I’m going to preface this, that if you are single, this sum might be a little more comfortable. This account is based on two people.
NYC is great. It has the “vibe”. It’s hip. It has a zillion cultural attractions, good public transport, diversity, great food. You can get almost anything at anytime.
So why are so many people complaining? Why do they want to move?
Life of an average NYer.
The median household income in NYC is $43,515. The US average is $44,684. (Source: Sperling's Best Places.) Most large metropolis' have a higher household income than NYC.
So the first myth, is that NYers make more money. That data simply does not support that. We do have a higher than average number of lawyers, bankers and doctors. But does the median household income substaintiate housing that costs 3x the national average?
So what is life like for those with average professions, and average incomes?
Your average day, you get up and you go to work.
You commute on the Subway, or perhaps a bus. Very few people can walk to work, even if NYC is one of the most walkable cities around. Why? Well most people of middle income don’t live anywhere near where they work.
It takes New Yorkers an average of
38.4 minutes to get to work. It is the longest commute in the nation. So that means on average, you lose 5 hours of your life, per week, commuting. (Although my commute has always been between 40-75 minutes which is closer to 10 hours.)
You crowd the crowded transport. You usually can’t sit. You are lucky to be able to get on the train or bus. You have to stand very close to people you don't know, some of which you would prefer not to touch, or smell. You may be in reach of a pole or a handle. Often times, one is not availabe. Who wants to touch one of those things anyway? Ewww!
If you move the wrong way, or get jostled by the transportation, you risk falling down. Worse, the person next to you had a bad night, and might start a fight with you over trivialities.
OK, you finally get to work, undazed at the normal commute, that is stressful in it's own right. This doesn't even discuss if there are delays and diversions requiring you to take a different route than normal.
Some say that working in NY is much harder. They demand much more of you in lesser jobs. (eg: the need for a college degree to become a file clerk, and the demands that are placed of you, once you are there.) Having never worked elsewhere, someone else will have to verify if that is true.
You end your day, and you go back to your public transport. It’s the same deal as the morning commute except people are less stressed in some ways, because they aren't in as big of a rush. On the other hand, people may be tired and cranky from work. So it's a coin toss.
For some reason, the commute home always takes longer. You may or may not go shopping after work for household items. If you do, invariably, you will go into a small store, that has too much stuff in it. The aisles are incredibly narrow. If you are like myself, I have to rush home to pick up my kid from daycare and then, pick up food items. The aisles are often filled with boxes of produce that has to be restocked. It's almost impossible to maneuver with a stroller. I personally get stressed in stores this claustrophobic. But you do, what you have to do.
If you are lucky, you may live in a neighborhood that carries “exotic items”, such as tofu, or pre-washed mesculin. Otherwise, you are faced with the choice of pretty bland fair, with produce, that is less than ripe, but priced as if it were.
The other alternative is to shop while you are still in “the city”, Manhattan. There, you will find a wide selection of everything your heart desires and then some (but not every market, only the special markets). It of course comes with a hefty price tag, $5.00 for tomatoes, and things like that. AND, you have to carry these groceries home. That’s not fun. Of course you can spring for a cab, but that might knock you out an additional $20. I have onced traversed from Trader Joe's filling a small "flight-bag" with wheels. I thought this would make transporting stuff home easier. It turned out worse than expected because I didn't anticipate so many steps and just how heavy it was. So normally, I carry 3-4 bags home from Trader Joe's. Carrying such groceries on a 40 minute ride up and down subway stairs becomes very fatiguing. People under-rate the hassle it is to transport "the good stuff" into an apartment in the outer boroughs.
You arrive at your apartment. Let’s hope you don’t have to walk up more than 4 flights. Maybe you are lucky and you live on the second floor, or an elevator building. Most apartments in NYC are small private houses with 1-2 apartments on each floor. For north of $1,000 a month, you will get an apartment that has electric that flickers when you run the blender, water that can sometimes run brown. You might have a bathtub large enough to sit, but definitely not large enough to lay down in. (Although some people ONLY have showers.) You may or may not have roaches or other vermin.
Your landlord didn’t paint when you moved in, and the apartment doesn’t look like it has been painted in at least a decade. The floors, although solid wood, haven't been refinished in three decades. The caulking in the bathroom hasn't been reapplied since the last tenant, and has a problem with mildew.
And why is it, most landlords in NYC can’t speak English well-enough to have a proper conversation with their tenants? On top of that, they often have a third grade education so common sense seems to go out the window? My landlord stores the snow shovel in the basement. The basement is only accessible through cellar doors on the sidewalk. So how do you get to the shovel when the cellar doors are filled with snow? Most New Yorkers have to put up with landlords that are this moronic.
You end up trying to have a reasonable conversation, about reasonable tenant demands, and it in turn falls into shouting matches. These landlords will inevitably charge you to replace equipment that needed replacing when you moved in. That’s why most people live out their last month’s security deposit. It isn't perfectly legal, but it sure beats the landlord trying to keep your security deposit for things that fall under routine maintenance.
Of course if you have more money than some middle class, or got lucky, you may live in an outer borough hip neighborhood or a decent well-maintained apartment that is not the size of a shoebox. I lived in one once, and I found the prices of the neighborhood amenities to be on par with Manhattan prices, but the quality was definitely that of Brooklyn.
At the time, I didn’t realize how much worse it could get. I’d rather have 2-3 choices of mediocre Chinese food than no Chinese restaurants worth eating in. And the majority of outer borough neighborhoods that don’t have that hipster panache, do not have more than 1-2 restaurants worth eating in PERIOD. That can get old quick. Let’s not even talk about visiting your local bookstore. Most neighborhoods don’t have bookstores. (Sad, but true.) Or art galleries, or any of the other things so “New York”.
So during the week, you want to take in something cultural. There are many things you can do for free. That’s great. Except, if you stay out past 9:30, you will have one f’n commute home. I went to a political fundraiser and took a train, to a shuttle bus, to a train, to a shuttle train to get home. It took me TWO hours to get home, and I left rather early, at 9pm. I can’t imagine taking the train at midnight when you are tired and want nothing more than to hurry up and get home. That’s at least a $20 cab fare or more, depending on where you live. So if you don't want to commute endlessly, be prepared to shell out cab fare, if... you can get a taxi. Sometimes it can take 20-30 minutes to hail a cab if you aren't in the perfect spot.
The weekend comes, and you are dog tired. It’s time to have fun. There are plenty of things to do for free and very cheap. OK, you can go to Central Park. You have to schlep yourself on the train. It takes an hour and half where it would normally take 45 minutes. Hey, it’s the weekend, the MTA does track work on the weekends. So you have to grin and bear it.
You schlep with you, a sandwich, some fruit and a big bottle of water for your lunch. You walk around all day, see lots of things. You get tired, so you hang out on a bench for a while. Then, you run out of water. So now you have to buy more. Cha-ching. $3.00 for an 10 ounce bottle of water in Central Park. I suppose you can leave the park and buy your water elsewhere. Well, you can, except it’s a pretty long walk to get to stores that sell water if you are already in Central Park. It could take easily 20 minutes or more.
It's rare thing that we go out "on the cheap" and spend LESS than $50, no matter how hard we try. Because when you are a good hour commute from your house, or if you are in the middle of an outdoor event, your choices become eating out, or leaving.
You get home, you are very tired. You don’t feel like cooking. You have been out all day. So you treat yourself to take out. $35 plus tip. That of course doesn’t include alcohol, which might be nice to have, if you are an average adult.
Sunday, you are at home and you realize, your house is a mess, and you need to do food shopping. Most importantly, you have to pay your bills which always leaves you depressed, because while you make a lot of money, you never seem to have much extra. Well, there goes your weekend. The chores takes up the greater part of your day. By the time you are done, there isn’t much time to get started doing something fun.
On occasion, you divert yourself from this routine. You do something different. Even something pretty low-key. Well if you go to the beach, that is $15 round trip, ($30 for two) and a two and half hour trek over subway, LIRR, and bus. When you get there, there is nothing but beach, and $4 beers, and $3 burgers that you can barely eat. Of course you can carry your food. But food is heavy and perishable so you don’t always want to do that.
The whole point, is that YES, NY has a ton of things to offer. But it sure puts a damper on your life if participating in those things require long commutes and schlepping tons of things on foot. Unless you are loaded, participating in a lot of these things is a big hassle. It's not as simple as some would think it would be.
For many, the responsibilities of working, commuting and maintaining the household takes up a good portion of their energy. And then when recreation either becomes expensive, or a big drain physically, it becomes harder and harder to justify how you are benefitting from living in NYC.
How is living in a not-so-chic neighborhood in the outboroughs living in NYC? Well geographically, yes, you are in NYC. But are you experiencing "NY"? Is living in the boonies the life portrayed on "Sex in the City", or "Seinfeld" or "Friends". Hardly.
What do you get? Well you pay a lot of money, even out in the boonies. The neighborhoods, some of them at least, aren't so pretty architecturally. They look very "urban" and "gritty", but don't have the good-side that most people would expect from real urban life. (Good restaraunts, good quality and variety of shopping, lots of entertainment.)
You also don't have the good side that comes from suburbia. Clean and quiet streets, lots of grass for your kids to play, parking for your vehicle.
And everything "fun" is about a one hour trip.
So is this lifestyle worth staying in NYC?
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i've had it - yes you make more money but it's a huge tradeoff and a ripoff.
