I’ll share some stats about my 9 years in NYC.
School 5 years (went back to school, worked until going back after dropping out 15 years ago). Work 4 years (took a year to find a job total, 4 months after grad, and 5 months after 1st job while trying to work for myself and 1 day after I started looking seriously again this year while continuing to work for myself on the side).
Rent 2000 UES 2BR split 50/50 with GF, parents helped with 50% of rent during school (super fortunate to have parents with means) since in city tuition savings were insane, I paid everything else I could with part time book keeping work, GF paid for most expenses and food (we lived super frugally).
Rent stayed at 2k until 2014, then started going up by 100 a year until we moved in Late 2017.
GF has amazing Gov job, benefits out the wazoo pension etc. 15k cash. She pays into her pension and she pays for our healthcare, this is really our first full year of dual income, we’ve saved 25k so far.
I’ve done the max Roth contrib every year since 2002, 229k. 3k cash. 12k taxable vanguard.
I make 65k, 15k-20k side business.
GF 70k + research Grant 9k, summer class teaching 8k.
All of this, and we STILL had to pull out all the stops to get approved by the board in Queens in a 300k co-op. Our place was in great condition, but old interior, newly renovated go for 360-400k.
Our mortgage is 1000, maintenance is 775. We pay 195 for a garage spot and I’m paying 300 a month in car financing/insurance (1.6 finance%)which MMM would strangle me for, but the two trips a month average we take to see family, friends, nieces nephews was so expensive with zip car or something that this actually saves us money long term, we take mass transit for work, walk to shopping and will bike when we get a bike spot in the co-op.
We are also fortunate that I will work in Manhatten or Brooklyn in finance and my wife works east on Long Island, so we settled in Kew Gardens which may be a good investment, but that’s not why we bought.
The bank would have given us a mortgage for 5000 a month, but the coop needs debt to income of 27%, and we barely made it basically (they didn’t want to count my side hustle, or my wife’s grant work or summer work since that could end, but so could our jobs????? I screamed in my head during the board interview).
Anyways long story short, settling for a very modest place by NYC standards means that I will be able to “retire” in another 5-10 years and just keep doing my side hustle. My wife is stuck for another 18 years minimum but her pension is so insane it’s worth it given her work load, and I’ll gladly be the person cooking and cleaning at home when we get there.