11 ms·
New York City Prices Make $100k Salary Feel Like $36,000
- malshe 4y agohttps://archive.is/Zriun https://archive.is/Zriun
- malshe 4y agoThe full list of 76 cities is available here: https://smartasset.com/data-studies/dd-what-100000-is-worth-2023 https://smartasset.com/data-studies/dd-what-100000-is-worth-... As a proud Texan, I am very happy to see so many Texas cities ranked high on affordability. I often hear people say we should also consider the quality of life in expensive cities. Although I agree that quality of life on standard metrics might be better in NYC, SF, or Honolulu, I would rather save my money living in Texas and take vacations to pricy places.
- Ancalagon 4y agoCrazy to me how expensive my home state of AZ has gotten in the past few years. Growing up my friends and I believed it would remain cheaper than other states due to the hot weather, but homes prices have trended very high in the last few years for many of the more desirable areas. I feel like AZ used to be in the top ten for lists like these.
- qball 4y ago>Growing up my friends and I believed it would remain cheaper than other states due to the hot weather Interestingly, Arizona in particular is famous for its "snowbirds"; Canadians (and likely those living in the northern US states as well) tend to buy houses there to get more than 4 hours of sunshine in the winter.
- neilv 4y agoHow are people in Arizona thinking about climate change? Does it seem rational (for people planning to live at least a few more decades) given the current state of science? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Arizona
- Ancalagon 4y agoThere are many opinions, and I don't know the science well enough to tell you what the outcome will be long term. One town recently had its water supply cut off. But as far as I understand this wasn't so much because the town was running out of water but because the parent city it took its water from was growing very fast and needed that water for its new residents. There was something in the contract that allowed the parent city to do this. The Phoenix metro in particular has very advanced water recycling tech, most of the water that is taken in gets reused as long as its not used for irrigation (admittedly likely the majority of the water use in the city). Long term this means water will become more expensive, and the many golf resorts and hotels will probably need to change their lawns to fake turf or close up entirely. Most residences don't actually use that much water for irrigation, as a lot of the landscaping is desert-based already. Recent heavy rainstorms have lead some to believe the Sonoran desert may actually get wetter as climate change happens. And with this the state is planning to use its aquifers to store the water from those storms for the dry years. The Colorado river is low, but I believe Arizona has higher water rights than e.g. California. Meaning Southern California would lose its main water supply before the Phoenix metro would. On the other hand, I actually know at least one couple that decided to leave a couple years ago because of their concerns over water and climate change. There's also concerns regarding the water use of the exploding chip manufacturing industry being built there. These companies will require a lot of water and be able to pay the premiums even over residents.
- treeman79 4y agoRemember that climate politicians are buying properties on the beach. They have no actual concern.
- malshe 4y agoIf AZ used to be in the top 10, it has certainly fallen down a lot as it is now in 40s. Interestingly, Boise also shows up near AZ cities, which I guess happened due to the Californians moving there during the pandemic.
- Ancalagon 4y agoYup. I own a home in AZ and the prices have doubled in 6 years. Despite interest rate increases, they haven't really come down. Most of that is immigration from CA I'm assuming.
- jeffbee 4y agoTexas, with the notable exception of San Antonio, builds housing at an exceptional pace compared to coastal cities. That's their big affordability secret, and many big cities in Texas have plenty of cultural amenities. Houston, where I lived before moving to SF, has a symphony and opera and ballet and museums, food and entertainment and dancing and all that. And in my experience there you can participate in the culture as a normal person unlike in SF where you are always bidding against hundreds of literal billionaires.
- malshe 4y agoFor me having a large house close to my workplace is a huge game changer. I get to spend a lot of time playing with my daughter outside on my property. I play pickle ball, jump on trampoline, etc. all on my property while living 15 minutes away from my office.
- tayo42 4y agoLiving for vacations feels just like living for the weekend. And in the US how many weeks is that really? Feels unfullfilling.
- explaininjs 4y agoThey didn't say they were "living for vacations", just "saving money and taking vacations to pricier places". They could very easily be living for the moment, enjoying every day, and still taking some time to go out exploring other more expensive areas now and then. It's a common fallacy of the new yorker to think they're the only one who has figured out living, and everyone else wants to be where they are but can't afford it. (not saying this was you, but it's something I've heard many a time)
- malshe 4y agoYes, that’s what I meant.
- tayo42 4y ago> I agree that quality of life on standard metrics might be better in NYC, SF, or Honolulu, I would rather save my money living in Texas and take vacations to pricy places. How else do you interpret that other then they are sacrificing day to day quality of life in favor of more expensive vacations? The post admits that these cheaper towns have a measurably lower qol
- explaininjs 4y agoYou're interpreting on standard metrics as on metrics I agree with, which is unfounded.
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- xwdv 4y agoIn New York City you should be making at least $150k to $200k for a decent life IMO. If that’s not you there’s no point living there, but you can certainly commute there to work the menial jobs if you’d like. Inevitably someone has to do them and it won’t be the $200k+ residents, so job opportunities should be fairly plentiful.
- javanissen 4y agoI live in Midtown, make $130k and there’s tons of money left over. I have friends from childhood who live in Brooklyn, make <$40k and do fine by just having some roommates. The paradox is that NYC, despite having a bunch of expensive stuff, is also very easy to enjoy for cheap due to the public amenities.
- drewbeck 4y agoAnd $4 egg n cheeses!
- javanissen 4y agoYep. Deli sandwiches and halal cart are surprisingly cheap
- zug_zug 4y agoI know people who "do fine" in NYC making ~40k by which they mean they "pay all their bills." Unfortunately they are NOT on track to have >1.5million saved up by retirement (as is projected to be necessary).
- javanissen 4y agoThere’s a decent point here, but it’s not insurmountable. If these people lived on $32k net (in today’s dollars) their entire lives, they definitely won’t need $1.5m (in today’s dollars) for retirement. That would generate about $60k (gross) in retirement income. Social security, assuming no future raises (and therefore higher benefits) and a 25% haircut to payout, would cover about $15k. So they’d need $17k in portfolio income, which is a $425k nest egg. Or they could work part time, or get a raise at some point, or delay claiming social security and work longer for a larger benefit. This plan could go wrong. But it also makes a serious of fairly pessimistic assumptions about the person’s entire working career. And it doesn’t require extreme frugality either - the friends I have making <$40k still eat out and go to concerts. There’s this pervasive myth (exemplified by the top-level comment) that moving to a big city is an unmitigated financial disaster that requires an upper-middle class income to defray, and I just don’t think it’s true.
- ashwagary 4y ago"Taxes are a particular point of concern: state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has cautioned against raising taxes further as New York’s may already be pushing out wealthy residents, who make up an important revenue base." Doesn't pushing out the wealthy reduce cost of living? I heard NYC has a lot of vacant residential properties held as investments.
- shagmin 4y agoI think you're describing a different thing. Those vacant residential properties could be owned from someone overseas who has never been to NYC. I interpret pushing out wealthy residents to mean someone moving to Florida and living there most of the year to avoid paying NYC income taxes, even if they choose to keep their NYC condo. NYC suffers a drop in tax revenue and the housing supply doesn't necessarily get better.
- treeman79 4y agoNew York tax collectors are incredibly aggressive about pursuing this kind of stuff.
- mcntsh 4y ago> What is not in dispute is that the richest New Yorkers pay most of the income tax the city collects. The 41,000 filers in the top 1% pay just over 40% of all income taxes. The 450,000 in the top 10% contribute almost exactly two-thirds of the city’s income tax revenue. The remaining 3.3 million taxpayers pay the final third. https://www.thecity.nyc/economy/2022/12/6/23497265/nyc-tax-data-high-earners-drop-2020 https://www.thecity.nyc/economy/2022/12/6/23497265/nyc-tax-d...
- vanilla_nut 4y agoOddly, NYC has very low property taxes: https://leavethekey.com/blog/property-tax-new-york-city-2021 https://leavethekey.com/blog/property-tax-new-york-city-2021 About .88% of assessed value on average, something like half the rate of the rest of New York State and less than half the rate of most of the Northeast! So it's actually a pretty cheap place to buy an investment property. Seems strange to me that NY puts so much of its tax burden on renters and so little on owners.
- mcntsh 4y agoOne thing I was not prepared for was the taxes. My total tax bill comes out to around 39% of my pay check... paying $2k/mo in state/city taxes alone. Shocking, coming from Germany, where the tax (minus health insurance) was almost exactly the same percentage, but I get a *lot* less for it.
- malshe 4y ago39% is insane! The infrastructure is crumbling so not sure what are they doing with all the money
- giraffe_lady 4y agocops mostly
- malshe 4y ago[flagged]
- logicalmonster 4y agoI'm not going to say that I'm in love with the cops in NYC and I certainly have my own list of issues with them, but in general I'd say that at least NYC has usually felt pretty safe regardless of the area. Hard to say that about many other cities.
- twblalock 4y agoIn quite a few places in NYC, including the subway, it actually feels like a crazy person could stab you at any moment. When people leave the city and feel an unanticipated sense of relaxation, it's because they were used to living in fear and looking over their shoulders all the time, and they don't need to do that in their new surroundings.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
- newaccount2023 4y ago[flagged]
- malshe 4y agoA lot of New Yorkers have moved to Texas and Florida but they can still complain!
- AllegedAlec 4y ago> move away from your unpayable hellhole > start voting for the same policies that made the previous place an unpayable hellhole > ??? > profit?
- lisasays 4y agoIt's hard to evaluate these numbers, without full access to the decision tree and source dat) they are working with. One very common mistake people make in evaluating NYC living costs is to work with rent statistics provided by ... high-end real estate brokers. For example in an another Bloomberg article that the story links to: The median rent on newly signed leases last month was $4,095, down just $2 from January, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Everyone in NYC knows this just isn't true -- a very large portion of NYC tenants live in either rent-stabilized units, or in units not listed on the MLS system that these brokers work with (and from which they get these numbers from). Not surprisingly, these brokers have a vested interest in propping up the idea that "you just have to" fork over $4k a month for rent in NYC. Now, rent stabilized units of course aren't exactly easy to get -- and you may not want to live in many of these units. But on a strictly factual basis - the true median rents in NYC are far lower than the numbers provided by these high-end brokers. Finally, there's the fact that NYC is one of the few cities where one legitimately does not need to maintain car at all (easily a $6k-$10k savings every year). The article simply mentions "transportation" but completely glosses over this crucial distinction between NYC and other cities.
- mcntsh 4y agoAFAIK, being a rent stabilized unit has no bearing on the actual rent cost, it just means landlords cannot raise the rent above a certain percentage after contract renewal. My 1br apartment is almost $4k/mo and it's rent stabilized.
- lisasays 4y agoYeah, there's a certain number of stabilized units which are "high-end" (for those earning 80-100 percent of the local median income), whose rents scarcely differ from those of market-rate units. But I assure you the vast bulk of stabilized units have grandfathered rents from way back, and these are far below market. Which is why the industry always fights tooth-and-claw to get these restrictions lifted or lessened, any time they get half a chance.
- malshe 4y ago
- GenerocUsername 4y agoOver the years I keep hearing a general sentiment that cities are more efficient places for humans to work and live than their rural alternatives. If this was true, shouldn't efficiency make living there cheaper?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nkjnlknlk 4y agoIt is cheaper than having all of NYC live in the rural equivalent, yes.
- GenerocUsername 4y agoIs it? Wouldn't each individuals expenses be lower? And therefore the total would also be lower...
- chucksta 4y agoThe only thing that makes it expensive is the desire to be there. If you move that "desire" to a rural location, its going to cost the same but have larger distances to travel, a la Los Angeles.
- jeffbee 4y agoIt doesn't because of the constrained housing regime. All marginally available money flows to landlords. Anything that begins to cost less simply raises rents.
- javanissen 4y agoNot if the supply dramatically outstrips demand. If you want to live in a walkable city in America with decent public transit (to the point where car ownership is optional), low to moderate crime, and lots of jobs, relatively few places meet that demand. If there were twenty American cities with the same economic abundance and amenities as New York City, New York City rent would be lower.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoSo hard to compare a lot of these places. Sure you'll take home a large share of your money living in Ft Wayne, IN...but you're also living in Ft Wayne. Relatively, taking home near 60% and living in Chicago is so vastly different than taking home 80% in Ft Wayne.
- ianbutler 4y agoI moved out of NYC to Jersey City three years ago, largely because there was an immediate upside on my taxes. I'm still close enough and can easily go in when I want to via the path. My friend who works as an engineer at Google was lamenting to me the other day how his 350k+ TC basically feels like nothing in NYC after federal, state and city taxes. He takes a 50% loss. Why would you want to continue living in a place that takes what is a top 1-2% earner for our age group (25-30) and makes them feel poor? And that is even considering RSUs since those are vesting monthly at Google now. He's almost priced out even in Brooklyn, paying over 3k for his 1 bedroom. But if you don't want to live in some slum lord pre ww2 shit hole you need to be paying a lot. I'm in the same earning bracket and I've been contemplating a further move because while Jersey is easier on the wage taxes, the property taxes are insane and make buying a house here deeply un attractive.
- treeman79 4y agoI pay 2700 for an acre in a highly desirable area in the south. Which is 1200 more than it was 4 years ago. But we have a huge flood of people coming from out of state that love how cheap everything is.
- throwaway6734 4y ago>Why would you want to continue living in a place that takes what is a top 1-2% earner for our age group (25-30) and makes them feel poor? Least out of touch FAANG engineer
- 2c2c2c 4y agoMy first job was at a startup for $95k in SF in 2018. This felt like the "peak" of rent here, where I was paying $2350/mo. I'm kind of lost how this salary should feel like 36k/mo. To me this is a salary that reminds me of my childhood-- paycheck to paycheck, looming foreclosure from being behind on house payments, constant fliers from electric threatening to shut us off. That isn't remotely what my experience was. I maxed my roth ira, paid into my 401k up to what my company matched, and had plenty left over month to month. I paid off the small amount of student loans I had within the year. I didn't have to think or care about what I spent money on. I went to bars weekly spending $12/drink. Work comped my dinners, and I ate out everyday for lunch. Articles like this have created this perception online that you will starve to death on a salary like this in SF. I guess my question is, 100k here feels like 36k where?
- throwaway6734 4y agoThese articles are written by people completely out of touch with your average American. The median household income in the US is around 70k.
- 2c2c2c 4y agoThere are comments on this post that just suggest an ungodly level of consumption. Saying you can't live in NY comfortably on 150k salary. I buy $800 jackets and feel like a jackass, WTF are these people spending their money on to say this shit?!
- twblalock 4y agoHousing. NYC median rent this year is $3350. That's over $40k per year. On a $100k salary, which is about $60k after federal, state, and local taxes, rent is 2/3 of the take-home pay for someone making $100k. More concretely, if you get $60k take-home pay per year after taxes, that's $5k per month, and if you pay median rent that leaves you with $1650 for everything else, and that rent price does not include all the utilities! That is pretty hard to live on if you have dependents. If you have to feed and clothe multiple people on $1650 a month you are going to feel pretty poor, even if you don't own a car!
- mint2 4y agoThis is good and useful for some purposes but over simplifies and leaves out important trade offs. It’s like treating cities as interchangeable fungible commodities like low quality coffee beans or flour. For example, the premium some would pay to live near certain amenities or family. For example, being within easy weekend driving of world class skiing, backpacking and hiking. If I was paid 100k and had to pay 10k to live near those amenities vs Nebraska, no question I’d pay. These are hard to factor into a ranking like this but without some consideration of them the list is of marginal use.
- mcntsh 4y agoYou can't really control for this because it's completely subjective.
- mint2 4y agoOne could argue the price differences show how much people are willing to pay. Think how much money I could save by moving out of SF. I am staying here. If Leaving out a crucial aspects just because they are hard to quantify then it is easy to stray into the garbage in garbage out arena. That’s harsh, I don’t think the list is garbage I just think it needs to at least try.
- mcntsh 4y agoCounter point: most people in America don't live in these HCOL cities.
- mint2 4y agoYes, but the ones that do are clearly forgoing tens or of thousands to do it so unquestionably it has value. That’s actually one way the results of the study can be interpreted, despite paying a cost of living difference of about $40k to live in NY vs Tennessee, smart people are choosing NY. That means the benefit they get by remaining in NY is greater than $40k… To a rough first order approximation. But it’s no rougher than completely neglecting value of location. On a side note, that’s a nice 2 story house on the beach, want to swap it for my two story house in the suburbs? It’s equivalent right!