The "first family" aspect of the President job is almost becoming similar to the royals. If he wanted to just go to work like other elected officials do, I'd be good with it.
I'd agree, but security concerns probably made that impossible. The President's family becomes the focus of many threats, so it's probably best to have them in a secure area. We aren't a country like Holland or Finland where political officials and their families probably could live ordinary lives, and even Sweden, a country without all the global pressures and significance of the United States, has seen two prime ministers assassinated in recent decades.
The security is a good point. I thought of that, but it occurs to me that she travels the world on her own and takes separate planes for most of their vacations, so I didn’t see the cost difference as being significant.