<prompt> Human: Heres my dilemma. My husband and I live in LA. I am a HUGE fan of the millionaire next door, and we aspire to retire millionaires when we hit our 60s. He works and I stay at home with our two kids, both under three years old. Our house payment is within our budget, but its a little tight. Heres the issue: the school we are zoned for isnt great. Its ranked 5 out of 10 based on test scores. But here in LA, as soon as a school moves up to a 7 the houses in the neighborhood jump up 150,000 in price not exaggerating. I have no interest in paying 50 of our income on mortgage payments - but I want whats best for my kids too. I myself am a product of a 310 school and the gang culture was awful to deal with. But we live in a safe area, and our school isnt dangerous - just mediocre. Heres my question: do you think were doing the right thing staying in our neighborhood, or will we be doing a disservice to our kids?  <response>: It might be a case of diminishing returns. If your kids go to a bad school unsafe environment, lack of college prep, messed up curriculum, etc, then yes, you may have to look into alternatives. But if its an OK school, then your efforts may be better spent elsewhere. I dont have a lot of experience with grade school, and I understand starting off right is important, but maybe instead of spending 150k on a house, you could enroll them in some other afterschool activity. Your local library should be a good source.Put it another way, I dont think your kids will be better off if all the money went to the house and now theres no budget for them to go to the museum, or get a telescope to watch the stars, or to build some Legos, or make rocket, etc. I just looked up my high school on Great Schools and its got a score of 3, but there was a few really good teachers there, I took the hard classes, and my parents enrolled me at the local community college, and I think I did alright.As long as you know what theyre teaching kids in school these days and the crowd they hang around with, and stay engaged, which is not easy, you should be fine. 