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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

You can live ok, and have disposable income with 120k in Kansas city, while in NYC or SF you probably have to have roommates, or live in a small cramped studio, to have the same disposable income at the end.

If a company is going to pay for you to have a good/happy living conditions, and disposable income, then adjusting some of the pay by location makes sense.

The best scenario is when they split the difference and it becomes a win win scenario.

At the end of the day a company will pay as much as the market bears for their long term retention strategy (e.g. 94% voluntary retention).

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A single person will have $6700 a month after taxes on 120k in NYC. Manhattan studio rent is about $1800. That leaves almost $5000 a month in disposal income after housing, which is higher than the US median income before housing costs!

Sure rent is pricy in Manhattan relative to other places in America, but I just don't get how that type of life is depicted as such a struggle online.

$1800 is the very very low end for Manhattan (and likely a reflection of COVID price drops): https://streeteasy.com/studios-for-rent/manhattan

Also: there's the Manhattan people typically think of, and then the reality that it's a large island with a wide variety of housing. Most folks who aren't from NYC think don't realise that world continues past 110th st (or, let's be honest, past 86th).

Sure, but you’re trading accessibility/entertainment/<something else people value and typically accept as a given for living in Manhattan>. At a certain point, it makes more sense to leave Manhattan to one of the other boroughs, go across the river to New Jersey, or move further up to Westchester/ Long Island. Your money goes further there (housing, groceries).

My point was that looking at median rents while dreaming of Midtown or Tribeca is not a realistic way to assess the realities of living in Manhattan.

We can argue exactly what one would pay for Manhattan rent but

1. $1800 isn't that far off for studio rent, multiple listings on apartment.com show that right now

2. Most New Yorkers don't live in Manhattan anyway. I purposely overstated New Yorker's rent costs to prove my point.

Splurge for 2.5k studio in midtown and you still have enough spare cash.

It's because it's not unless you're wildly outspending your limits. Having personally done it, living in Brooklyn was fine around 90k right in Carroll Gardens a pretty nice area with a 1 bedroom. Living in Manhattan was fine at about 120k and very easy when I was making about 150k. I have high student loan debt too. I haven't lived in a non luxury type building for years now at this point and only had a flat-mate once by choice while being able to save thousands a month. The narrative of the poor struggling highly paid engineer doesn't really jive with me.

I moved to Jersey City last year to have cheaper rent but I did that because I don't care for NYC much and am migrating out in general but it wasn't like I was struggling as an individual engineer before hand.

You can live extremely well on 120k in Kansas City. Median household income there is only $54k. On 120k, you are very well off in KC.

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