My biggest fear is that I’ll move to NYC and end up spending my entire time there trying to scrounge up enough money for rent each month. Just by looking at apartment listings on craigslist frightens me. How do average working class people manage to survive comfortably up there? That’s my biggest fear, which is trivial, I know. It will just be hard to transition from living in a spacious house with leftover income to spend on “toys” (which consists of new technology and musical equipment for me) to having to constantly limit and keep note of my spending.
So I’m researching other people’s stories and trying to get as much knowledge about moving to “New York City sane and not broke“. Below is some advice taken from the article.
SCOPE OUT THE RENTAL MARKET
Determine where you would like to live and how much you can pay. Personal finance gurus recommend spending no more than 25% of your expected salary on rent. Realistically, you may have to spend up to 50%. But if you lock yourself into a high rent so you can live in “the cool spot” you may end up spending all your time inside your stupid little apartment cause you can never afford to go out. Think smaller and cheaper.
On this note, Brooklyn is a nice, cheaper-than-Manhattan place. Fort Greene and Carrol Gardens are good spots to look at in Brooklyn. Rents are relatively affordable, amenities are there, it’s not too far from Manhattan, and they’re fairly safe. Living near but not next to housing projects is a sure way to get more apartment for your money.
If you must live in Manhattan, Upper Upper West Side (past the 100′s) has become affordable. There’s places to be found on the more easternly points of the Lower East Side.
I’m definitely more interested in living in Brooklyn than Manhattan, but Brooklyn is getting pretty pricey too. Guess I’ll just have to really look hard.
SAVE Five times your expected monthly rent. To move into a lease, you will probably have to put up two month’s rent + security deposit (usually another month’s rent). There may even be a broker’s fee, which is at least another month’s rent. You will need the rest of the money to feed yourself and not feel like a loser. Stuff it in a high-yield online savings account, like HSBC or INGDirect.
Well I’m off to a good start. I started an INGDirect account in May and try to put money into it every month. The interest is definitely higher than any other account I’ve had (even better than my Credit Union). I do a lot of things on the side to make extra cash, like those paid to click email sites and paid surveys, so I’m going to start transferring the money I receive from those to my ING account.
DUMP YOUR JUNK. You probably don’t need about 90% off what you own. Hold a yard sale. Donate. Digitize everything you don’t need a real-world copy of. Put stuff in local storage. Throw it away. Whatever you do, just get rid of it. A good goal is reducing your belongings to an essential wardrobe, books, and your “tools of the trade.” For most people this means a computer. For you it may be a welding torch. Shipping costs. Space in NYC is at a premium. Less stuff means less stuff you don’t have room for.
This is going to be extremely hard for me. I’m a pat rack. I love holding onto memories. Scraps of paper, journals, random crap that *could* be useful one day. I get attached to all of my things. I know it will be a good thing to purge myself of all the unnecessary crap I’ve accumulated over the years. But it’s going to be extremely painful.
LINE UP JOB PROSPECTS. Send out feelers and resumes before you arrive. Tap those personal connections. Let people know you’re coming. If you went to college, call up the alumni office and see if they can hook you up with former students in New York. Monster.com has never done anything for us. Craigslist has. Don’t get discouraged if people don’t initially seem that interested in you. Tons of people say they’re going to move to New York but never do, so NYC veterans learn to take a policy of, “I’ll see it when I see it.” That’s okay, just start cranking the wheel on getting a cash flow going as early as possible.
Check. I presently have my resume opened and have been altering and saving many different versions depending on which type of job I’ll be applying for. I have subscribed to e-mail lists that send out job openings. I have been looking at open positions across the country that sound like the jobs I will be seeking in NYC and am tweaking my resume. I’ve researched all of the awesome organizations that have offices in NYC and compiled a list. I also have some contacts that I’ll get in touch with and plan to start applying for jobs in November.
Okay, back to working on my resume…
