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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

The takehome on $36k wouldn't even be able to cover my tiny (~180sqft) studio in Manhattan ($1700/mo), let alone a decent place. And that place was a steal. As I said, it's possible to live very cheaply in NYC, if you're willing to be far away from everything; I know people who travel an hour and a half each way to get to work, to save a few hundred dollars a month. I can't make that sort of tradeoff -- my time is just worth too much to me.

Edit: I should note, this is the primary reason I left NYC about 6 months ago. I'm paying all of $1400/mo for a large house in CT now, and working from home. Much as I love it, living in NYC is just too crazy.

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I'm sorry my friend but that is hardly a "steal".

Also, you can very easily live in Brooklyn or Queens for under 1.7k a month with a far larger place and only have a 15-20 minute commute.

It is very possible to live comfortably in NYC but why people choose to live squished up in Manhattan is beyond me.

The best place to live in New York City is actually New Jersey.

Hoboken and almost all of Jersey City are under 30 minutes from many Manhattan offices by the Path subway or bus or even ferry. Rent goes very roughly 25% cheaper than Manhattan for similar digs, everything from basement studios to ultramodern luxury towers. There's plenty of supermarkets and any other businesses you need. And access to the rest of the world via car or airport (Newark) is considerably easier from NJ. Bonus: NJ sales tax is less, and you dodge the NYC income and commuter taxes.

I've lived on the NJ Gold Coast and commuted to Manhattan for basically my entire professional life, and pretty satisfied with it. My 15 minute ferry ride is just long enough to decompress and relax without getting bored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_(New_Jersey)

Whatever smelly downtrodden ghettoey reputation New Jersey once had is not at all universally true. Hoboken and downtown Jersey City are first-class modern neighborhoods. There's worse areas up into JC Heights and down to Bayonne, but by and large the region served by the Path is the equal of anything in Brooklyn/Queens.

How does one go about finding a great place in Brooklyn or Queens without getting fleeced by brokers?

This thread & the thread yesterday on cost of living in SF miss some vital, real-world data. Most people simply don't live like this. I worked 4 years in Goldman Sachs, downtown Manhattan. One thing every MD consistently told me was that only fools live in Manhattan proper. Every one of these MDs had multi-million net-worth, liquid even, & still took either LIRR or NJ Transit or lived in Brooklyn/Queens/Jersey City/Hoboken/across GWB & took the Path & A train & whatnot. I lived in Fort Lee in a comfy gated $900 1-bdrm & took a bus + the A train - very adequate. Now I live in the Bay Area & take the BART & am able to land $1.5K 2-bdrm houses in the east bay very easily, stone's throw from the bart. When I hear my colleagues complain about the insane $3K studio rents in Nob Hill SF, I don't know what to say. Live in the burbs, wake up an hour earlier & take the BART. Nob Hill can wait.

Your best friend is the local realtor. Talk to her over a starbucks latte & she will tell you how the locals hack real estate.

> am able to land $1.5K 2-bdrm houses in the east bay very easily

Unless you're talking Oakland/Concord or the hwy 4 corridor, I call shenanigans.

If you want walking distance to Bart, I'm talking concord, walnut creek, pleasant hill. on a lucky day, orinda or lafayette even. If you have a family & want a nice large 3 bdrm with small yard, you can get one for under 2K in nearby San Ramon and take the BART commute bus to the actual BART...I know tons of people who do this everyday. I actually considered doing that myself but was able to land a nice albeit small 2brm with walking distance to bart. If you don't mind an additional 30 minutes of car commute time to the actual BART station, it dramatically opens up possibilities...Danville is very nice.

Yeah no. I own a 2br home in Pleasant Hill. These 2 br SFH rentals for $1,500 you're talking about are a fantasy.

I guess I am presently living in a fantasy then. Let me pinch my wife & kids to check if they are real or just figments of my imagination.

You forgot Alameda, Berkley, Rockridge, San Leadro, Pleasanton, Dublin, etc etc.

I dare you to find a 2br+ single family home in Pleasanton for $1.5k.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?srchType=A&zoomTo...

Three listed today.

I am sure there are issues with most of those. But still.

All three of those are apartments, and one of them is $1600, above our $1500 limit.

Here's the link at a $1500 limit: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?srchType=A&zoomTo...

8 results. Total. All are apartments (one is a duet, a couple aren't actually in P-town but are apartments nonetheless).

(edit: I'm not trying to dick with you here. I've just been searching for valley housing for a long time and have a good idea where certain cities land price-wise.)

Ah, I wasn't sure what you meant by "single family home".

Of course renting houses is more expensive than apartments.

I am sure you will find something that makes you happy. I have had a few house search adventures in the Bay Area. Best of luck to you!

People are happy to ignore questioning if living in the highest-demand locations in the entire country is really a reasonable and responsible use of money.

Apparently, irresponsible spending is only when others spend on things I don't value.

That's generally speaking, a bad tradeoff. But one that most people make.

Yes, the rents in the city are high. But long commutes are one of the main things correlated with unhappiness.

I'd rather live in a smaller place, or with roommates, than quadruple my commute time.

Sheesh! And that doesn't even come close to what some people pay. NYC > Manhattan. It's insane! I live 10 minute bike ride from Manhattan, and pay just under $500.00 a month w/ two roomates (GF and best friend) for the first two floors of a brownstone, plus basement and backyard. I've had about four apartments in the past 10 years in this range in my area, it really does pay to live just a little out of the way! I do pretty well for myself these days and am stashing around 50% of my income away. I feel like people who pay some of these whopping amounts of money don't even get to enjoy the true treasures of the city, and money is tied to everything. Stressful.

The monthly take home on $36k in NY would be $2,250 [1]. So after rent you'd have $550 for groceries etc. Sure, it wouldn't be a comfortable life, but definitely doable, especially without a car.

I agree with you on the commute though. I'm paying almost $1,800 for a one bedroom in Silicon Valley just to be able to ride my bicycle to work.

[1] http://www.adp.com/tools-and-resources/calculators-and-tools...

paying $1700 a month in rent on $36K would be total insanity. The general rule is that rent should be no more than 25% of your income.

On $550 a month after taxes and rent you'd not just have to pay for food (which can easily hit a few hundred a month if you aren't eating catfood), there is also:

- utilities

- clothing (employers appreciate this)

- transportation (the NYC subway is now $2.25 (going to $2.50?) a ride, or a monthly unlimited is currently $104, so there's 1/5th of that 550)

- phone bill (likely a very low end cellphone with limited use)

- laundry (coin op machines can run up $20-$30 a month), if you have dry clean clothes then this is quite a bit more

- medical ? does that $36K have health insurance as well? On a low-end insurance policy, the copay for a PCP visit is about $50, and if there's any kind of meds you need to take that can easily cost $50-100 a month.

- renters insurance ? in case your apt. burns down, it's a good idea

- any kind of occasional expenses that go over what's left, probably go on the credit card. So it's very likely there's 18-20% interest payments on a few thousand dollars going on at any given time as well.

$550 a month after rent is really not workable for an active, functioning adult.

I'm not advocating the decision to spend this much on rent on such a small salary, I was just correcting the claim that $36k wouldn't even be enough to pay for a $1,700 apartment.

Millions of people survive on less than $550 per month. Sure, you won't have your daily Starbucks, no cable TV, and your cell phone plan will most likely come from a low cost provider like Virgin Mobile. In a $36k job, you can probably get away with clothes from Kohl's or even the thrift store, and your apartment is probably not filled with expensive stuff so renter's insurance isn't that much of an issue.

you can probably get away with clothes from Kohl's

Jeez! Where do you shop? My entire family's clothes comes from Target and Tractor Supply. Kohl's would probably be an upgrade.

At $20-$30 a month on coin-op laundry you are probably better off looking for full-service laundry that charges by the pound. Before I moved into a place with a washer/dryer of my own I was spending ~$10-$15 every two weeks (50 cents per pound) to drop a laundry basket full of cloths in the morning and pick it up perfectly folded later that day (took about 4 hours, but I would pick up in the evening).

full service laundry in new york city is always at least 40% more money than doing it yourself - which is logical since it's the price of the machines plus the service. I believe you might be comparing two different areas.

edit: some googling reveals 85 cents a pound is the cheapest and most are 90c-$1: http://centzy.com/nyc/laundry-10024 so about $20-$30 for your size of load, guess our loads are bigger.

Hmm, the cost of doing it myself (at the same place that did it for me) with coins, plus the cost of detergent, worked out to about the same price as having them do all of it. I assumed that cost of full-service and cost of machine-time and detergent would more or less scale together.

$550/month after rent is totally doable. That's a good bit more than what my wife and I live on (per-person). This is possible, in that we do it, so how?

March through February of last year my wife and I were living with another couple (who we met via craigslist, both couples hoping to save money) in a three bedroom apartment in Somerville MA. Food was communal, and we took turns cooking. All numbers I'm giving are per person per month.

utilities+food+household goods: $110. This included heat, hot water, internet, electricity. AC only in one room, and only on a few very hot days. By cooking our own food and not eating out we saved a lot of money.

clothing+other optionals: $150. My wife and I each give ourselves an 'allowance' for discretionary spending. Clothing, eating out, cell phones, entertainment. Clothing we mostly buy at the local thrift store. They have good clothing quite cheap. I'd go down once a month or so to look through things for an hour maybe. My phone now is $30/month and has unlimited texts and data (via t-mobile) but at the time I didn't have a phone (preferred to spend the money on other things).

transportation: $60. Unlimited public transit pass. (This is now $70.)

laundry: We did our laundry with a hand-crank machine at the apartment. Not worth it; too much work. When we used to use a coin-op washer that was about $20/month for two people ($2/load, 2 loads a week) so $10. We would hang clothes to dry, which also makes them last longer.

renters insurance: not worth it. Better to have savings. If our apartment had burned down we wouldn't have lost much of replacement value anyway.

credit card: if we couldn't afford it we didn't get it. Credit cards are a trap.

medical: paid for by my work. If we were buying it on our own that would cost about $150.

This comes to $480 (counting the health insurance costs and laundry).

(We're still spending a similar amount, somewhat less now, but I don't have the data as well organized.)

Why are we living so frugally? So we have more money to donate to effective charities.

> medical: paid for by my work. If we were buying it on our own that would cost about $150.

where on earth would you get health insurance for $150, and you have no copays of any kind for doctors or medication? or you're fortunate enough to have no medical issues ?

Also I'm kind of talking about NYC here still.

The state of WA offers insurance for <$200 a month for people under 40.

You're almost certainly trolling. If you are paying 1700 for a 180 sq ft studio (which is probably illegal), and think that's a steal, that's awful

No, I'm not trolling, it's not illegal, and yes, that was a steal. It was in a convenient location (15 minute walk to work), first floor, and in a nice (if a bit dangerous at times) area. Since I know people spending hundreds more for a slightly bigger place (maybe 240sqft) in a less convenient area, it absolutely was a steal; most of the places around me were more like $2k/mo.

1700 for 180ft, is a price almost 100 per 10 ft. if they have 240 ft and they're paying "hundreds more" that should be about right - it's not a steal. it might be average, but not a steal.

I can confirm this because (a) I too lived in a tiny studio in a super convenient area for a while and (b) after shopping around for a while I can confirm that $1.7k in Manhattan is definitely a steal.

Definitely not. I pay $1600 for a 250sqft studio in Manhattan. It's quite nice actually.

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