Esther Akutekha, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, has a good job as a public relations specialist that pays more than $50,000 a year.
But because of the $1,440 a month rent on her studio apartment in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, she never takes vacations, dines out just once a month and scrapes together dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.
Where is half her money going? She has no kids, so her primary expenses should be rent and food - giving a generous weekly allowance for a single person to eat, she's still below $25k a year for food and shelter, leaving another $25k on the table.
Taxes, student loan payment, health insurance, transit pass or even more, car payment plus insurance... that salary can go FAST without any particular extravagance. New York city has its own income tax on top of everything else. Based on this calculator: https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator#J3k3HVzqzq She'd be left with $39,600 after tax. $3300/month. Remove $1400 in rent. I used a tool to look up health insurance, for a bronze plan for her it would be $480/month. (Maybe her employer gives her health insurance, but mine doesn't, so I never take that for granted). All of a sudden you're looking at less than $1500/month in one of the most expensive cities on earth.
Do you see how quick that can evaporate?
It just annoys me when people assume everyone else is being a wasteful dipshit, without doing any leg work.
Not really, there's still $1380/month based on the numbers you've estimated. After the categories you've already accounted for my personal spend on everything else is under $500/month. But maybe I'm a little on the cheap side so let's use some slightly more generous numbers than my own.
$3300
-$1440 rent
-$480 health insurance
$1380
-$300 groceries
-$50 eating out once a month
-$30 cell phone
-$60 electric
-$50 internet
-$100 transportation
-$20 prescriptions/medicines
-$20 clothes
-$50 gym membership
I feel like I'm reaching for categories at this point and there's still $700 left. Any other categories we should add?
A young single woman in New York? I imagine she gets her hair cut and colored, buys make up, spends more than $240/yr on clothes, and so on. That adds up very quickly even if you're doing groupon cuts and rite aid makeup. On a shitty bronze plan, seeing your GP can be $40 (or at least, that's how much it cost me last year, and specialists were $80). Add in a trip home to see family for the holidays assuming she's from elsewhere, a cable package, amazon prime and netflix, and a student loan (my payments are $350/month and that's only 2 years of school with scholarships that I took loans for, and my living expenses were covered by my fiance, and I already paid off half of them). The numbers, they can definitely add up.
Am I saying she's mustachian and there's nothing for her to cut? Absolutely not what I'm saying. Just that someone doesn't have to be going out for margaritas and have a closet stuffed with designer shoes to run through a $55k salary in NYC. And she's spending 42% of her take home on rent. My understanding is "affordable" is considered 30% or less, right? Yeah the rent isn't all of it, but it sure doesn't help.
I don't know. I just don't see the point of assuming you know better than someone in a random article that is essentially "flavor text" on an otherwise fairly dry economic study.