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Living in NYC
El Skid
The frozen white northRegistered User regular
The frozen white northRegistered User regular
Hey guys,
So my wife is considering a position in New York City. Pay is about $150k gross (which seems ridiculous). We're actually Canadians, so this seems like a scary prospect, and I just wanted to see if anyone could provide insight around what living in NYC is like, whether the cost of living makes that ridiculous salary insufficient, and generally any context you can give to someone who has never set foot in the Big Apple.
We have a kid that we'd need to educate/feed etc along with this, and I wouldn't be eligible to work there maybe (barring getting a green card or figuring something else out).
Any feedback from New Yorkers or people that know the city would be helpful!
So my wife is considering a position in New York City. Pay is about $150k gross (which seems ridiculous). We're actually Canadians, so this seems like a scary prospect, and I just wanted to see if anyone could provide insight around what living in NYC is like, whether the cost of living makes that ridiculous salary insufficient, and generally any context you can give to someone who has never set foot in the Big Apple.
We have a kid that we'd need to educate/feed etc along with this, and I wouldn't be eligible to work there maybe (barring getting a green card or figuring something else out).
Any feedback from New Yorkers or people that know the city would be helpful!
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Okay, all seriousness.
Forget romantic notions about living in Manhattan (too expensive for a family). The trendier parts of Brooklyn (DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, etc...) are also expensive these days. Most other boroughs are much more livable, and don't discount NJ or Long Island if you want to get into better school districts. For New Yorkers, a 30 minute commute is a luxury. One hour or more is standard for a sizable amount of working New Yorkers. Depending on where you live, owning a car may be optional, but you then need to take into account mass transit costs.
The schools are rather good if you can get them into the right ones/right programs. Navigating that can be a hassle, though. I'm already trying to plan for my two year old...
$150,000 is plenty in NYC, honestly. You can live well on that, especially if you have a "house husband" doing the cooking, cleaning and childcare.
If you can work it out so you can legally work too, you'll have no problems.
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I live in NYC. $150,000 is pretty good. You can live a nice life with that.
You know there are actual poor people in NYC? And you know how they'd laugh at $150k being "low"?
I live in a spacious [by NYC standards] 2br in Astoria with a 125k household income, and it's not a financial burden.
Looking for housing will probably be a pain in the ass, so be emotionally/mentally ready for that. Realtors are inconsistent, and most just want to push an apartment on you asap and move on with their lives. They also charge you ~ one month's rent for the privilege.
This is only slightly exaggerated:
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NJ transit is pretty good. you also have the path etc. lots of options to avoid driving
If relying on the subway, factor in that the time the subway takes can vary a lot. So if your commute is 40 minutes you need to leave an hour to get to work. So don't say "It's only an hour and a half by two trains. I can deal with that if it means my kid gets to have a yard." That would end up as a 2 1/2 hour hell-commute at least once a week.
I live in Westchester (the county just north of the Bronx, for those not from around here) and commute over the Whitestone. I am pretty sure that the bridges to Long Island from NY proper are the only potential commute that isn't just appalling; I can be home in 45 minutes, though our office is not very far from the bridge. The days I have work calls in Manhattan are not enjoyable trips.
The people telling you to live in Jersey aren't off base, but consider my area and Nassau as well. And honestly, if you can't find a way to live within a reasonable distance of NYC on that kind of money, I ought to have starved to death a long time ago or had to move.
Try looking up real estate in the school district of your choice and you'll get a much more realistic idea of how affordable it can be. But keep in mind, New Yorkers don't move out to Long Island/Jersey to raise their kids for no good reason.
That is, you deal with the small house by not buying stuff, aggressively removing unused stuff, reusing rooms for multiple purposes, and frequent use of public parks.
1. If you both remain Canadian citizens, can you get health care in the US easily? Or do you need to pay for US health care?
2. How long of a commute does your wife desire?
3. If you stay at home, this means you can watch your kid. No daycare!
Public schools in the NYC area are generally good. If for some reason you disagree with that assessment, there are private schools. Property taxes in the area are high (and passed along to renters if you rent) to account for the multitude of public services, including schools. For many, living in NJ makes a lot of sense -- same with some people living in CT. It depends on where your wife's position actually is located, and how she would get there.
For $150k, your monthly take home would likely land in the realm of $8000/mo. That means you can afford to rent a place that's $4k/mo and still have $4k to spend on whatever, which is pretty good!
Just one thing to account for on this -- if you live in NJ and work in NYC, you have to pay NYC income taxes as well as NJ. At 150k, this isn't a show stopper, just something to keep in mind when you're figuring out what you'll have left. If you find the right place in NJ, you'll probably still do OK even with the double taxing.
Pretty sure in this case, you get a credit in New Jersey for the taxes paid in NY. This is how it is with most dual-taxation situations.
http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/njit14.shtml
So you'll be paying more throughout the year probably, but you'll get a lot of that back at tax time.
that's definitely true, but the paying more throughout the year bit is important for budgetary reasons.
Yeah, though you can adjust your state withholding to compensate, probably after the first year so you know approximately how much you'll be overpaying.
Ahem, no you do not pay more throughout the year. I have worked in NYC and lived in NJ for a long time. Your taxes get withheld at NY rate and you pay income tax to NY. You still owe a little more to NJ come tax time because NJ doesn't have quite the same deductions when calculating your taxable income and also taxes on health care benefits, but it's a relatively small amount. I got a refund from NY and owed half that amount to NJ. It evens out. EDIT: And if El Skid has a kid he's got lots of kid-related tax credits he can take advantage of.
El Skid--if you want to raise your kid in the suburbs, NJ is a great state and has lots of really good school districts, but the property taxes are high (if you want to buy instead of rent) and NJ Transit is not all that reliable--I have taken the busiest line (NE Corridor) for a long time and it can be nightmarish at times, especially since Penn Station is a soul-sucking gray cave designed to flay the skin off your deepest levels of tolerance. Still, it's not the worst thing in the world, and the monthly cost of a train ticket is much, much cheaper than Manhattan rent. Also there's no tax on clothes or groceries in NJ.
I live in Astoria now (hey @minirhyder you in my neighborhood i guess) and the rent and housing stock is much more reasonable than Manhattan, although the median rent is probably going to be rising even more rapidly since lots of new luxury apartment buildings are being developed right now.
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That said, the commute...well, the one summer I was working in the City, I was getting the 5:50 am train to report at 7:30. (You can sleep on the train, which helps.)
I agree with all of this. I've lived in Astoria for almost 7 years. You could live somewhat comfortably on 150k/year there. Also, are you sure you can't get a work visa through whatever visa your wife will get?
I live in Crown Heights in Brooklyn now, in a 2 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. Our combined income is about 120K, but we don't have any kids. It might take you a bit of searching and hustling to find a decent place, but I think $150K for a family of 3 is doable as long as you're looking in the outer boroughs, as others have said.