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Comment by ahoy | Hacker News Reader

I moved here about 10 years ago in my mid 20s. It's certainly more expensive and annoying to find housing here than other places I've lived, but it's more than balanced out by needing to own an automobile. The average cost of car ownership in the US is in the $10k-12k range. I certainly don't spent an extra thousand dollars on rent here vs say, any other place I might reasonably move. So I figure I'm still coming out ahead.

I can't speak to the bedbugs problem, I've been lucky I suppose.

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NYC housing quality is, absolutely, dollar for dollar, garbage value. With or without discounting car costs.

My (now) wife & I both got well paying jobs at banks out of college almost 20 years ago. Our entire signing bonuses went to apartment fees & deposits. We were each in a situation where 1 paycheck per month went to the rent. Neither of us had a dishwasher, let alone a washer/dryer, central air, any aircon.. etc. Our buildings had bugs&rats, and walls thin enough to hear neighbors phone calls.

Marrying and moving up to nicer places, we still had no washer/dryer across the next 2 apartments.

Finally when we felt like we had "made it" in our mid-30s, we bought a new condo and finally have a washer/dryer. It cost more than my parents, in-laws, and sister's homes combined.. and then multiplied by two. It has only 2 beds (not 3 like the aforementioned homes). My kitchen has a stove the size of a fisher price play kit, and the oven doesn't fit standard sized baking trays. I have only 1 zone AC which can't manage to keep the different rooms within +/-5F of each other.

I could live like a proverbial king in 95% of the rest of the country on this budget.

so why then do you continue living in NYC if the quality of life is relatively worse? i bounced from a similar situation in sf to a lower cost of living area and am loving it, albeit i have the luxury of working remotely.

I spend ~50% of my time outside NYC now as I am remote.

One can easily buy a car for $30k that will operate for 200k miles/10 years with no problem. That is $0.15 per mile, add $0.45 per mile for insurance/fuel/maintenance/savings to buy new car.

$0.60 per mile is $6k per year at 10k miles per year, which is a decent amount of driving. $9k per year at 15k miles per year.

However, you can usually get more than 200k miles/10 years out of a car, so those costs above are very high end costs. Unless you opt for luxuries, I think annual car spend can easily be brought down to $6k, or $500 per month. Even less if you opt for liability only insurance, and live in a place that does not require you to drive 10k miles per year.

Owning a car is far cheaper than living in NYC!

You definitely spend more than $10-12k/year once you have a family for even a modest amount of space.

And that's the average cost of car ownership, it's easy to find a cheap car.

Further car can be useful in lot of ways, like hauling large amount of things, groceries, going for a out of town trip and so on. I think in case of NYC don't need a car in city vs can't afford a car in city use cases are mixed and need to be separated out.

Yes, $10-12k is like the monthly mortgage on a family sized apartment in NYC.

Many NYers need to construct elaborate fantasies to delude themselves that actually living in NYC is totally economical/convenient/rational, and not just their personal preference. Something about a river in Egypt.

In reality while it's fun, its also often inconvenient, expensive, or both.

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