How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It\u2019s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.<\/p>\n
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people \u2014 rich, poor or somewhere in between \u2014 live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?<\/p>\n
Tyson Watts spends every day trying to make enough money to eventually leave New York City.<\/p>\n
He wants to live somewhere where life is easier, and more peaceful. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything left for me here,\u201d he said. So for now, his life revolves around his work.<\/p>\n
Mr. Watts, 28, spends his days traveling across the city, cleaning homes as an employee of Well-Paid Maids, a local service that guarantees its cleaners $27 an hour. He makes about $2,000 a month and picks up as many overtime shifts as he can.<\/p>\n
Mr. Watts lives with his mother in Rockaway Park, Queens, and he gives her about $600 a month to help pay for groceries and utilities in their shared apartment. Since his mother does not work, he is encouraging her to take a job as a cleaner, too.<\/p>\n
A step toward independence, then moving back home<\/p>\n
Mr. Watts knows there is something special about being able to afford your own apartment.<\/p>\n
After he moved to New York City from California as a child, he bounced between apartments and homeless shelters with his mother and brothers, before moving in with his uncle.<\/p>\n
Mr. Watts started working right out of high school, taking home about $1,000 a month from his job at a children\u2019s clothing store, and soon started paying his uncle $700 a month for his share of the rent.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, when Mr. Watts moved out of his uncle\u2019s place and into an apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, he felt like he was taking his first big step toward adulthood.<\/p>\n
But he had to break the lease when his roommate was unable to keep up with his half of the $1,900 rent and ended up back with his mother, who by then had secured her own apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do have an option to live with a family member that will be there for you, to help you save and want to do better with yourself, take advantage of that until you\u2019re really, really good,\u201d Mr. Watts said.<\/p>\n
Everyone needs a side hustle<\/p>\n
In the early days of the Covid pandemic, Mr. Watts took up a new hobby: making Caribbean food in his mother\u2019s kitchen and spending hours in quarantine watching YouTube cooking videos.<\/p>\n