Why are all the comments here fixating on financial minutia?  Zed puts it as well as it can be put - NYC is obsessed with Finance (and Design and Publishing to a lesser degree) and really expensive, and these combine to create a harsh environment thats prone to failure.  Its tough to get people excited about money when the next guy is talking about orders of magnitude more.  But there's a huge variety of activity overall, and that makes life fun.  None of this is surprising if you're familiar with the area.