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I've seen people get deals on studio apartments for around $1500 a month. One person I know has a studio apartment on the UES for $1400 but it is quite a long walk to get to the train. The UES seems to have good deals (relatively speaking) on studio apartments from what I have seen. I don't see why a person couldn't live comfortably in this arrangement on 75K per year. That is, if you're okay with living in a studio apartment. If you want a true one bedroom you'd most likely have to go further out without compromising lifestyle too much. If you're willing to nudge a bit above 96th, perhaps several blocks or so, there are sometimes one bedrooms up there around $1500 per month. My advice is don't make 96th the cutoff on the UWS at least, make it more like 106th and you can score more 'deals'.
Last edited by EastBoundandDownChick; 09-03-2011 at 03:43 PM..
You can do it on $50K or less IF you can luck into an affordable apartment and IF you know how to cook and IF the word fashion has never crossed your lips. There won't be a lot left for bar-hopping either.
That's a lot of IF's and the first one is extremely hard to pull off but it is possible and life can be quite pleasant. New York offers a lot to do that doesn't involve mucho dinero. Join a discount theater club and for $100 a year you can see a show every night for $3.50.
Last edited by Kefir King; 09-03-2011 at 06:50 PM..
100k +
My husband and I lived in NYC at 96 and 3rd in a new luxury highrise on his salary of 93k (software developer) plus my measly retail cosmetics job of about 30k a year (120k). Rent for our alcove studio was 2700 a month (got a "deal" because it was during the economy bust). We went out to dinner a lot and did fun things, but boy we weren't saving at all. EVERYTHING is more expensive AND add all the taxes. Crazy.
100k +
My husband and I lived in NYC at 96 and 3rd in a new luxury highrise on his salary of 93k (software developer) plus my measly retail cosmetics job of about 30k a year (120k). Rent for our alcove studio was 2700 a month (got a "deal" because it was during the economy bust). We went out to dinner a lot and did fun things, but boy we weren't saving at all. EVERYTHING is more expensive AND add all the taxes. Crazy.
PS: our luxury high rise was indeed very nice with amazing doormen etc. which may have you thinking "If she got a luxury place for 2700, surely I could get a good place for under 2k."
Even a non-doorman walk-up will likely set you back 2k at minimum. If you abide by the 30% maximum rule for housing costs - you are looking at an income of 70k for an okay, VERY, VERY SMALL place.
New York is for successful, rich people. I didn't feel like we fit in at all. I felt like I did back in school: on the outside looking at all the popular kids having an amazing time in their cliquey worlds. Much happier here in Denver CO.
$150K is really truly 'comfortable', and more than half of Manhattan, below 96th St, earns a heck of a lot more than that!
That may be true, but many neighborhoods in manhattan below 96th have median household incomes well below that. I live at 69th and Columbus and the median income in my zip code is 102k.
My wife just finished school, and we make a combined 155k now. We live in a 1 bd walkup (2300/month, 3rd floor, we got pretty lucky I think). We do eat out a lot, but mainly at cheaper restaurants and pizza joints. I think we spend dramatically less than others in our area on clothes and home furnishings (think JC Penny's, Amazon, and Ikea for most of our stuff). We also prefer cheaper forms of entertainment, AMC Gold Tickets usually enable our weekend fun. We like to go out for a drink or two every now and then, but we don't spend a ton there either. We're also fortunate enough to have jobs that cover our health insurance premiums at 100%.
For us, 155k is much more than we'd need to live comfortably here. I think we could maintain our current lifestyle on more like 80-90k, but it'd kill our savings rate. On our current income and lifestyle we're able to save 3-4k a month (including retirement savings).
PS: our luxury high rise was indeed very nice with amazing doormen etc. which may have you thinking "If she got a luxury place for 2700, surely I could get a good place for under 2k."
Even a non-doorman walk-up will likely set you back 2k at minimum.
My wife and I searched a long time to find our current place. For manhattan it's a decent 1 bedroom (12x22 living room, 12x12 bed room, kitchen can hold more than 1 person at a time). It's at 69th and columbus and costs 2300/month. I think we got lucky because most places we looked at (which weren't even as large or as nice) were more like 2700/month. You could save a bit if you went further north, but even close to 96th we didn't see anything comparable to our current place for less than 2300/month.
$150,000 a year sounds about right. We're talking about living like a normal adult here, not a college student.
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