Hello all!
I've been reading MMM for a while (found it through ERE, which I started reading last year). The timing is great—I just graduated last June, and am just now moving to NYC to start a fairly-well-paying software job. I resonate with a lot of the MMM/ERE philosophy and aim to hit FI in the next few years.
First obstacle: NYC housing. I had hoped to land a room rental in the $800 range, preferably in Manhattan somewhere under 69th to save on transportation. I had anticipated that the only way to make that happen would be to have one or several roommates, but I'm hesitant to jump in with a complete stranger while I'm also figuring out a new city and also figuring out a new job and whathaveyou.
My company has a meager relocation package which includes a rental/broker service, so I've been touring around the island the past few days looking at studios (broker gaped a little when I told her "I really like small spaces, so I don't want anything too big", and then again when we walked into a sizeable studio and I told her it was a little too big for me...apparently that's strange?). The trick is, everything is well out of the range I'd really like to be paying.
There's one property available now (or at least, it was as of a few hours ago) for about double what I would like—which I could afford, barely. It's important to me to pay off all of my student loans this year, which (all expenses considered) I could do while living at this place, but with just a few grand left over for saving. Then next year I would hopefully be in a position to move in with a roommate I had gotten to know, thus having much lower expenses and no student loans to pay off, so the 'stach could start growing at about the rate I would like.
How's that for a plan? Are there other safe/reliable routes I should be taking to find housing closer to the range I'd like? (I really don't need a lot of space, and I'm happy to room with someone, but to be living in such close quarters I'd want to have some way of vetting them first.) I'm hoping to find a place this week, so I don't have to deal with it when I start work next week.
Also, if any other NYC Mustachians have any survival tips, I'd appreciate them muchly! Thanks.