typical day school tuition. Texas's education savings account is new for 2026 and capped, so it is not guaranteed; Georgia's and Maryland's programs are limited to a few districts or incomes and are modeled at zero.
Sources. Ḥeshbon's Community Database; Zillow Home Value Index (2015 to 2025, used only to anchor relative city appreciation); state scholarship and ESA program rules as of 2026; camp, Israel-year, college, car and wedding costs are modeled estimates from typical Orthodox community ranges. Illustrative, not a forecast.
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Evidence where anecdote has been doing the work: what a Jewish household or a Jewish institution actually pays, and who decides. Most of these datasets did not exist until a piece needed them. Each one is published alongside the work, with its sources and its limits, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
The figures here are estimates built from public filings, published price pages and survey samples, and every piece states its own sources, sample sizes and limits in place. Tax filings run a year or more behind and get restated, posted prices change without notice, and a percentage describes the sample observed rather than the whole field. Several rest on small denominators or on voluntary reporting, noted where they appear. Where a number is our own arithmetic rather than a published one, the piece says so and shows the working.
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This is research rather than financial, tax, legal or immigration advice, and no one should decide about their own money on these pages alone. Israeli figures are current as of August 2026, at roughly three shekels to the dollar, and Israeli tax and benefit rules move faster than that. Corrections are made on the piece itself and noted there. If something here is wrong, write and it gets fixed.
© 2026 Ḥeshbon, Center on Data and Jewish Life. Research, writing and charts by Gavriel Brown.