You know, the 1990 holiday classic starring Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, a kid who fends for himself against burglars after his family, on their way to catch a flight to Paris, forget him at home.
The family has a nice house in a nice neighborhood and a nice budget (of some sort, at least) to travel to Paris. (Plus, they plan another trip in the sequel, to Miami.)
So all this might have you wondering, well, just how rich this family is.
According to a new report by the New York Times, the McCallister family is probably part of the 1 percent.
On Thursday, the paper published a report on the fictional family’s wealth, which included speaking with economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Both the setting of the fictional home and the real house used for exterior shots are in the Chicago suburbs. The real house is specifically located in Winnetka, Illinois, which is part of the metro area’s affluent North Shore suburbs.
According to the New York Times, the Federal Reserve economists deduced that the family is likely in the top 1 percent of Chicago households.
This came after they considered a variety of factors, including area housing figures and the standard rule of using 30% of income used on housing costs.
All this led to the belief that the McCallister family likely had an income of at least $305,000 in 1990 (when the film was released), which would translate to roughly $665,000 in 2022.
The New York Times also noted that a current Zillow estimate for the real home is roughly $2.4 million, meaning the family would need an income of about $730,000 to purchase the house. This would then put them in the top 1 percent of households in Chicagoland.
Of course, this is all hypothetical, since they’re talking about a fictional family, and the movie never really outlines what exactly Kevin’s parents do for work. Still, it’s interesting to wonder what would have been at stake for the McCallister family if Kevin hadn’t fended off the burglars.
You can check out the New York Times’ full report here.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephlongo/home-alone-wealth-new-york-times-report