New York is a wonderfully, exciting city to live in, but sometimes, it can be a bit too expensive to hold your own in the Big Apple. If you are planning to move to NYC, you need to have a guide that will make your stay happy and worth it.
This article is going to assist you in the struggle of finding a footing in the city of New York.
Here are five main financial reasons that could cause you to lose your ground, when you are living in New York. Make sure you address them all before they try to bring you down in NYC—the city that never sleeps.
Many people have a belief that if they are earning a solid salary, they will be able to survive in New York. They can be proven wrong in a jiffy—this is one city that can easily put a dent in your wallet and leave you reeling within just a few months of your arrival. In order to be able to succeed financially, you need to make a reasonable home budget that lists all of your expenses in detail.
This budget must include details such as your rent/credit payments, as well as your grocery and emergency contributions. Most importantly, you also need to ensure that you are sensibly saving your money for the rainy days.
According to experts, as a rule of thumb, you should not be spending your entire salary in meeting your monthly or everyday expenditures. Therefore, you must make a habit to include tax reductions, and other utility payments. Moreover, you need to ensure that you are maintaining your budget calculations at much less cost than your actual income.
You may be living like a king in places such as Phoenix and Dallas, but you will barely afford a one room apartment at the same cost in New York. If you like to stay at a lavish residence in the Big Apple, you will quickly run out of all your money.
Similarly, you will have to change some other lifestyle habits as well. If you're unable to make compromises on the quality of your life, it means that you cannot survive in NYC. Furthermore, if you regularly use services such as Uber instead of taking the NY buses or the underground—you will definitely end up spending more than you earn at the end of the month.
The number of times you dine out will also have to be reduced substantially. Some of these compromises will allow you to survive in a big city like New York, and ensure that you successfully work your way to the top.
You will have to ensure that you already have a financial plan in mind before moving to New York. Otherwise, you will fail to survive here for more than a few months. Never be too encouraged by overnight-success stories of people moving to New York. Such stories will often result in having too many expectations and hence, you will meet failure.
When planning to move to New York, you must have some savings in your pocket already. Unexpected emergencies take no time in knocking at your door. Such situations will eat up a huge chunk from your regular income.
Remember, moving to New York is not the same as moving to any other state in the U.S., so be prepared and do not move until you are sure that you will be able to kick things off in the Big Apple positively. If not, you can always wait until you are financially stable enough to move there.
The main expense that bothers New Yorkers is the heavy rent. The rent of a normal, one-bed apartment is more than three times the average rent in other cities of the United States. Even the smallest apartments cost around $3,000 per month, which means that you have to allocate a significant amount of your income towards paying the rent.
The smart way of living in New York is to leave the notion of living alone to the side, and find a few roommates. If you are not comfortable with that, you can still find a roommate who works on a different time as you. This tactic will ensure that you have a residence, which is utilized in a better manner with your privacy intact and also that the rent is reduced by half.
The last consideration is to ask yourself: Do you want to live in New York just because you want to experience life in the Big Apple? Do you actually have a legit reason to move to New York?
If you have a job, a decent home, friends and family back in your hometown, you can always visit New York and have a lazy, well-pampered stay at a hotel for a few days. For such people, creating a new living setup in NYC , might not be a very good idea. On the whole, if you plan it wisely, living in NYC comfortably is surely possible with a few compromises.