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Not very many people plan to retire to New York from other parts of the country, either in Manhattan nor the hood.
You could do it in NYC on that $3,600/month if you owned your home. NYC residential property tax rates aren’t awful. The senior citizen abatement for below $50k income cuts that tax in half. Mathjack’s hypothetical million dollar small house in an ok Queens neighborhood would pay about $4k in property taxes at that income level. You certainly don’t need a car.
You could do it in NYC on that $3,600/month if you owned your home. NYC residential property tax rates aren’t awful. The senior citizen abatement for below $50k income cuts that tax in half. You certainly don’t need a car.
another one speaking for a place they don't live .
they just bumped nyc real estate taxes up by a lot ... many here are in the 5 digits now a year , plus we have a nyc income tax too to go with the state income tax ..
so even if you qualify for up to 50% in reduced value they bumped taxes up thousands from what they were with most paying more than 2x what they were over the last 10 years .
you don't need a car in manhattan . life outside of manhattan can suck with no car . we could never live with no car ... all our kids are 30-40 miles away and we see them regularly ...
my wife does not drive .. while she survived years before me relying on public transportation the quality of life sucked . plus she had her son living home not 40 miles away and did not have grand children . so life can really suck in the boroughs with no car .
people do it but it is no life i would ever want to have counting on those buses and trains . even a simple trip can take hours .
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Last edited by mathjak107; 07-28-2019 at 04:52 AM..
who cares what things cost or are like where you live , or what is an acceptable lifestyle to you to be honest .
you don't live here ..
you may not have the same expectations in retirement , costs or minimum acceptable standards that others do so any comparison is a moot point . 69k still qualifies you for a low income housing project here . there is a reason ....
600k here is a home in areas like jamaica , rosedale or many areas where most of us don't want to live if we can avoid it .... sure you can find cheaper homes in good areas but those homes are going require extensive renovation and are not 600k homes anymore .
in manhattan you can't get a decent studio for 600k unless it was in a less than stellar area.
in fact in our area in queens , not manhattan single family homes start at 1 million . co-ops apartments in apartment buildings are in the 300-400k range with about 1500 a month in maintenance being typical plus your mortgage .
so great you live on 4k a month .... it would not work for us . dont forget those living on social security alone who claim they are living comfortable lives look at your 4k and go that is nuts , no one needs 4k to live on .
So who says retirees have to stay in overpriced NY?
The question was "how much do you need to retire," NOT "how much do you need to retire if you want to stay in a city where a studio condo runs more than $600k"?
If I were living in NY, wanted to retire, and would have a retirement income of "only" $4000 a month, I would move to a cheaper location a couple of hours away. That's always an option, and they have some nice little places in Delaware for half the cost. You apparently wanted to stay in Queens, and so you wouldn't have been able to do it on that income.
So who says retirees have to stay in overpriced NY?
The question was "how much do you need to retire," NOT "how much do you need to retire if you want to stay in a city where a studio condo runs more than $600k"?
If I were living in NY, wanted to retire, and would have a retirement income of "only" $4000 a month, I would move to a cheaper location a couple of hours away. That's always an option, and they have some nice little places in Delaware for half the cost. You apparently wanted to stay in Queens, and so you wouldn't have been able to do it on that income.
by the same token can't it be said where you live is far to costly and you could move somewhere way cheaper ?
so we are TALKING LIVING WHERE WE CHOOSE TO and what it takes to live the lifestyle you want where you want .
my parents and my wife's had to flee to florida as they could not stay here on their income .
it was a move they hated but they had no choice . both my kids and my wife's kids barely knew their grand parents .. they were a vacation stop over ... for all purposes they were out of their daily lives .
we have 6 grand kids wich we have no intention of leaving at this point .. so this is where we live , this is where we set a life and my comments are based on this location and this life.
yours are based on where you live . your income would not work for us here .
Last edited by mathjak107; 07-28-2019 at 05:03 AM..
You're sounding a bit snobby. My expenses total around $4,000, and I live in a $600,000 townhouse in one of the wealthiest areas of the country. Nowhere near the hood,
Mathjack rents. It totally changes the cash flow requirements. My summer house has about $7k in ownership costs counting everything but home improvements. I couldn’t quite run boat, townhouse ski condo & skiing expenses, and car on $4k. I’d have to ditch the boat.
Mathjack rents. It totally changes the cash flow requirements. My summer house has about $7k in ownership costs counting everything but home improvements. I couldn’t quite run boat, townhouse ski condo & skiing expenses, and car on $4k. I’d have to ditch the boat.
owning would not be better .. as i mentioned we could buy a co-op for cash and save 6k a year in expenses , which looks nice . .. but the money we would spend on the co-op would reduce cash flow by a minimum of 15k a year by no longer being invested . everything has a cost to it. so buying actually would leave us with worse cash flow.
the fact we have 350k or more in equity tied up in the co-op does not help cash flow which in retirement is king .
by the same token can't it be said where you live is far to costly and you should move somewhere way cheaper ?
so we are TALKING LIVING WHERE WE CHOOSE TO ...
NO, that is what YOU are talking about.
I was responding to the original question, which was how much does the average person need to retire in reasonable comfort. The fact is the average person doesn't retire in overpriced NY.
Remember, the average person earns - EARNS - around $50k during his working years, and lives in a place where houses are a fifth of what they are in NY. So if his gross was a little over $4,000 a year while he was working, I'd say the PP who originally said $3,600 was right on target. That could be a decent, albeit not luxurious, apartment an hour away from a major city where rent is $1,000 a month.
I was responding to the original question, which was how much does the average person need to retire in reasonable comfort. The fact is the average person doesn't retire in overpriced NY.
Remember, the average person earns - EARNS - around $50k during his working years, and lives in a place where houses are a fifth of what they are in NY. So if his gross was a little over $4,000 a year while he was working, I'd say the PP who originally said $3,600 was right on target. That could be a decent, albeit not luxurious, apartment an hour away from a major city where rent is $1,000 a month.
a silly absurd comparison .....average anything means nothing unless some one is living in an average location and lives whatever the heck an average life style is supposed to mean .
without knowing the specifics throwing out average numbers to everyone here is ridiculous . you may as well address average straw people whether it fits the op or not
by the same token can't it be said where you live is far to costly and you could move somewhere way cheaper ?
so we are TALKING LIVING WHERE WE CHOOSE TO and what it takes to live the lifestyle you want where you want .
my parents and my wife's had to flee to florida as they could not stay here on their income .
it was a move they hated but they had no choice . both my kids and my wife's kids barely knew their grand parents .. they were a vacation stop over ... for all purposes they were out of their daily lives .
we have 6 grand kids wich we have no intention of leaving at this point .. so this is where we live , this is where we set a life and my comments are based on this location and this life.
yours are based on where you live . your income would not work for us here .
Why do you say your parents had to "flee" to Florida, as if that's a bad thing? It was a bad thing for THEM because they wanted to be near their grandchildren, but many people see that as a goal - to move out of the city where they've worked and relocate to a beach place in Florida where they won't have to deal with winters. Add in that the cost of housing there would be HALF the cost of their northrrn city house, and they don't consider it "fleeing."
Remember...New York is NOT the best place to live (although many NYers think so), and there are many attractive options available at a fraction of the price. With that in mind, and circling back to the original question, $3600 is fine for the average person to live comfortably.
a silly absurd comparison .....average anything means nothing unless some one is living in an average location and lives whatever the heck an average life style is supposed to mean .
without knowing the specifics throwing out average numbers to everyone here is ridiculous . you may as well address average straw people whether it fits the op or not
But that WAS the OP's question: what does it take for the average person. You keep wanting to go back to how you are well above average and want to continue to live in the most expensive city in the country.
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