Should you live in a city or a suburb? No easy answer
NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - Stay in the city or move to the suburbs? Families have been wrestling with this question for generations.
So I decided to visit two different families: The Schneiders in Westchester and the Shures in Manhattan to see what raising kids is like in both places, and to try to figure out which makes more sense: city or suburban living.
Tina and Greg Shure are raising their son and daughter on the Upper East Side. Greg says when he met Tina, he never thought he'd have one kid in New York City, let alone two. He wasn't planning on renting long-term, either. But here they are, 10 years later, still renting with two kids. And, he says, it works for them.
Two-bedroom apartments converted into three bedrooms like theirs rent for between $5,000 and $7,000 a month in their building.
Tina and Greg send their daughter Chloe to the local public school. Their son, Hunter, goes to a private pre-school for about $2,000 a month.
Jena Schneider and her husband Brad moved to Ardsley in Westchester from Brooklyn about three years ago.
Jena loves having a driveway so she no longer has to worry about alternate side of the street parking.
They bought their three-bedroom house for $577,000, which works out to just over $3,000 a month in mortgage and taxes if you were to buy it and put 20 percent down.
Their son Jackson goes to public school. Their daughter Madeline goes to a private pre-school. They run about $1,500 to $2,500 in this area depending on the hours.
And the Schneiders definitely spend more time in the car these days. Jena says getting everywhere, including the supermarket, takes at least 20 minutes. It's a little different from living in Brooklyn, where they had just about everything they needed right outside their door.
Though, she says, they spend a lot less on groceries now. Jena says they average between $75 and $100 a week in food for everything from steak and chicken dinner to breakfast and snacks for the kids.
Back in Manhattan, the Shures spend about $200 a week on groceries from Fresh Direct. Tina says they do all of their shopping online and have everything delivered, even Costco once a month.
While their food spending is a lot higher, one perk of living in the city is that they can walk their kids to school. No need for the bus or a car, both of which the Schneiders depend on up in Westchester.
The one thing I figured out while doing this story? Choosing to live in the city or move out to the suburbs is really personal.
New York City gets a bad rap for being so expensive, but if you're sending your kids to public school and spending less time and money commuting, there is a lot of value there.
For a lot of families, renting makes sense if they don't have the down payment for a house or prefer to keep their money in the markets for the return on their investment and easier access to cash.