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Yes, I saw that yesterday, interesting how the explosion in housing costs is really centered in Brooklyn & creeping east & north into Queens. Ridgewood, formerly sleepy but attracting young people who 20 years ago would've moved to Williamsburg, rental costs up 27% in 5 years there.
I'm literally just on the other side of the tracks & bordering a neighborhood that costs $40K more per year to live/rent, prewar apartments vs new glass & steel condos with a view (sometimes). 2 subway stops & 5 minutes away, seems like a new tower going up there monthly.
If you haven't been to Williamsburg in years it's quite shocking to see the change there, it's like being in Manhattan now.
williamsburg is very nice ... very expensive ..pretty much what happened is all the areas around the trains except brownsville and east ny became the hot new gentrified areas .. all the old good areas like canarsie where i grew up are all less then good .
we are in to photography and photograph bushwick and williamsburg from time to time
Nada Ning, with time junk consumption can go up. I am on a outdoor cooking buying binge. Just minutes ago ordered a over $300 temperature controller. Just had a rotisserie basket delivered earlier. Got a Sirloin tip spinning now, then wings. Company tomorrow with ribs and wings.
my wife and i took a ride to manhattan and went to b&h photo ...oh man did we do serious damage upgrading our photography gear ..... we have to buy 2 of everything . we ended up going with the new nikon z6 packages .
There's a lot of squawking about a U of O football coach hauling down a $500k pension, but nobody said a word about paying him over a million bucks a year while he was working, His pension is still just 50% of his pre-retirement income.
I always forget that normally the highest paid state employee in every state is one of the University football coaches.
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 .
It's true, people spend money where they want to spend money. My wife is an insurance nut. She carries huge life insurance policies on both of us, collision and comprehensive vehicle insurance where the premiums would pay to replace the vehicle in a single year, etc.
I have told her it is nuts. Nobody in their 70s in our situation needs half a million dollar life insurance policy when we have no debts, both of our pensions set up for full survivor benefits, pension subsidized Cadillac level Medicare supplemental policies, and a well maintained home that costs $220/month in taxes and insurance. Two pensions and two SS checks bring in $8000/month, plus RMDs that are almost a nuisance, since we don't need the money. I have told my wife she is nuts about insurance, but what the heck, it's her money and it saves me having to go out and find someplace to spend it.
I still do an automatic savings withdrawal from my checking account, because I am an old fart, and prefer spending money in chunks rather than frou frou iced coffee drinks. One of these days I'll write a check for a new car.
I figure if somebody wants to live in Silicon Valley or NYC, it's their money.
I know I could live comfortably on a lot less, but I didn't realize that before I retired. See what paranoia will do for you?
my wife and i took a ride to manhattan and went to b&h photo ...oh man did we do serious damage upgrading our photography gear ..... we have to buy 2 of everything . we ended up going with the new nikon z6 packages .
It's true, people spend money where they want to spend money. My wife is an insurance nut. She carries huge life insurance policies on both of us, collision and comprehensive vehicle insurance where the premiums would pay to replace the vehicle in a single year, etc.
I have told her it is nuts. Nobody in their 70s in our situation needs half a million dollar life insurance policy when we have no debts, both of our pensions set up for full survivor benefits, pension subsidized Cadillac level Medicare supplemental policies, and a well maintained home that costs $220/month in taxes and insurance. Two pensions and two SS checks bring in $8000/month, plus RMDs that are almost a nuisance, since we don't need the money. I have told my wife she is nuts about insurance, but what the heck, it's her money and it saves me having to go out and find someplace to spend it.
I still do an automatic savings withdrawal from my checking account, because I am an old fart, and prefer spending money in chunks rather than frou frou iced coffee drinks. One of these days I'll write a check for a new car.
I figure if somebody wants to live in Silicon Valley or NYC, it's their money.
I know I could live comfortably on a lot less, but I didn't realize that before I retired. See what paranoia will do for you?
the problem at looking at any median income numbers in nyc and the boroughs is they are skewed .
half the rentals in nyc and the boroughs are rent stabilized . millions live in them .
many are older tenants who pay way way below market rents after decades in them . they have lower incomes too.... if they had to pay current rent they would not be here ... so the fact that so many lower income people are able to live here dilute the median income numbers ...
regular people looking to live here will be paying far far greater rents and need much higher incomes .
so you can't go by median numbers here at all .
our area has rent stabilized apartments but they are all pretty much market because being a higher end area there were lots of capital improvement increases . our area has a median income of around 110k .....but with home starting at 7 figures you need some pretty beefy incomes for a single family home .
average pension incomes rarely make it into the news. It is the excessively high ones and they are a result of excessively high salaries. Not sure people outside of a their employer/agency would know a strangers or neighbors specific pension. Inside it is easy if you have a pay schedule and you know their years of service.
I could tell you our annual income and you would have no idea what are pensions are.
Many pensioners also have SS and many have tax sheltered and taxable accounts.
Once they reach 70 1/2. Figure that if they are high income it includes RMD income along with dividend, interest and capital gains from taxable accounts. That can all add up to a very nice Chunk of change and be deceptive to the Nosey who don’t really know because they aren’t investors.
Yes Dorothy many with pensions are also active investors and savers.
average pension incomes rarely make it into the news. It is the excessively high ones and they are a result of excessively high salaries. Not sure people outside of a their employer/agency would know a strangers or neighbors specific pension. Inside it is easy if you have a pay schedule and you know their years of service.
I could tell you our annual income and you would have no idea what are pensions are.
Many pensioners also have SS and many have tax sheltered and taxable accounts.
Once they reach 70 1/2. Figure that if they are high income it includes RMD income along with dividend, interest and capital gains from taxable accounts. That can all add up to a very nice Chunk of change and be deceptive to the Nosey who don’t really know because they aren’t investors.
Yes Dorothy many with pensions are also active investors and savers.
Government salaries, however, are public record. If you know years of service and salary for the 3 highest earning years , you can figure out the pensions. In Utah, my male administrators were all making 6 figures. No social security paid into. If they stuck it out for 30... the would make approximately 66% of the average of their 3 highest income years...most like still 6 figures. That plus investing and you have a very lucrative retirement. Not so for the rest of us. Matter of fact they lowered the benefit for those hired after 2011....saying the benefit was “too rich”.
Seriously.
Thankfully, we were also investors despite my lower income.. worked my way from just under $30k in 2001 to 60k at retirement last year...plus additional years of service at a prior job that paid diddly squat.
Yes Dorothy many with pensions are also active investors and savers.
That's the classic 3-legged stool of retirement: Pension, Savings, and Social Security. The more socks you stuff the better off you will be. Besides the classic three, I have a paid-for home, which enhances both my cash flow and lifestyle quite a bit. Renting this place would cost a fortune, even in my area.
You can file rental property under savings. I have a cousin with almost 50 paid-for apartment units in Corvallis, which is a college town, and another cousin who owns 600 condo rentals in Portland, though they are not all paid for. He also owns two marinas on the Columbia that are free and clear. Another cousin owns a vineyard.
Did I mention that at family reunions, I am the poor relation?
As long as you retire with food, shelter, medical, clothing, transportation, and a few bucks walking around money, that's all you really need. Anything past that is gravy.
That's the classic 3-legged stool of retirement: Pension, Savings, and Social Security. The more socks you stuff the better off you will be. Besides the classic three, I have a paid-for home, which enhances both my cash flow and lifestyle quite a bit. Renting this place would cost a fortune, even in my area.
You can file rental property under savings. I have a cousin with almost 50 paid-for apartment units in Corvallis, which is a college town, and another cousin who owns 600 condo rentals in Portland, though they are not all paid for. He also owns two marinas on the Columbia that are free and clear. Another cousin owns a vineyard.
Did I mention that at family reunions, I am the poor relation?
As long as you retire with food, shelter, medical, clothing, transportation, and a few bucks walking around money, that's all you really need. Anything past that is gravy.
but you can spend a fortune on just shelter and transportation as well as there is no bottom . there is always cheaper locations and ways of covering food, shelter, medical, clothing, transportation , which makes that all wants for the most part not needs . we want the level we choose to live at as our minimum standard we set.
depending on ones standards you can spend a small fortune on that "walking around money" as well.
our discretionary budget is as large as our bills we consider to be fixed and non discretionary ... so while you may be satisfied with a few bucks in walking around money others may have set standards for their lives that require a lot more then some walking around money.
whether you rent or own is not the key , it is if you rent do you have other assets growing and creating income ?
we rent in retirement because cash flow is greater renting because the money we would spend on buying a similar co-op would lose more in income generation then the savings is ...
we could save 6k a year buying a co-op vs renting ...but we would take a minimum hit on the money now tied up in the co-op of at least 15K not counting appreciation . .... that is worse cash flow ....
renting with nooooooo assets invested elsewhere is bad .... renting with assets invested and generating more money then you could save buying , can be good .
Last edited by mathjak107; 08-03-2019 at 02:06 AM..
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