How do you move to New York City and stay sane and not be broke?
Look at this kid. That’s Ben Popken on the night he moved to New York City. He just spent the past three days on a Greyhound from Denver to Manhattan. The last leg of the journey was shared with twenty just-paroled convicts. Look at his smile. He has no idea what he’s in for.
After reading our post, “HOW TO: Re-Up Your Lease, Keep The Same Rent,” Tim in Wisconsin Falls, Wisconsin, asks,
- “You pay $1650 a month rent for an apartment. What do you eat? I am barely getting by with $425.00 a month for a house. I understand it is New York but I have always wondered how New Yorkers manage to eat after paying huge rents each month. I have never been to NY so I cant say much but I have been told that New York doesn’t pay that much more than other cities do. Do you have to have 50 roommates in a one bedroom apt to make it or what?
How does one move to New York and survive? “
Here’s how…
First, ask yourself…
DO I REALLY NEED TO MOVE TO NEW YORK? Answering no to this is the easiest way to avoid the inevitable hassle and heartache of. New York City is a glittering emerald slut, full of potential and promise, but it can also be a total bitch. Nightlife is down ever since they enacted that cabaret law. The city’s conduits of power are increasingly rusty and incestuous. Parts of the city are becoming, or already are, Disney versions of themselves, like the Lower East Side and Times Square, respectively. There’s lots of other great cities in the world. The Bay Area has nicer weather. Philadelphia has dirt cheap rents. Even so, New York is awesome and is still the capital of the world for many a human endeavor. Let’s move!
TAP PERSONAL CONTACTS. The easiest way to move to NYC is to have a friend, or a friend of a friend, who will let you crash in their apartment until you get your shit together. Be cool and offer to help out with rent as much as you can. If you’re broke, maybe offer to clean up the apartment really nice all the time.
SCOPE OUT THE RENTAL MARKET. Determine where you would like to live and how much you can pay. Personal finance gurus recommend spending no more than 25% of your expected salary on rent. Realistically, you may have to spend up to 50%. But if you lock yourself into a high rent so you can live in “the cool spot” you may end up spending all your time inside your stupid little apartment cause you can never afford to go out. Think smaller and cheaper.
On this note, Brooklyn is a nice, cheaper-than-Manhattan place. Fort Greene and Carrol Gardens are good spots to look at in Brooklyn. Rents are relatively affordable, amenities are there, it’s not too far from Manhattan, and they’re fairly safe. Living near but not next to housing projects is a sure way to get more apartment for your money.
If you must live in Manhattan, Upper Upper West Side (past the 100′s) has become affordable. There’s places to be found on the more easternly points of the Lower East Side.
Cruise Craiglist for the going rates in your desired area(s) for 2+ roomies. Hone in what rent you think you’re going to be paying each month. This number will rule your life.
SAVE Five times your expected monthly rent. To move into a lease, you will probably have to put up two month’s rent + security deposit (usually another month’s rent). There may even be a broker’s fee, which is at least another month’s rent. You will need the rest of the money to feed yourself and not feel like a loser. Stuff it in a high-yield online savings account, like HSBC or INGDirect.
DUMP YOUR JUNK. You probably don’t need about 90% off what you own. Hold a yard sale. Donate. Digitize everything you don’t need a real-world copy of. Put stuff in local storage. Throw it away. Whatever you do, just get rid of it. A good goal is reducing your belongings to an essential wardrobe, books, and your “tools of the trade.” For most people this means a computer. For you it may be a welding torch. Shipping costs. Space in NYC is at a premium. Less stuff means less stuff you don’t have room for.
LINE UP JOB PROSPECTS. Send out feelers and resumes before you arrive. Tap those personal connections. Let people know you’re coming. If you went to college, call up the alumni office and see if they can hook you up with former students in New York. Monster.com has never done anything for us. Craigslist has. Don’t get discouraged if people don’t initially seem that interested in you. Tons of people say they’re going to move to New York but never do, so NYC veterans learn to take a policy of, “I’ll see it when I see it.” That’s okay, just start cranking the wheel on getting a cash flow going as early as possible.
MOVE. Go Greyhound. Fly coach. Drive yourself. U-Hauls and the like can be expensive over long distances, so its cheaper to ship your stuff freight with a trucking company like ROADWAY and then get to NYC by other means. If you’ve already reduced everything to two pieces of luggage, bonus.
Once you’re here…
DO MASLOW. Take care of your pyramid of needs, working from the bottom up. If you have a choice between doing something at the top of this pyramid, versus something at the bottom, do the thing at the bottom. Not taking care of your needs at the bottom will thwart your attempts to do the ones at the top.
At the same time, maybe you will have to eat only one box of pasta a day so you can afford to go out for social drinks. That’s fine, just don’t make it a habit, or you may end up begging for quarters in Union Square.
GET A JOB. Even if it sucks. You need to make money just to tread water. Our first job was as a bike messenger. In winter. Saner folk go the temping route. Atrium is a fantastic temping agency. Tell them Ben Popken sent you. If you refer people to them who stay on for a few months, you get a small finder’s fee.
LEARN TO ENJOY SOLITUDE. It’s easy to feel lonely in a city of a gazillion people. That’s because you are alone and no one wants to talk to you. Be prepared to have no new friends for at least a year. Be prepared for people who say, “Oh, we’ll totally hang out once you’re here,” and then stand you up even after you set a date. Everyone’s got crazy schedules here so “hang out with the new guy” may rank pretty low. Be glad people do this, so you can scratch ‘em off your list before they have time to really disappoint you.
BECOME AWESOME. Whatever your deal is, be it your job or your hobby, get really good at it. You will have lots of free time to work on this because you have no friends. Socializing is often centered around people who have “your thing” in common, so it helps to be dedicated and skilled in it. This is for both personal satisfaction, and that other people will take you seriously if you’re taking your thing seriously.
TUNNEL. Use the resources of your current crappy job to get you your next, better job. With the money from bike messengering, we bought clothes that made us look presentable for the temp agency. Between directing phone calls at the temp job, we blasted out hundreds of resumes that eventually landed us a job at an online marketing firm. While at the online marketing firm, we started an advertising blog on the company’s behalf that ended up getting us a job with Gawker. Now we’re tunneling towards building a six-month emergency cushion and doing more personal creative projects.
DON’T MOVE BACK. A lot of people quit New York less than a year after moving. That’s a personal choice, but if you’re trying to be in New York, obviously leaving it is not a viable solution. If things get so hard you want to move back, ask for help from family and friends. Evaluate the choices you’re making, the things you’re buying, and see where you can cut back. Realize you’re not going to get that super-star job right off the bat (see: BECOME AWESOME). Stiffen that upper lip. Or cry. Whatever you need to do, just don’t move back. Life is hard. Welcome to it.
— BEN POPKEN
More From Consumerist
-
Moving My DirecTV Service Costs $230, Canceling It Costs $500
-
Walmart Testing App That Allows Customers To Scan As They Shop Then Pay Quickly At Self Checkout
-
Time Warner Cable Holds Up My New Account Over Nine Cents
-
How I Straightened Out A Verizon FiOS Mess With A Single E-Mail
-
MetroPCS Board Checks “Yes” On Note Asking If It Likes T-Mobile Enough To Merge
Well, I’ve certainly had fun reading this thread!
A decade ago (fresh from college), I would have lit out for NYC with nothing but a dumb grin and a fire under my a*s. Instead, I ended up wrecking a motorcycle while slacking around the country, and I fell in love with New Orleans.
For ten years.
Unlike many of you, I don’t have social or professional connections in NYC to ease the rub. In fact, I can not claim a single acquaintance. I used to fool around with a girl who went to Parson’s (sp) and visited me in New Orleans once a year or so – but that’s the extent of my familiarity with the metropolis. To the table I also bring a worthless degree (philo) and no interest or experience in the Manhattan rents income bracket. So why would any reasonable person with these stellar qualifications plunge into something so potentially catastrophic as a blind (and obscenely expensive) nose dive into UltraCity?
Yeah, I don’t know, either. But I do understand the concept of regret. I’m still a vital man, if not a spring chicken. What monstrous regret and yearning will I feel 10 years from now, not having taken in New York City? To lie with her…feel her energy pulsing the streets around me like blood in arteries! Even if it turns out to be hype, not doing it is like believing it better to have never loved, than to have lost.
So here’s the ‘plan.’ I’m taking $10,000, my laptop, and my favorite pair of jeans. I am a bartender…a real one, too. As in ‘career.’ Someone, somewhere in NYC needs a bartender, right? So that solves my career goals. Well, there’s that whole ‘American Novel novel thingie, but I don’t want to be an absolute cliche.
I’m amused by the few people who have remarked that NYC, even in this post-sleaze hum, is just insane. That I’d better be prepared for it, mentally. While certainly a fair concern, I have lived in the French Quarter for ten extremely bizarre years. With a straight face I’ve ordered dinner at a deli while surrounded by 19 gay midgets bussed in for Decadence Festival. All in varying degrees of strappy leather and undress. All while feeling stuck in a particularly lurid version of The Wizard of Oz. I’ve shared sunrise and fog bar stools with poets and pimps, hustlers and celebrities. I survived the social chaos of Katrina. And as for the crime that remains in NYC, I’m already hardened, distrustful, and cynical. So NYC, aside from the extraordinary size and volume, you can’t possibly give me pause.
Years from now I may find this post in a bookmark and laugh. Heck, I’m laughing at how naive this must sound even as I write it. But I do know that something is just white-hot, deep in my guts. I MUST do New York. Even if she gnaws on me like cheap jerky and tears the last bits of passion and wonder from my spine.
You’ve destroyed better men than me, femme New York. But you’d like me even less if I never tried. And three months from now, I will make you mine.
-B
1) This has all been very helpful. I’m a long-time Californian, originally from Silicon Valley/ suburbs of San Francisco (expensive), and now a resident of Los Angeles (less expensive, but still expensive). I’m considering NY and back to SF–the city that is my love–but can’t decide where to go to next.
2) Car expenses are *not* overrated if you live in a city, especially an over-crowded one, where street parking is fined in everyway possible and your car is towed with alarming frequency and zeal (no, really). I pay more for parking and driving than any single thing in my life except rent (though rent feels justified–I love my $1025 old-hollywood studio). For those asking about LA on this board: LA has a lot to offer for those who want to pursue some means of career in the industry (movie, TV, commercial, advertising, modelling) or its related industries (ie, entertainment law). DO NOT MOVE HERE if you don’t want to work in the industry or if you hate driving.
Hollywood, movie stars, movies being shot on your street, and the papparazi are not glamorous, and if they strike you as such, will lose their charm quickly, promise. (Shopping and food are great.)
3) Back to NY: how about the cold, for those of us that have never lived in it? I lived in England and wore so many layers everyday I couldn’t breath. I know NYC is lots colder. Tips, tricks, suggestions? How to stay fashionable and warm on a budget?
4) NYC attitude. Yes, I know LA has got its stereotypes (many true), as does SF. But I’m wondering, are people in NYC cold, angry, bitter, and judgemental? Can you find a decent relationship in NYC? Is the art scene actually alive or just a pretense? Do all conversations really begin “what do you do for a living?” and do people really (really?!) care where you went to undergrad?
Thanks!
I have a good question: How do people in New York go grocery shopping? You obviously can’t fill a bus or subway car with your eggs, coffee filters, milk jugs, and such…
I read this advice. I took it. I am now here and alive in my third month in NYC with a roof over my head and I would say two very good friends. NYC can be handled. Thanks Ben!
My best friend and I are thinking about moving to New York- we’re from Gibraltar (population of 30,000) so massive culture shock
. I’m a primary school teacher- does any1 know what teaching is like over there? Over here we have a supply list which I’ve been on for nearly two years- I get around £1,400-£1,500 a month depending on how many days I’ve worked because I’m not permanent and don’t get paid holidays.
OK. So I was terrified about moving to the city, and now I am even more so. Good thing my excitement trumps my terror. I need some more advice on living there on a student budget. I am going to start nursing school at Columbia and can’t work for the first year. I guess coming from Florida, I can sell my car and other belongings. How the hell do I find a roommate? Or even afford a place with a roommate? I’ve been in college for six years and just want to live alone with my books and my Bulldog. I start in three months. Is that even enough time to plan? Ahhhhhhh.
TA
I am so happy with reading this article and comments by others. I have been wanting to move to NYC for a very long time now, I just graduate from college last year with my Master’s degree in International Business which obviously for me I would have to move to an international city so my college wasn’t wasted. I have decided to move this coming april but I am terrified to think about it. I am from Buffalo, NY but have been living in the Panhandle of Florida with my parents since my graduation last May. I am scared right now because of the economy and all the jobs being lost, but I can’t handle being down here anymore and I want to move on. I’ve been saving for like 8 months to live in NYC. I don’t have a car or anything because of wanting to move there.
I am just scared of failure but I can’t stay here, there are no career advancement oppurtunties nor any international oppurtunity. So I will be taking my leap of fate hopefully in April. I just wanted to thank ben for this article, it really made me feel that my fears are felt by others. I know that it won’t be easy but I have better expectations.
@DarleneCactuar:
I’m graduating next May and also considering moving there. I will have a bachlors in MIS and marketing. Currently living in Michigan, there’s not much opportunity here. The move is mostly for my husband who wants to go to the culinary institute of America. He is so talented and I’m excited to help him with his dreams and hopefully find a job I will love. We currently have a 3 bedroom house and it’s hard to imagine selling that to move into a 1 bedroom condo/ apartment. We just started thinking about it but are very serious. I’m terrified but it seems like such a cool place to live.
There are so many thoughts I have with this BLOG. I almost don’t know where to begin. Here! I will just dive in!
I am a 23 year old female living in Salem, Oregon. I have always loved the idea of living in an urban city like New York but only recently realized how much New York could offer me. I am limited where I am at! The public transportation sucks (the buses don’t run 24 hours and only come around once an hour), I don’t have a car to get me to and from where I could attend school up in Portland, and there is really nothing here to help me grow as a person anymore. This is where New York comes in to play. . .
My friend, a customer at my work, is my life cheerleader and wants to see me succeed. He has been many places around the world, including the East coast, he has been through college and wants to return to acquire a Masters, and he has a family. Because of these things, I trust his advice. Recently, I ran into him, and he wondered out loud whether or not I was back in college. Regretfully, I had to respond that I still had yet to return. I explained that I wanted to go back to school to study languages at Portland State University but that I would have to wait to save up for a car to get to school because I would need a better paying job to afford the car.
He said, “I don’t want to see you scanning coupons the rest of your life, and why do you have to limit yourself to Portland? What is so great about Portland? Why not move to New York? It is THE city to live in for foreign languages.” He told me he knows a lady who is single, older and more than likely willing to room with someone. My friend had it all lined up before I could say another word. I kept throwing him doubts and questions not only because his suggestion was completely out of the blue but also because my initial perception of moving to New York was that I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD IT.
I know it makes me feel better to think that when I have it pretty bad, I am probably not the person the worst off and that there is someone else out there going through more difficult times, and I know I would be paid differently in New York, but I will show you how cheated I have been out of my pay raises at my four year job as well as how bad I have had it here in Oregon. Right now I am earning only $9.10 an hour. When I started four years ago at my still current job, I was earning $7.50 an hour. What a pay increase! Not. I also bring up how small my pay increase has been since starting at my job because I am not able to pay my half of the rent ($287.50) with my also having to pay two student loans (totaling roughly $160) and the full amount of utilities ($100.00+). (More on why I have a boyfriend and still pay all the utilities explained further on.) This is not counting the money I spend on my food and toiletries for myself and NOT with government help, and that can get expensive because I purchase mostly organic products. I will note that I don’t get any help from the government, so this is all out of my own pocket. As mentioned above, I don’t have a car, so I don’t have to pay car insurance, and although that SHOULD have been saving me money, my car insurance company decided to take advantage of me being a new car owner by ignoring the paper trail created in my car being totaled out by continuing to bill me for premiums I thought I had to have lest I got behind the wheel of another person’s car. Recently, I discovered that my insurance company has started work on investigating my being overcharged, so they are working on getting my money refunded. Anyway, if I hadn’t been overcharged with car insurance premiums, I would be getting by just barely- at this point, but since I have been paying for the utilities to pay my boyfriend back for my half of the rent in addition to the rent, I am in the hole financially. However, I should be even in the next month if I pay the full rent for this month and the next with no help.
I CAN see how I would have a lot more opportunities in New York with my aspirations of wanting to work around foreign languages. However, I also see how I could get that here. If only I didn’t feel so limited in where I am at right now.
I talked to my boyfriend of four years about wanting him to move with me to New York, and he was against it. He likes it here in Oregon, and I said that wouldn’t change if he left. He said that it would be different if it were a move to California, and I said it wouldn’t. Our being closer to our home state wouldn’t change the fact that we would have to still fly to get to family. He said he has too many ties here (friends, family, school), but I told him I have as many ties as he does, and it isn’t like he is attending Willamette University where he is getting such an outstanding education that wouldn’t be worth moving away from. He is attending a community college! He said that he doesn’t want to waste any more time because he is 27 and still working at a degree. I told him that another year, at this point, isn’t going to make much of a difference and that he should be wanting to support my aspirations by moving. He said he would prefer that I spend a year or two acquiring a degree in New York on my own and then return to Oregon once I graduate, but I don’t see myself moving and maintaining a long distance relationship. He doesn’t understand how feasible it is for me to move all the way across the country when I could pursue the same education in Portland even though I have told him I have been limited in getting back to school these past six months what with not having a car let alone the money to supply one and that if I were in New York, I would already be back in school. He doesn’t understand how I could suddenly afford to live in New York when I can’t even afford where I am right now. This is another reason he couldn’t see it working out for both of us to move out East. He doesn’t want to have me “dragging him down” when we move out there because I can’t afford things out there like I can’t out here. I don’t know how to assure him that for what I can’t do here in Oregon, I can do in New York. Does anyone have advice for me?
Thinking about moving there… thanks for the rent advice!
The people who move there with no job, semi-permanent place to shack up, or personal contacts/family to show you the ropes are definitely braver souls than I am. I would need some combination of those to consider moving anywhere really, (to soften the landing) but especially a place like New York. As luck would have it I do, so it seems it would really be a shame to let such an opportunity pass.
Very Useful information for people considering the move to NYC and much of it could be said the same for anyone considering a move to the very expensive state of California. If you want to work yourself into the ground paying expensive rent move to either NYC or LA. You could buy a house in many states with the rent you pay in just one year in either LA or NYC. Also besides the bedbugs consider the massive Rat problem in NYC and cockroaches. Consider having no quality of life in NYC if you are not making 6 figures or hit the jackpot.
Thank you for this.
I’ll be moving to NYC Sept 3rd.
Just graduated college and I’m obviously crazy or a masochist, right?
I have one suitcase, a computer, a friend’s couch, craigslist connections, resume, cover letters, recommendation letters, and looking forward for the first crappy job that comes my way.
So this is 2009 and this article was written a couple years back…. I need advice on what neighborhoods to live in. i’m looking for a cheap room, with a good lock and where i wont die to or from work.
Or any other advice i guess would be good.
Thanks!
Julie
all sounds good. I am sincerely consideringmoving to ny, your advice is right on the same blocks that i was thinking. my problem is that i am a single parent of 3 little girls. why move? i live in california and 25% of all californians are unemployed, including myself. the job market sucks. i have my unemployment check, but the job market sucks. i have been on unemployment for 6 months, with no hopes for a job. so, i will continue on my journey, but i have noted roadway and atrium for future references. thanks for your advice.
Moving to the city doesn’t necessarily mean having to be lonely. There are plenty of ways to meet people, through communal activities and even sports teams. One really helpful site i found is the postgrad apartments blog. They give recommendations of companies that organize various sporting events, formations of teams, etc.
I love New York. I currently live in NC but I was born in NY (Brooklyn) and I am dying to be back there. I can only go when I graduate from high school. (education is horrible here btw) Should I go to college there and then live, or should I go to college here and then move? I really want to go to NYU though. It’s one of my dream schools.
Excellent tips. Putting stuff in storage can definitely help to make the moving process easier. Manhattan Mini Storage offers some great units for stashing your belongings until you are able to find an apartment with space for everything. It definitely beats trying to decide what to keep and what to ditch.
NYC is a gorgeous city. Still, if you’re going to be miserable there, you’re better off elsewhere. So it’s always good to prepare.
First off, you’re unemployable without a skill. No, I’m not saying you need to go get a four year B.S. and then a 2 year M.S., and then another 2 year year M.S. like me – that’s just stupid and inefficient.
But you should have a good idea of where the jobs are. And in NYC jobs are in software and information and money and writing – all things that take up little space. Bye manufacturing facilities and strenuously acquired manufacturing technical skills.
A simple search will show you what I’m talking about. Go on careerbuilder.com and type in “software” or “java” for NYC, and you’ll get thousands of hits. To illustrate my point I just performed the following searches for NYC on Indeed.com (just another job search site):
1. “software” – 16,235
2. “java” – 5,637
3. “financial” – 26,209
On the other hand, other fields are so scarce, they scare you:
1. “aerospace” – 345
2. “semiconductor” – 113
3. “chemical” – 645
4. “electrical” – 649
Unless they find some way of making aircraft vertically and then moving them out of the city via gridlock traffic, “aerospace” is going to be just a blip in NYC. So think “information”, “software”, “business”, “office space”.
I know this article is old but it’s so completely relevant. However, 1600 dollar rent is a lot, and there is no way you could pay that with a bike messenger’s salary. Or waiting tables salary, or retail worker salary.
To reply to Musician78, I feel like places in NYC pay the same or less. Definitely not more in my experience. But people here tend to make their jobs centered in their lives, and work more hours. The cost of living here can be really high, but also worth it. You gotta be willing to work long hours, stay thrifty, but never, never undertip.