What makes living in New York worth it?<\/a><\/p>\nAsk Lori Perkins what was the biggest bargain she ever scored and her life story comes pouring out. The Advanced Placement classes she took at a public high school, Bronx Science, helped her do four years of N.Y.U. in three. She bought her first apartment with money from a buyout she negotiated with a landlord. Got a break on her wedding from a hotel banquet director who was about to retire and a deal on her divorce for landing her lawyer a book contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery big thing in my life has been a bargain,\u201d Ms. Perkins said last month as she stood in her apartment high above the Hudson River surrounded by the fruits of a lifetime of haggling.<\/p>\n
The Herman Miller Noguchi glass coffee table? An invisibly chipped floor model for $700. To save the $700 delivery fee, she and a friend drove up to Westchester, wrapped it in a blanket and rolled it home \u201clike Lucy and Ethel through the hallway.\u201d The fox fur coat hanging over the chair? $20 new at a vintage shop. \u201cWhen I looked it up, it was a $575 coat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The co-op apartment itself \u2014 three bedrooms on the 18th floor of a building on a hilltop in Riverdale in the Bronx \u2014 was a foreclosure special: $125,000 in 1992.<\/p>\n
It is the apartment of someone who has lived \u2014 who is living \u2014 a full existence. A sign on the bright orange wall in the kitchen says \u201cA clean house is the sign of a wasted life.\u201d Shelves in every room groan beneath the weight of thousands of books.<\/p>\n
Setbacks and Silver Linings<\/p>\n
As a literary agent, Ms. Perkins, 66, has sold some 3,000 titles, including seven best-sellers \u2014 perhaps you\u2019ve read Jenna Jameson\u2019s memoir \u201cHow to Make Love Like a Porn Star.\u201d She runs a publishing house, Riverdale Avenue Books, specializing in L.G.B.T.Q. erotica. She edited the zombie bodice-ripper anthology \u201cHungry for Your Love\u201d and has written or co-written nine books herself, including a pair of paperbacks, \u201cTwo Dukes and a Lady\u201d and \u201cTwo Dukes Are Better Than One,\u201d that birthed a hybrid genre she calls \u201cduke m\u00e9nage.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the last few years, she\u2019s endured some setbacks, but each one has had a silver lining. Burning through her 401(k) \u2014 over $100,000 \u2014 to pay for her late mother\u2019s dementia care let Ms. Perkins qualify for Medicaid so that when she got breast cancer early in the pandemic all her expenses were covered. Her treatment at Mount Sinai led her to teach journaling to breast cancer survivors, which led to a grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts to teach at her local senior center, where she has discovered a whole community.<\/p>\n
The aftereffects of cancer, coupled with a plunge in her publishing house\u2019s overseas sales, which she attributes to Trump-fueled anti-American sentiment, forced her to downshift a couple of gears, take more time to enjoy things and embrace frugality as a lifestyle.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the state of her hustle, 2026: She\u2019s getting $22,000 from Social Security, about $20,000 as an agent, a couple thousand for freelance writing and, hopefully, another couple for running writing workshops. She signs up for focus groups, \u201cusually about being old,\u201d and will squeeze about $1,000 out of that. And she has lined up a 10-day, $3,000 gig as a Board of Elections poll worker. All told, she\u2019s looking at little under $50,000.<\/p>\n
How to Afford the Day-to-Day<\/p>\n
On the spending side, the monthly maintenance on her apartment is $2,000, though she\u2019s looking to downsize and move to a lower floor, which she figures could cut her cost in half. \u201cSomebody can call me and buy my apartment right now.\u201d $750,000!<\/p>\n
The maintenance includes use of the complex\u2019s outdoor pool, but she rents a cabana with an umbrella for $500 a year \u201cbecause I can\u2019t go in the sun, after radiation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Insurance on her aging Volkswagen Beetle is $1,900 a year. Her annual pilgrimage to Maine costs about $1,200. Most of the rest is day-to-day stuff. Groceries are maybe $200 a month. \u201cI go to Stew Leonard\u2019s where they have dollar beers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She allots $250 a month for entertainment, including meals out. She gets the $10 lunch special to go at the local Chinese restaurant and heats it up for dinner. She never misses Restaurant Week.<\/p>\n
She does $5 movie Tuesdays at the Showcase Cinema in Yonkers, $4.50 for Broadway tickets through Club Free Time, an online publication. She re-ups her Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions on Black Friday, when they\u2019re $1.99 or $2.99 a month. She\u2019s going to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden on Saturday and the tickets were $130, \u201cso that\u2019s most of my budget for May, but it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
What about museums? Dollar admission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters for city residents, free Fridays at the Whitney, pay-what-you wish hours at the Guggenheim. \u201cI used to be a member of all of them, and if I ever had more money I would go back to being a member, but right now I\u2019m taking advantage of their generosity,\u201d Ms. Perkins said.<\/p>\n
Her wardrobe budget is minimalist like her fashion. \u201cIf it\u2019s winter, I\u2019m wearing black pants and a black shirt. And if it\u2019s summer, I\u2019m wearing a black dress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even her splurges have been bargains. The cruise she took in Italy, using money she had saved by taking the toll-free Broadway Bridge instead of the Henry Hudson Bridge when she drove to Manhattan, was effectively free after she won $1,000 gambling on board.<\/p>\n
The Middle Class Fantasy<\/p>\n
\u201cI really believe you can do almost anything if you research and plan,\u201d Ms. Perkins said. \u201cIt\u2019s the spontaneity that\u2019s hard. And we as Americans are really spoiled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking back on her journey, Ms. Perkins has reached some conclusions that surprised her.<\/p>\n
\u201cCancer saved my life,\u201d she said. \u201cThe life that I was leading was exhausting because I was trying so hard to keep up with this fantasy of middle-classness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, she said, \u201cI don\u2019t care if I\u2019m wearing last year\u2019s shoes, I don\u2019t need to go out every night to a Michelin-starred restaurant, because I go two times a year, and you know what, when you save up for it, it\u2019s more joyful. Every single thing. Every little joy is a bigger joy. I can\u2019t explain it. I took so much for granted when I had more money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did she mention she\u2019s working on another book?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s called \u2018La Vida Broka: How to Live Richly When You\u2019re Dirt Poor,\u2019\u201d Ms. Perkins said. \u201cJust buy the book, because it\u2019s all going to be in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.<\/p>\n
Show more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[89381,174,49713,9,24,55,54,56,35161],"class_list":["post-227583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-book-trade-and-publishing","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-cost-of-living-and-affordability","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-riverdale-bronx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}