This one made me shake my head.
Chicago is one of the most expensive cities to reside in the United States, with Angel Reese revealing she’s also a victim of those high costs, as her WNBA salary does not cover her $8,000-a-month rent.
Oh, the poor thing.
This is something I happen to know quite a bit about, because as Longtime Readers will recall, I used to live in Chicago.
“But where did you live, Kim? That makes a difference.”
Connie and I lived in a 10th-floor apartment in Lakeview, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, which afforded us views of both Lake Michigan to the east, and the city skyline to the south.
Dawn over Lake Michigan.
That’s the John Hancock Building in the distance on the left. Both pics were taken on a glum fall day soon after we’d moved in.
The apartment itself was massive: around 2,800 sq.ft (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms), it also had a basement lockup storage unit, free use of the laundromat, also in the basement, and 18-hour/day garbage pickup from the trashcan outside the goods elevator out the back door. It was also beautiful, with bay windows and solid brick.masonry walls which were so thick, they actually impeded the wifi signal. There were only two apartments on each floor.
It was so beautiful that when we had a couple of clients over for drinks during a conference, one — a wealthy owner of a chain of grocery stores — looked over at his wife and said, “We could do this”, and she nodded in agreement. It was truly a place to be proud of, and only the business need to move to Dallas after 9/11 got us out of there.
At the time (early 2000s), the monthly rent for this wonderful apartment was $3,700 and even with our combined incomes, the only way we could afford it was due to the fact that we’d sold both our cars when moving from the suburbs, and the resultant savings on car payments and insurance (about $1,200 a month) made our apartment affordable. (And the proximity to both train- and bus routes, not to mention the ubiquitous Chicago cabs, made car ownership irrelevant and unnecessary. On the few occasions when we needed a car — to venture out of state for a client meeting, for example — there was a Budget rental office four blocks away.)
Anyway, I went online and checked on the current (2024) rentals in that building, and they’ve gone up, all right: to $4,200 per month, just over half of what that WNBA tart is being charged.
Which begs the question: what kind of apartment is she living in, at that rent?
I don’t know, but I can guess: some swanky modern high-rise apartment in the Loop, Streeterville or Near North neighborhoods. Or maybe even a lakeside penthouse apartment just north of the Golden Mile. Whatever, it’s probably too big for her, and definitely not worth what she gets paid as a WNBA player.
The point about living in Chicago, as we discovered when we looked into it, is that yes, you can pay a lot of money to live in the city; but if you just lower your expectations a little and make a small compromise here and there, you can find affordable digs a-plenty.
Our apartment in Lakeview was just such a compromise, and I think that everyone could agree that it was not too great a sacrifice to have made.
The 20-year-old Angel Reese has clearly never bothered to look into such a compromise because her several sponsorship deals pay the bills, and not her WNBA salary (which is less than a fifth of my and Connie’s joint income at the time). In ten years’ time, her career at an end and the sponsorships having vanished, we’ll no doubt be reading about Angel Reese having to live in her car and eating dog food — unless, of course, she manages to snag some rich dude who can afford her.
Not the best outlook, but hey. According to the article, she has a (paid) “financial advisor” who, on this basis, ought to be fired.
I don’t know Angel Reese from Adam, but I’ll betcha she’s black and has an overweening sense of entitlement, believing she deserves as many material symbols of wealth and status as an NBA player.
Is her middle name “Bling”, does she already have four kids by three fathers and an army of “friends” and hangers-on who ‘need’ the apartment? Sounds like she needs more than a new financial advisor; more like a well-grounded father or big brother to jerk a knot in her ass.
Last time we blew money on rent was in 1986. We’re this close || now from paying this house off. Probably by May of next year. Could pay it off now but that would make reserves uncomfortably thin, considering the national climate now and the next few months. It’ll be nice to finally be free and clear. Property tax is about $1400 a year.
$3k or $8k for rent is unfathomable to me. May as well be $3mill and $8mil.
Ghost – When you get to the end of your mortgage the banks start to send you offers to pay it off early at a small discount. It costs them more to service the loan than they are making. All of the payment is going to the remaining principal and taxes on the books, none in interest. They will make you a deal to pay it all off a few months early.
Thanks Ted, since we never paid a house off, I didn’t know that. I’ll take what we can get.
I had to look it up. Apparently she is a first year rookie with a large fan base left over from when she was a college Hoops Star last year? So her Salary is only part of her income. the rest comes from various endorsement deals. Average WNBA Salary is $ 130 K. Her endorsement deals brought in around $ 1.7 Million over the past 2 years so don’t believe everything you read in that article that only tells part of the story. Typical Media Bullcrap.
But she does need a better Finacial Advisor. I bought my first Condo in 1978 for $ 28,000 Thanks to a rapid inflation in the housing market, a bank manager friend and the S&L scandal I was able to use a home improve Loan to buy a 911S . ( You can improve the value of your Condo with a Porsche in the Garage…. Right? )c Sold the Condo at a healthy profit. Rolled the profit into a house. rinse and repeat. Haven’t paid rent since graduation.
I will pass an any apartment. Out in flyover country, just far enough out that I can have a house in the woods, 10 acres, over 3k ft^2 brick house and a pole barn for about what your old apartment rents for now per month. Not really any comparison for me.
And bonus, deer hunting in the back yard.
I have no sympathy for folks like this WNBA player.
Acting, music, sports, modeling all can have very high incomes that diminish over time. She needs to live as cheaply as possible if she wants her money to go further and she needs to make sound investments. Buy a small two or three bedroom house in the suburbs somewhere and rent it out. Hopefully the rent payments cover the taxes, maintenance and mortgage so that when her career ends she has an affordable place to live or she can sell it and move near a college that hires her to be a coach.
The WNBA gets a huge subsidy from the NBA and they still run in the red. Clearly not enough people want to watch these freaks play basketball.
Well, if they really wanted to sell the product, and bring the fans out to fill the seats, they have to take a page or two from Beach Volleyball and reconsider the uniforms.
so 20 years ago your rent was about half that her rent is now.
Sounds about right given the development of housing prices, especially in major cities.
Still stupid to pay that much at her income (and especially income projections 10 years into the future) but not an unexpected rent price.
Well sweetie, if your product wasn’t dreadful and was capable of putting asses in the seats maybe your salary would increase proportionally. These chicks come from college programs that are huge $$$ losers for the Uni, but are Title 9 mandated, so they exist artificially. You could always pursue a career at an oil change place and so count your blessings. Betting in 10 years she’s living off the .gov.
Many many years ago I called in to Chicago on the way to what I thought was one of the most beautiful places in the world, Green Bay (in fall).
Person I was sent to meet in Chicago was one of our directors.
His apartment block was over the road from the lake. It had security at the gate, they valet parked my car, escorted me to the lift and handed me over to the lift driver who escorted me to the door of the apartment I was visiting. The apartment covered top two floors of the building, I only got to see the “entertaining” floor.
Mien host insisted on taking me to his club for dinner. So after a huge martini I excused myself to go to the bathroom. On the wall in the hallway was a little framed print, a Picasso that caught my eye. No, son, that’s not a print, my mother bought that in the 1960s.
His club was on the top floor of a high rise building. They’d done a deal and sold their old club to a developer who built the high rise and they took over the top floors.
So we get to the club, are escorted to his table in the corner, with all of Chicago laid out below. “What would sir like?” No menu, nothing. So I said, I don’t mind, lamb or a steak, whatever the chef recommends. Didn’t even ask my host. He just said bring me one of those Aussie reds.
So out comes a bottle of 86 Grange (generally regarded as the best red made in Australia) the best steak I’ve ever eaten and two cheeseburgers with fries for my host.
Unbelievable…