@blossom, I agree. We all find our way, and it’s not always easy… Nor is it so black and white as we find our way. When you know you can’t afford dinner but suggest joining friends for drinks thinkingyouve found a slick solution, it’ll still cost you. Some friendships felt (and were) important for professional reasons, even if costly. Over time, folks know not to invite you but that can feel hurtful as well. And honestly, when life has conspired to throw some of us back together again, we’ve lamented what we didn’t share.
We’ve compared notes before and you did this better than I did. But trust me, it wasn’t for lack of trying. My cheap neighborhood resulted in my getting mugged twice in my first year out of college. Running into a coworker at a fancy event and having him comment unkindly on my vintage dress stung. Constructing a low COL life in an expensive city isn’t always as simple or direct as many make it out to be.
Sending you a hug from our early 20’s… I was never mugged, but my apartment was robbed-- they caught the guy-- and I had to testify in front of a Grand Jury which was more traumatic than being robbed.
I’m not romanticizing being broke. But if anyone thinks that keeping up the with Jones’ is something that happens in your 20’s but goes away once you are earning a great salary and are a real grown up, folks like us know- it never ends unless you decide not to keep up. And if young people who can’t afford their rent (the title of this thread) think that once they CAN afford rent in a nice, safe place the world is their oyster… ha ha ha.
A co-worker walked into my apartment (I had already moved to a cheap city in the midwest for my job) and said “I can’t believe you don’t have A/C”. My former apartment in NY was so… minimal (aka cruddy) that it hadn’t occurred to me that central air was an amenity worth discussing while apartment hunting! I was in a safe, inexpensive apartment in a nice neighborhood with free parking- who the heck would ask for MORE?
I remember my first apartment with in-unit laundry. I thought I had died and gone to heaven and at the same time, also remember thinking very clearly, “Oh no, it is going to be so hard going back to no in-unit laundry if I need to in the future”.
Hedonic treadmill is real. And I totally agree that the only way to win is (for the most part) not to play.
Edited to Add: I got a water dispenser for the house almost 10 years ago. I now have hot water always available at the touch of a button, and I still to this day think it is the height of luxury. Choosing not to get on the “Jones’ treadmill” at a fairly young adult age really did help put luxury in perspective
My kid got an affordable shared place in Brooklyn, a section not yet gentrified. I think there is some correlation between affordability and crime rates.
Laundry is tough when it’s not in the building, on foot, if the load is heavy.
Unless Brooklyn has changed a lot most laundromats have drop off service where you get charged by the pound. Back in the day it was pretty affordable - I often did it - especially for sheets and towels and anything not “delicate” - even when I was flat broke. I’m sure in nicer neighborhoods they will also pick up and drop off - I seem to remember that being an option even then though I never used it.
My kid had to pick. Laundry or off street parking. Picked parking and sent out her laundry. She didn’t mind it. It did get old, she lived there for 4 years. She also had boyfriends with laundry so did hers there also.
This was a smaller east coast city. She could have spent more but decided it was better to save.
I know adults who still seems to think they need to do it all. Big house, expensive cars, nice vacations. They don’t mind living on the edge and hate to make choices. It comes back to bite them every so often but then the creep comes back. They start to do the same stupid things over and over again. Some people don’t make choices. They keep making dumb choices over and over again. And no they can’t afford all that they do. Because it catches up to them and the fraud is discovered.
I’m way too cautious and thankfully so are my kids.
My mid-20s kids each pay about $1700 per month. One lives in a basement one bedroom apartment in a nice area of an expensive city. The other recently bought a house that needs a lot of work in a moderate city in the northeast. Both are very careful with their $.
Normally rent has an inverse relationship with house purchases during lower rates, because mortgages are often lower than rent. But the latest housing shortage forced people into rentals anyway, causing rent to artificially skyrocket. Now that mortgage rates are higher, real demand for rent has finally set in, forcing high rent rates to go up even more. These are unsustainable prices, and they’ll come crashing down soon enough. I’m thinking there’s been some market manipulation on the side of real estate investors snatching up homes and keeping them off the market to drive up house and rental prices.
I lived for many years in a building with washer dryer down a very long hallway. One coin operated washer and dryer for our 8 units that we all shared. It worked pretty well and folks were considerate. I rarely had anyone with laundry in the machine when I wanted to use the machines.
I have not tried to keep up with Jones nor sibs and am happy as we are.
They are already falling, it’s just not impinged on public consciousness yet, because other prices are still rising:
“Apartment rents fell in September in more than half (80) of the nation’s 150 largest metros.”
Real Estate prices don’t rise and fall in the same way because of high transactional/frictional costs. When prices are rising, buyers ignore such costs because the rising values can offset those costs. When they’re falling, such costs loom large and even prohibitive, putting a stop to unnecessary transactions. The effect is even more profound in rentals since rent prices lag further, due to long-term leases.
I thought of this thread at dinner with older S last night. He said he was talking to a new teammate who recently moved to NYC. S asked how he liked it. The co-worker said he was so happy how much space and how cheap it was. He came from Hong Kong where we was paying $3000/month for a 40 SF room in an apartment. There was only room for a bed. Their clothes were in a suitcase in the living room.
I found out my apartment was $1725 fifteen months ago, and I now pay $2200. Does anyone think my landlord will decrease my rent? Nope. The only way rent decreases will happen for anyone is if they move. Also, timing is everything. Anyone renting for Sept. 1 tends to pay more. Nov. through Feb. are good times to rent for prices, free months etc.
This is very true for the Boston area because that’s when all the gazzillion college students start their leases…but is it true everywhere? Not that I know of.
Our DS rented at a very reasonable price for his last apartment in Phoenix. It was about $750 a month…he was a good and long termish tenant, and his landlord was terrific to him.
BUT the landlord sold the small complex (8 units). The new company raised the rent to $950 the first year (2020…yes, during COVID), and then in Oct 2021, it was increasing to $1350. They were renovating all the units….but DS would have been living in a unit that was not renovated…and they were not differentiating !
So…he started to look for townhouses. Found one with way more space, convenient location, covered assigned parking, and $900 a month including the HOA. He could have gotten a mortgage on his own, but we helped out to avoid PMI.