Share your opinion without bashing please...

↑ 33055

Tue, May 28 2019, 5:54 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

It's very common for grandparents to help out with these things, especially if they are in chinuch or kollel. Also, there is a huge Earned Income Credit refund which gives these families more money.

That's not what Keym was saying. She said with programs and earning minimal money the family, she was talking about, was able to support a very nice lifestyle for 6 kids. She said to do the math.

The math works if you add in money from grandparents. It works if you add in money from parents. It works if the couple saved big money from before they were married. It works if they won a lawsuit or a lottery. What doesn't work is the original numbers.

It's roughly $4000 a person annually or to fund sleep away camps, expensive food items, nice clothes, nice cars, and vacations. I can't see it. I need at least that every month to fund the items she mentioned.

And what of utilities and cell phones? What about gifts? What about furnishings? What about surge spending for the yom tovim? It's even less if they are giving maaser and tzedukah.

amother

↑ Aquamarine ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 6:03 pm

amother [ Periwinkle ] wrote:

To the poster above who was getting defensive about my post regarding the OOT kollel people where I live...I'm not sitting here figuring out what they spend their money on
What I was pointing out is that these people are bringing their gashmiyus standards into our cities
I don't know if they pay tuition, I don't know how much the wives work...but I do know that there are many, many other people who live here that DO pay full tuition and DO work hard and they don't have to have the latest fashions, strollers, shaitels, etc.
It used to be you could move OOT and feel like you were getting away from all that, but it's no longer the case.

I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm wearing an almost decade old sheital that I got for a few hundred dollars before my wedding. I have two and I bought them before my wedding for a few hundred dollars. What I'm trying to say is that in my experience we haven't imported materialism into the community. I don't see it here and I don't see it in the few towns I know. It may be the case in your community, but it isn't the case with all oot Kollels. My life and my friends life are pretty non materialistic.

amother

Seafoam

Tue, May 28 2019, 6:04 pm

A bit of rambling:

I grew up in Lakewood and see the big change. Yes, the fact is that lakewood changed and as some other posters said no use mourning over it, just accept the new reality.

1) a lot of non-kollel families migrated here and caused a big business boom. Look at Lakewood circulars: there is a lot of gashmiyus available in town
2) which leads to my next point: there is a lot of money floating around town. There are many people that are rich and can support the high class stores and dress their children in top of the line clothes
3) and there are many kollel people with rich parents, or a wife may be a successful business owner
4) and also in this big town there are working class people that are struggling. No denying that.
5) and also not a contradiction: there are kollel families that are struggling and living simply, believe it or not. Although many of these chashuv women are not represented on imamother
6) so you land up with a "kollel" town interspersed with rich people. There is no clear divide in neighborhood/schools so the peer pressure is real
And people do spend beyond their means.
7)and there are some who are still in kollel, yet do some investing/business on the side that you may not know about, wife works and gets paid well and the boss bought the doona and gave them a credit at the stores before YT, so they may appear to spend beyond their means but are not.

In summary, the change did not happen overnight, but it is real. And people's finances are not necessarily what they appear to be so don't judge.

↑ Mommyg8 ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 7:55 pm

keym wrote:

I think I wasn't clear.
I was saying that a family on programs legitimately with very little actual income has more disposable cash for SOME luxuries that many other middle class families can't afford.
Especially with qtr, so large portions of tuition can legally be paid pretax, lowering the income.
But at the end of the day, the Kollel and Rebbe friends and neighbors on programs are more easily able to have SOME luxuries that many middle class families can't dream of.

Tuition in Lakewood is lower-4/5k per child. Rent is really lower. 1800-2000 for a 5 bedroom house.

As Squishy mentioned above, this is not really true. And it's not possible. The only way for a family like that to have SOME luxuries is if they get gifts from family or wherever. Which is perfectly legal and fine, but it's still not coming from programs or their salary or anything like that. Or they live on credit cards. There is no magic, and if you are only living on programs you are POOR. (By American standards at least).

ETA: I just want to add that there are PLENTY of families in Lakewood who live VERY simply and have zero luxuries. They may not be as flashy as their wealthier neighbors, so you don't really see them, but make no mistake - in Lakewood they are the silent majority.

DVOM ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 8:07 pm

Ahhh… another edifying conversation about my dear hometown, Lakewood!

I’m exhausted. My boys all had stomach viruses this week, and I have scrubbed all sorts of bodily fluids out of all sorts of surfaces more times than I can count. So take the following with a healthy heaping spoonful of salt. I get very wordy when I’m this pooped (hah! Pun intended!). And I know I'm really not answering the OP's question. Sorry OP! Here are my rambling, sleep-deprived thoughts:

We too moved into a Lakewood neighborhood that seemed, at first glance, to be a good fit for us. We were young and dumb, bright eyed and bushy tailed, nerdy and naive. We were told that the crowd was 'very Frum,' mostly Kollel families. We took 'very Frum' to mean very simple, very spiritually inclined, very focused on what is really important in life, very kind, very honest, very accepting and loving and warm. Well, we though, we're very Frum too, or at least we aspire to be, if that's what Frum means. We'll fit right in!

It took a lot of heartache and the gnawing feeling of not belonging before we upped and moved. The strollers! The fancy shmancy Shabbos pajamas! The matching weekday and Shabbos outfits, matching down to the sox and hairbows and jewelry! The looooong park-bench conversations about finding the right pacifier clip! The kiddushes and bar mitzvahs with ice sculptures, masses of fresh flowers, ice cream sunday bars, dozens of teeny tiny cakes shaped like itty bitty pink ballet slippers or torahs or boys' initials! The time and effort and attention given to professionally perfect family photos, to window dressings, to kitchen appliances, to Shabbos 'tablescapes'! The looks that I got in my comfy maxi skirts and sneaks and scarves when everyone else dressed in heels and loooong wigs and designer sunglasses! Many of our new neighbors were, in fact, kind, spiritual, honest, accepting, loving and warm. I grew to call several of them close friends. But precious few were living anything close to a simple lifestyle.

I don't begrudge anyone their little or large luxuries. I don't mind if you want to buy a stroller that cost more than my family spends on food in a few months or go on vacations that cost more than we spend on food in a year. Right or wrong, I have my own luxuries that I’d like to afford, my own materialistic dreams, my own extravagant splurges.

What did (and does!) get under my skin is the tacit and sometimes not so tacit invitation that these living-large Kollel families seemed to broadcast, an invitation to the rest of us to admire them and their lifestyle, to, in fact, look up to them. I have seen families whose outsides match their insides; whose bar mitzvahs and pajamas and wigs match their dedication to Torah learning and Torah values. I truly admire these women. They’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

But families who are living richly while learning in Kollel seems to me like… like a friend of mine who has full-time live-in cleaning help who once told me that she ‘prides herself’ on having spotlessly clean floors. You could walk on her floors barefoot, she told me, and you toes would stay as pearly pink as if you’d just hopped out of the bath. I marveled at her perspective. She does not clean her own floors. She does not even earn the money that pays for her cleaning lady; it is funded by her wealthy dad. What exactly is she proud of? Or a couple we met who ooohed and aaaahed about the beauty of the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the majesty of the changing colors of each rock layer as you travel deeper and deeper into the earth, the towering walls high above you when you reach the bottom. We were very impressed, envious even, and asked how difficult it was to do the climb, how many days it took to accomplish it. They responded that they went in and out by helicopter. No doubt the Canyon was still beautiful, but our admiration and respect for them was gone.

I’ve always believed that hard work buys pride in one’s self, wins the respect of others. There’s no accomplishment without hard work. Kollel with a bugaboo just seems too easy to me to feel like there’s much to admire there. I know what you’re all going to say, and it’s true: each person on their own level has their own struggles, and that a stay at home Kollel wife with a huge home, a doona, two late model cars, two yearly vacations, extensive cleaning help, a healthy budget for food, clothing, toys, therapies, extracurricular activities for her kids and herself can still be sweating, sacraficing, striving, working really hard to support her husband’s Kollel learning. I know it can be true, and yet, I still have difficulty finding any respect or admiration for that Kollel lifestyle. I can admire her for many other things: her kindness, her chessed, her respect for others, her parenting, her heavenly chocolate cake recipe, her tact and sensitivity towards her neighbors, the ways she puts on makeup. But please don't ask me to admire the fact that her husband is in full time long term learning.

Last edited by DVOM on Tue, May 28 2019, 8:15 pm; edited 1 time in total

↑ thunderstorm

Tue, May 28 2019, 8:14 pm

DVOM wrote:

Ahhh… another edifying conversation about my dear hometown, Lakewood!

I’m exhausted. My boys all had stomach viruses this week, and I have scrubbed all sorts of bodily fluids out of all sorts of surfaces more times than I can count. So take the following with a healthy heaping spoonful of salt. I get very wordy when I’m this pooped (hah! Pun intended!). And I know I'm really not answering the OP's question. Sorry OP! Here are my rambling, sleep-deprived thoughts:

We too moved into a Lakewood neighborhood that seemed, at first glance, to be a good fit for us. We were young and dumb, bright eyed and bushy tailed, nerdy and naive. We were told that the crowd was 'very Frum,' mostly Kollel families. We took 'very Frum' to mean very simple, very spiritually inclined, very focused on what is really important in life, very kind, very honest, very accepting and loving and warm. Well, we though, we're very Frum too, or at least we aspire to be, if that's what Frum means. We'll fit right in!

It took a lot of heartache and the gnawing feeling of not belonging before we upped and moved. The strollers! The fancy shmancy Shabbos pajamas! The matching weekday and Shabbos outfits, matching down to the sox and hairbows and jewelry! The looooong park-bench conversations about finding the right pacifier clip! The kiddushes and bar mitzvahs with ice sculptures, masses of fresh flowers, ice cream sunday bars, dozens of teeny tiny cakes shaped like itty bitty pink ballet slippers or torahs or boys' initials! The looks that I got in my comfy maxi skirts and sneaks and scarves when everyone else dressed in heels and loooong wigs and designer sunglasses! Many of our new neighbors were, in fact, kind, spiritual, honest, accepting, loving and warm. I grew to call several of them close friends. But precious few were living anything close to a simple lifestyle.

I don't begrudge anyone their little or large luxuries. I don't mind if you want to buy a stroller that cost more than my family spends on food in a few months or go on vacations that cost more than we spend on food in a year. Right or wrong, I have my own luxuries that I’d like to afford, my own materialistic dreams, my own extravagant splurges.

What did (and does!) get under my skin is the tacit and sometimes not so tacit invitation that these living-large Kollel families seemed to broadcast, an invitation to the rest of us to admire them and their lifestyle, to, in fact, look up to them. I have seen families whose outsides match their insides; whose bar mitzvahs and pajamas and wigs match their dedication to Torah learning and Torah values. I truly admire these women. They’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

But families who are living richly while learning in Kollel seems to me like… like a friend of mine who has full-time live-in cleaning help who once told me that she ‘prides herself’ on having spotlessly clean floors. You could walk on her floors barefoot, she told me, and you toes would stay as pearly pink as if you’d just hopped out of the bath. I marveled at her perspective. She does not clean her own floors. She does not even earn the money that pays for her cleaning lady; it is funded by her wealthy dad. What exactly is she proud of? Or a couple we met who ooohed and aaaahed about the beauty of the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the majesty of the changing colors of each rock layer as you travel deeper and deeper into the earth, the towering walls high above you when you reach the bottom. We were very impressed, envious even, and asked how difficult it was to do the climb, how many days it took to accomplish it. They responded that they went in and out by helicopter. No doubt the Canyon was still beautiful, but our admiration and respect for them was gone.

I’ve always believed that hard work buys pride in one’s self, wins the respect of others. There’s no accomplishment without hard work. Kollel with a bugaboo just seems too easy to me to feel like there’s much to admire there. I know what you’re all going to say, and it’s true: each person on their own level has their own struggles, and that a stay at home Kollel wife with a huge home, a doona, two late model cars, two yearly vacations, extensive cleaning help, a healthy budget for food, clothing, toys, therapies, extracurricular activities for her kids and herself can still be sweating, sacraficing, striving, working really hard to support her husband’s Kollel learning. I know it can be true, and yet, I still have difficulty finding any respect or admiration for that Kollel lifestyle. I can admire her for many other things: her kindness, her chessed, her respect for others, her parenting, her heavenly chocolate cake recipe, her tact and sensitivity towards her neighbors, the ways she puts on makeup. But please don't ask me to admire the fact that her husband is in full time long term learning.

Did I ever tell you how much I love you? You expressed it so well. We share the same mindset .

amother

Wine ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 8:20 pm

DVOM wrote:

Liking this was not enough. Excellently put. There's what to learn from everyone and it doesn't have to be a sacrifice that they aren't making.

Writergirl

Tue, May 28 2019, 8:22 pm

DVOM wrote:

What an eloquent and non-judgmental way of expressing this!