Can you live in NYC on a salary of $60,000?

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by mahituna

Not in Manhattan but the surrounding cities yes. NYC is one of the most expensive cities to live in so be prepared. Remember that money management and interests pay a huge part. You can create a great life on 60k if your smart and you also can have a train wreck on 150k. Money is not the key to happiness and you can manage without looking for your next check. Just be smart and think through every decision carefully

the most important factor is the amount of descretionary income in your plan.

living hand to mouth regardless of income is stressful. if you have to sweat every unexpected bill life can be a misery.

to live a comfortable life you need slack in the plan. you need to make up an expense in one area with a cut back in another.

if everything in your budget is a need basically you can be screwed with no where to be able to cut back from.

[NyWriterdude]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

with an average monthly benefit for retirees of 1300 a month and a median retiree income of about 38k in the country most fdolks are not to me not actually living just on social security alone although the press likes to publish all kinds of bad news whether true or not.

i think about 1/3 of retirees get 90% of their income from ss so the almost 70% of the rest of the folks seem to be doing better.

i wouldn't want to try living on 38k in ny but i guess it is better than 16k from ss alone.

So from your last sentence 1/3 of retirees in NYC have only social security. That's a significant percentage of people. Not the majority, but a big enough chunk.

16k anywhere in the country would be terrible, but in NYC it's absolutely awful. Welcome to the shelter.

[krtnkd]

live, yes.
live well, no.

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by NyWriterdude

So from your last sentence 1/3 of retirees in NYC have only social security. That's a significant percentage of people. Not the majority, but a big enough chunk.

16k anywhere in the country would be terrible, but in NYC it's absolutely awful. Welcome to the shelter.

i don't know about 1/3 of them being in nyc, that is a national number they give . they do not tell you the breakout. most of those surviving on lower incomes seem to be rural usually so i would think that they retire where they live ..

but folks here do it , they manage to live on what they have. many get medicaid and save thousands , they qualify for housing projects , extra tax deductionsa at 65. while on the surface their income appears to be ss they get other things that are quite substaintial.

case in point is me . it is funny but i did some really cool tax planning for our first year going into retirement in july.


i planned it so well i got our intended 6 figure income in retirement down to very very little taxable income for the 1st year and possibly year 2 also..


being i am only 62 i will need to cobra my obama gold plan until 65. well i did such a great job getting our taxable income so low that not realizing it i would not be eligible to even keep my gold plan which would have been subsidized. because my taxable income would be so low i would be put on free medicaid.

i would never do that nor want medicaid insurance so i will do some roth conversions to get my taxable income up for the year.

imagine having to increase income by force so you do not get a free perk. but that alone if i did it would be worth 6k at the least. that is almost 1/2 the typical amount the median gets in social security as a perk right there.

although a bit off topic it is pretty important stuff to think about well in advance so for point of information -how did we plan it so low?

i am only working part time and maxing out my 401k and paying medical pretax. that wipes away 30k income off the top.

we had that lease rights sale i spoke of in another thread so the amount of state and local taxes i owe this year and pay will be a big deduction.

we started moving about 6% of our assets to cash over the years so we have nice clean money already taxed to draw from .

i am delaying taking ss until full retirement age

i have an old life insurance policy (whole life) i will borrow from tax free and never pay back.

we are contributing to my wifes ira so the 401k ,ira and medical now wipe away 36k in earned income.


because of the way capital gains distributions on mutual funds work i have to pay taxes each year on the funds profits even if i was not in the fund long enough to have gotten those gains.

well some funds i owned went to a loss the last couple of days so i sold them to lock the loss in (not a real loss ) , bought a very similiar fund and in a month i will buy the origonal back and shave another 6k off income.


we now qualify for zero capital gains taxes with income that low so we can sell some equities in our taxable account and pay zero taxes on the gains as long as we keep things low enough.

once i got below the amt threshold all the deductions we have stay so it was easy to come up with an effective tax rate in the 4.5% area.

nys does not tax the first 20k in retirement money or tax my wifes social security check which she is already collecting.

all in all it was a better plan than i even thought it would be.

of course at best we will only see 1 or 2 years like this until we run out of after tax money and have to start refilling from stuff that will get taxed but what the heck i will take 2 years and less than 5% tax on a 6 figure income.


never forget your fair share of taxes is whatever you are knowledgable enough to get it down to.

this is why it is important to not only do but to learn about structuring tax wise for retirement early on.

i could have structured better earlier idf i knew back then what i know now and had that low income for quite a while.

the trick is to plan so you can draw a big income and not get your social security taxeed. i belew that part of it because i lacked the knowledge early on to plan accordingly.

[NyWriterdude]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

i don't know about 1/3 of them being in nyc, that is a national number they give . they do not tell you the breakout. most of those surviving on lower incomes seem to be rural usually so i would think that they retire where they live ..

but folks here do it , they manage to live on what they have. many get medicaid and save thousands , they qualify for housing projects , extra tax deductionsa at 65. while on the surface their income appears to be ss they get other things that are quite substaintial.

Surely you don't think that's a good life living on medicaid and trying to get into the housing projects as an old person?

You get what you pay for.

Now if said older person moved into their apartment decades ago, it is likely rent stabilized or rent controlled. However I've personally seen and know landlords to find various ways of getting rid of rent controlled units. If the building is in bad structural shape the city can order vacate the premise in 30 days and the building can be torn down or gut renovated.

[mathjak107]

we never discussed good living. we are only discussing surviving on ss and the perks.

descent middle class living in the city to me requires 2x that posted amount pretax at the least . the ny times did an article and came up with 160-200k living in manhattan to have a true middle class lifestyle . it is less in the boroughs.

[NyWriterdude]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

we never discussed good living. we are only discussing surviving on ss and the perks.

descent middle class living in the city to me requires 2x that posted amount pretax at the least . the ny times did an article and came up with 160-200k living in manhattan to have a true middle class lifestyle . it is less in the boroughs.

Many seniors do end up having to leave NYC altogether, as it is a 10 year wait list in the projects. One person I know nearing eviction on his apartment has to eat in soup kitchens and senior homes.

Of course, the government in recent years has cut back funds to housing programs and to food stamps as well, meaning NYC has had to make it's own cutbacks.

[mathjak107]

my folks had to leave decades ago in order to live a decent life ,so they went to florida.