Raising six kids has never been easy, and architects don't make as much money as television's Mike Brady would lead us to believe. Wow, there's a surprise.
The Bradys lived in a large, four-bedroom house with a live-in housekeeper in suburban Los Angeles. In the earliest figures available from the National Association of Realtors, the average cost of a single-family home in the area was $87,700 in 1979.
Today, the average house in the same area goes for $509,700, and a house that can fit nine (not counting Oliver) would probably cost a lot more. Real estate Web site Zillow.com, currently values the "real" Brady House at about $1.5 million.
An architect's annual pay averages $64,150, according to the latest estimates from the BLS. That would mean Mike made an inflation-adjusted $15,687 a year during the show's final season in 1974 when Greg was getting ready to go college.
If Greg went to a state school, Mike and Carol would have been on the hook for about $636 per year, according to the University of California, or $2,984 in today's dollars - unless he decided to ditch the books and follow his dream as rock singer Johnny Bravo.
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