Where do Kevin's parents get their money from in Home Alone?
Since 1990, every winter viewers around the world have gathered in front of their screens to watch the confrontation between eight-year-old Kevin, abandoned in a huge mansion, and the robbers Harry and Marv, as if not knowing the outcome.
How parents could forget their child at home and fly to France without looking back is a valid question, but it is not the only one that worries viewers. No less interesting is what Kate and Peter McCallister did for a living, since they were able to buy such a property and chose the not-so-cheap Paris for a family vacation for 15 people.
To guess how much they earned, the NYT decided to first evaluate the house, which the robbers called a “diamond,” “chic,” and also a “prize” — with “stereo, video, trinkets, probably a bunch of jewelry, a safe for cash, and maybe securities.”
The house actually exists and is located, according to the real estate search platform Realtor.com, in one of Chicago's most prestigious neighborhoods, at 671 Lincoln Avenue. It is so large that Kevin's two sisters, two brothers, and himself apparently lived in separate rooms, not to mention that there was enough space for a whole "company" of guests.
Economists surveyed by the NYT studied household incomes for 1990 and 2022 in the metropolitan area where the mansion is located, analyzed average real estate prices, as well as tax, mortgage, and insurance conditions in the early 1990s.
Assuming that the McCallisters spent no more than 30% of their "income" on the property, experts concluded that the house would only be affordable for wealthy families - with an annual income of $305 thousand in 1990 or $665 thousand in 2022 (28 million rubles and 61 million rubles, respectively, at the exchange rate on December 22, 2023).
Only 1% of Chicago families could afford the McCallister house in 1990, and the statistics, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, are still relevant today. In mid-2022, a similar mansion would cost about $2.4 million (220.6 million rubles). To buy such an expensive property, a family must earn about $730 thousand a year.
The professions of Kate and Peter McCallister are not voiced in the film. The Internet suggests that Kate may be a fashion designer, since there are mannequins in the house that Kevin specially placed by the windows so that the burglars would think that he was not alone. Todd Strasser, the author of three novels based on the Home Alone screenplays, also came to the same conclusion.
According to one of the Internet theories, Peter may be a member of a criminal organization. Users admit that the thieves decide to rob his house in order to take revenge for their past actions, and Kevin's cruelty towards them is an example of what happens when parents set a bad example for their children.
However, according to the NYT, the reality may be much more prosaic. A flight of 15 people from Chicago to Paris is not a cheap pleasure, especially considering that four adults are flying in the first class cabin. However, it is not Kevin's parents who are paying for it, but Peter's brother, Rob. Kate talks about this at the very beginning.
Not only does Rob have the money to sponsor a flight for the entire family, but he also owns an apartment in Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower. You don’t need to know its square footage to appreciate its size — it’s enough to know that it could accommodate more than ten people.
Less is known about the wealth of Peter’s third brother, Frank. He behaves like a tightwad: he doesn’t want to pay $122.50 for the pizzas he ordered for dinner, and, while sitting in first class, he asks his wife to hide the salt and pepper shakers given to him by the flight attendant in her purse. But one scientific article in the American Journal of Psychiatry from 2008 said that petty theft was “far more common” among wealthier people — with a family income of $70,000 a year.
In turn, Strasser made Peter a businessman — simply because it was a “win-win option.” The writer, as he himself admits, never seriously thought about where Kevin's parents got their money. And he didn't consider them "super rich" - they are just "upper middle class", nothing more, Strasser concluded.
The NYT agrees with the latter. The McCallisters are well dressed and have the means to call several minivans for a trip to the airport. But in Paris, when the mother of the family tries to return to her son, she has to literally haggle for tickets on the next flight by any means: she offers $500, a pocket translator, a ring, and earrings.
And she also reacts ambiguously to the question of the owner of the tickets she needs about whether her Rolex watch is real - as if she herself admits that it is a fake.