One of the most popular Christmas movies of all time, Trembling, Burglars, follows the holiday adventures of the McAllister family from Cellboard, starring little Kevin, who happens to be alone in their huge Chicago house. Since the film premiered in 1990, the question has been asked from time to time, how wealthy would the McCallister family have been at that time, if they could have maintained such a large, magnificent residential estate and finance a trip to Paris for dozens of their family members?
a The New York Times This year, he looked into the question with the help of economists and real estate experts, and the answer is: a lot.
Thanks to their wealth, they belonged to the top 1% of society.
At the beginning of the film, one of the burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci), has the family nearly tied up when he tells his fellow burglar, Marv (Daniel Stern), that the McCallister house could be their biggest catch in this affluent neighborhood. It's a “gold mine” that can be filled with high-end items, loud audio equipment, jewelry, and maybe even securities.
But to determine the McCallister's fortune, it is enough to examine their house alone: according to the real estate expert interviewed, the huge multi-storey house located at 671 Lincoln Street in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka is considered one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the USA.
In 1990, it was affordable for only 1% of Chicago households, and according to economists at the Federal Reserve, that would remain the case today.
Based on the assumption that the McAllister family spent no more than 30 percent of their income on housing, economists also determined that at that time property was only available to a family with an income of $305,000 (about 105 million HUF). In mid-2022, a similar house would have cost about $2.4 million (about 830 million forints), which only 1% of the city's households could afford.
But the family's Christmas trip to Paris was also dicey: transporting 15 people to one of the most expensive cities in Europe is expensive, especially if the four adults are traveling first class.
However, the film never reveals what McCallister's parents did. Todd Strasser, who wrote the official novelizations for the two sequels, said in an interview that he received no guidance from the filmmakers in this regard, so in his books he gave Kevin's mother a job as a fashion designer, and of course made Kevin's father a businessman. But he didn't think to give a detailed backstory on how the McCallisters got so rich: he considered them upper-middle class, not super-rich, anyway.
