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Living Frugally in New York City
By Jay | January 2, 2008
Living a frugal life….is it even possible in New York City?
When I first moved here 20 years ago, Manhattan was filled with money and ambitious people, and the rest of us would escape to Brooklyn. Now, my formerly funky Brooklyn neighborhood has become a bedroom community of $3 million brownstones and self-satisfied trust-fund kids. I honestly don’t know how people making under $100,000 per year survive here, especially if they have children. I spend long days as a technology manager in an investment bank and have no kids – yet I still struggle to make ends meet.
But I believe you can live frugally, even in New York City. One caveat though: if you have kids it’s much harder. I know people who do it, but a family has to be real close in order to live together in the tight quarters of a 2-bedroom walkup. So my suggestions below are directed toward people without kids.
Shelter: Buying an apartment in Manhattan is out of the question, but if you have $50,000 saved you should be able to find a tolerable one-bedroom apartment in Queens that fits your budget. There are a lot of one-bedroom condos on the market in Jersey City now for under $300,000, which would require a down payment of $30,000 and closing costs of about $10,000.
A better frugal choice though – especially if you don’t have $50,000 saved – is to rent. Rent here is more than in other cities, but you can still find one-bedroom apartments in decent neighborhoods in Queens for under $1,500 per month: look in Jackson Heights and Forest Hills. If you look hard you may even be able to find something in a good part of Brooklyn for less than $2,000.
Transportation: You do not need a car, which eliminates a huge monthly expense. A monthly subway pass is $80, and you get unlimited travel anywhere in the city. M. and I walk or take a subway everywhere we need to go. We rent a car for a weekend when I want to get out of the city for about $60 per day. We do this every couple of months, so our transportation expenses are only $200 per month. Insurance alone would cost that much if we owned two cars.
Food: It is easy to eat out several nights a week in New York City, and to blow $100 each time. I know all too well, and have the debt to prove it. But we cook at home now and bring our lunch to work, so we don’t spend much more to feed ourselves than we would if we lived in the country. We enjoy cooking, and take full advantage of more types of ethnic groceries to experiment with than you could ever imagine. We eat mostly organic – especially when it comes to meat — and our grocery bill is about $170 per week. I’m sure we get by on $100 per week for groceries if we had to.
Clothing and Furniture: New York City has some excellent thrift shops. Several hospitals and big charities run thrifts on Third Avenue around 80th Street in Manhattan. I bought a Brooks Brothers overcoat in perfect condition for $80 at a thrift shop a couple weeks ago. Afterward I stopped by Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue: retail cost for the exact same coat, $850.
You can find some surprisingly good deals at Century 21 in Lower Manhattan. Sales, even at the exclusive stores like Barneys, do a lot to keep costs down. And you can shop online and get the same deals you would if you were in the Heartland.
I’m always amazed at how much good stuff I find on the street here. The culture of consumption in New York City is extreme, and people throw things away after a year or two. Plus, most people live in tiny apartments, and move a lot.
Entertainment: The hardest aspect of living the simple life here in New York City is dealing with the social pressure to spend, to consume. It’s easy to blow $100 on dinner and then another $100 on a Broadway play or the opera. I used to do it — weekly. A lot of my friends still do it. After all, we live in the big city. Why not take advantage of what it has to offer? Over the past year I’ve stopped eating out, and rarely see a play. If I do, it’s an Off-Broadway production for $30 or less. People seem surprised that I don’t “get out” more, and I don’t get as many calls from friends as I used to. But my priorities have shifted and over time I’ll make some new, less materialistic friends.
Now I take in a museum a couple times per month (a lot of large NYC companies, including my own, donate to NYC art institutions and their employees are allowed free admission). I also love to walk in the city, and am fascinated by the diversity, the hustle, the ideas, the astounding mixture of people.
In the end, the simple life can be lived anywhere. It is more about what you want and your own inner sense of discipline than it is about where you happen to be. Right now I feel blessed to have a great apartment and a good job. Pulling myself back into a simple lifestyle enriches me in ways that another night out never would.
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Topics: Frugality, New York City, Uncategorized |
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Cities do sometimes make the most sense for frugal living with their abundance of thrift shops and services. Eating out is my vice. I cut back on it but it is still one of my biggest expenses here in Boston.