Yep, The McCallisters Were The 1% — Inside The Staggering Cost Of A 'Home Alone' Family In 2025
Design: YourTango Photo: Steve Travelguide, Roberto Valz | Shutterstock They may be presented as just your average middle-class American family, but the McCallisters of "Home Alone" are actually part of the 1%. That's according to an analysis of economic data by InvestorsObserver, which found the staggering cost of raising a "Home Alone" family in these times requires more money per year than most American couples make by a long shot.
Part of why "Home Alone" has become such an iconic Christmas movie is because of the idyllic, "normal" family life it depicts. But what the data show is that raising a "Home Alone" family is shockingly out of reach, even in some of the cheapest parts of the country.
Inside the staggering cost of a 'Home Alone' family in 2025, & why the McCallisters are actually 1%'ers.
The big, beautiful house in a historic neighborhood, the outfits pulled right out of the aspirational pages of a '90s department store catalog, and of course, the Christmas trip to Paris for FIFTEEN PEOPLE for goodness sake — nowadays, everything in "Home Alone" kinda screams wealth in a way that is at odds with the film itself.
This observation is nothing new, of course. Real estate listings for the Winnetka, Illinois, house that Macaulay Culkin booby-trapped within an inch of its life (or appeared to: the movie was actually filmed on a replica built in a high school gym) have gone viral several times over the years, most recently in 2025 when it sold for more than $5 million. Those burglars targeted the McCallisters for a reason!
But InvestorsObserver's analysis reveals just HOW rich the McCallisters really would be if they were a real American family, and how wildly out of reach their story is for nearly everyone in America today. In short, they're not just an average family: They're full-on 1%'ers.
The McCallisters would spend nearly $165,000 a year for the basics for their family with five kids.
To analyze this, InvestorsObserver researched the annual cost of raising a single child in the top 49 American metro areas, and in the Chicago area, that endeavor comes to a staggering $32,978 a year for just the usual necessities, which is more than many people make in an entire year.
But multiply that by the McCallisters' five children, Buzz, Linnie, Megan, Jeff, and, of course, the one left "home alone" himself, Kevin, and good old John Heard and Catherine O'Hara are plunking down some serious cash: nearly $165,000 a year just for the basics of keeping their kids alive.
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By contrast, the present average combined salary for a married couple in the Chicago area is just $129,000. That leaves a $36,000 shortfall that such a couple would need to cover with credit cards every year. And it doesn't get much better in cheaper parts of the country.
Taking into account the year "Home Alone" was made paints a stark picture of how inflation has affected parenting costs, too. InvestorsObserver found the average cost of raising a single child in Chicago in the McCallisters' era of 1990 was around $6700-$8300 a year, or $16,000 to $21,000 in 2025, a far cry from the actual cost of nearly $33,000.
Even in affordable cities, having a McCallister-sized family would require an average of $32,000 in debt each year.
So, okay, having a family of five in the Chicago area is financially untenable for most. So move somewhere cheaper, right? But Chicago is already vastly cheaper than most large cities in the U.S. So if you think, say, Milwaukee is the solution, think again. A "Home Alone" family is still going to sink the average couple $71,000 in debt each year.
So perhaps you move to Detroit or Cleveland instead. Nope! Prepare to be saddled with $67k and $87k in debt every single year, respectively. Even Columbus doesn't make the cut. The average couple's income still falls more than $16,000 shy of the cost of raising five kids.
To raise five kids on the average couple's combined salary and still come out ahead, you could head to Richmond, Virginia, where you'll be left with a paltry $4,960 in surplus each year. But if you want to live high on the hog like the McCallisters? Hope you like bourbon and humidity! Because you're moving to Louisville, where you'll have $65,000 leftover each year.
All rolled together, this yields a national average of $32,000 in debt every year for a two-parent family raising five kids, showing just how out of touch with reality "Home Alone" really is. "The McCallisters were not a regular family… they are more likely to be closer to the 1% wealth category," says Sam Bourgi, a senior analyst at InvestorsObserver. All part of the Hollywood magic!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
