What makes living in New York worth it?<\/a><\/p>\nEverette Green never thought he\u2019d live to see his 60th birthday. Thirty-six years ago, he left a drug rehabilitation center, where he\u2019d stayed for several years after a few months in prison for selling drugs.<\/p>\n
To get his life back on track, Mr. Green chose social work as a career, where he could spend his days helping other New Yorkers who were struggling just like he did. He was able to save enough money to buy a house in Canarsie, Brooklyn, where he raised his two children.<\/p>\n
\u201cSixty years old wasn\u2019t in my vocabulary,\u201d Mr. Green said. \u201cThis is a whole new chapter I\u2019m living right now. Now all I need to do is live, and enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that Mr. Green, 63, is approaching retirement age, he\u2019s asking questions of himself he never imagined he\u2019d get the opportunity to consider.<\/p>\n
How much money does he need to comfortably retire, while still being able to enjoy the city he was born and raised in? He knows it\u2019s more than what he earns now, about $40,000 a year, making $21 an hour. At work, he supports people with developmental disabilities living in a Brooklyn residence run by the social services organization, The New York Foundling.<\/p>\n
He is hoping that politicians will endorse a recent push to raise the hourly pay to $29 for nonprofit employees like him, who work directly with New Yorkers.<\/p>\n
A Well-Maintained Home<\/p>\n
You never know what your children thought about their childhoods until they\u2019re grown up. So when Mr. Green overheard his son telling friends at the Knicks\u2019 victory parade in June that he spent every summer swimming in the pool in his backyard, Mr. Green felt a jolt of pride.<\/p>\n
Mr. Green grew up in public housing on Staten Island with three sisters and a single mother, and \u201cdidn\u2019t have much\u201d as a child, he said. \u201cI made sure my kids had more than what I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
That has required decades of hard work. Mr. Green bought the house for about $235,000 more than 30 years ago, and it\u2019s now worth more than $1 million, he said.<\/p>\n
He has worked diligently to maintain the home, so that he could share it with his family. He has never had to have a tenant to bring in extra money, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Green says he hates paying bills, but makes sure he is never late on them.<\/p>\n
He finished paying off his mortgage just last year, after about three decades of monthly payments of $1,400.<\/p>\n
His property taxes and insurance cost about $10,000 a year combined, so he makes sure to set aside that money at the beginning of the year. He spends about $200 a month on electricity in the summer, when his ConEd bills are highest, and as much as $800 for gas in the winter.<\/p>\n
He pays someone about $600 to keep his lawn trimmed in summer and fall, but he mostly insists on shoveling his own driveway after snowstorms, despite his family\u2019s protests.<\/p>\n
Mr. Green shoveled snow for extra cash when he was a child, and said he refused to pay someone else $100 to deprive him of a good workout. He puts on his headphones and dances his way through the task. He dances so enthusiastically, he said, that he often draws the attention of his neighbors, who come to their windows to watch.<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s why I have my work ethic\u2019<\/p>\n
Much of Mr. Green\u2019s work helping adults with disabilities revolves around helping them accomplish daily tasks, as well as helping them set longer-term goals, especially around money. He has plenty of wisdom to impart as a formerly incarcerated New Yorker who grew up poor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I learned, I taught them,\u201d he said. \u201cI told them my life story, I told them I was homeless, I was on drugs, I was in jail. That\u2019s why I have my work ethic.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Mr. Green commuted from Brooklyn to the Bronx for work, taking a bus, then a subway, then another bus. He is proud that his own children have also become hard workers, his son commutes from Pennsylvania to Queens for his job as an engineer for the Fire Department.<\/p>\n
He has tried to instill his love for sales and comparison shopping with his clients and his children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s not on sale, I\u2019m not getting it,\u201d Mr. Green said. Last month, he bought a carton of milk at BJ\u2019s for $3.09, he said, and when he went back recently, it was $4.49. So he started searching for a better price somewhere else.<\/p>\n
Being a committed coupon cutter has allowed him to save money to splurge. He\u2019s already saving up for his daughter\u2019s birthday dinner in September, when he\u2019ll treat the whole family to a meal at a seafood restaurant on Long Island or in Brooklyn, which he expects will cost $700 to $1,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bill is no problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Summer Is Charcoal Time<\/p>\n
Summer is Mr. Green\u2019s season. The way he knows it\u2019s really summer in the city is when he starts buying tickets to outdoor concerts with his son.<\/p>\n
His philosophy is to buy relatively cheap tickets to expensive concerts \u2014 \u201cjust get me into the building,\u201d he says. He recently spent $200 on tickets for a Bruno Mars concert in August.<\/p>\n
This is also the time of year when Mr. Green can partake in his favorite pastime: grilling. He stocked up with 80 pounds of charcoal at the beginning of the summer, taking advantage of the Home Depot Memorial Day sale. He will load up on charcoal again for next summer at the Labor Day sale.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s known in his neighborhood for his jerk chicken and hamburgers, and for his refusal to ever cook turkey or any other lean meats. He used to grill for free at his son\u2019s football games at Canarsie High School, and these days friends occasionally hire him to cook for $200 a day at basketball tournaments they organize in the neighborhood, or for big parties in their backyards. When he works over the weekend and helps out at a party on the same day, he\u2019ll be up before 5 a.m., marinating meat for his neighbors to grill.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery now and then I come out of retirement,\u201d he said, to cook for a big occasion, like his sister\u2019s upcoming birthday party in Delaware.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s already looking forward to next summer, when he\u2019s hoping to get the pool in shape again, years after his own children grew up and moved out, for his 5-year-old granddaughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a grandbaby,\u201d he said, \u201cand that\u2019s my world.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.<\/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":306342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61391,174,49713,9,11,10,56,1577],"class_list":["post-306341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-canarsie-brooklyn","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-cost-of-living-and-affordability","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ny","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306341","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=306341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}