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Cynthetiq · 05-26-2008, 07:35 PM

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View: Starting Salaries but New York Tastes
Source: NYTimes
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Starting Salaries but New York Tastes
May 25, 2008
Starting Salaries but New York Tastes
By CARA BUCKLEY
Laura Werkheiser knew she would have to make many sacrifices to live in Manhattan. Foremost among them was shopping for clothes.

Anticipating, rightly, that her Manhattan digs would be cramped and her budget stretched, Ms. Werkheiser, 26, shipped 18 boxes of her clothes to her parents’ house in Omaha before moving here from San Francisco. The boxes sit in her parents’ basement. When she feels she needs to freshen up her look, Ms. Werkheiser has her mother ship her several outfits from what she dryly refers to as the “Nebraska boutique.”

“If I shop,” said Ms. Werkheiser, “I can’t have a social life and I can’t eat.”

Having one’s mother mail rotating boxes of old clothing is just one of the myriad ways that young newcomers to the city of a certain income — that is, those who are neither investment bankers nor being floated by their parents — manage to live the kind of lives they want in New York. Every year around this time, tens of thousands of postcollegiate people in their 20s flood the city despite its soaring expenses. They are high on ambition, meager of budget and endlessly creative when it comes to making ends meet.

Some tactics have long been chronicled: sharing tiny apartments with strangers. Sharing those apartments with eight strangers. Eating cheap lunches and skipping dinners — not just to save money, but so that drinks pack more of a punch and fewer need be consumed.

But there are smaller measures, no less ingenious, that round out the lifestyle. These young people sneak flasks of vodka into bars, flirt their way into clubs, sublet their walk-in closets, finagle their way into open-bar parties and put off haircuts until they visit their hometowns, even if those hometowns are thousands of miles away.

Ms. Werkheiser’s salary as a publicist, while well south of six figures, might be considered enviable elsewhere in the country, but in New York she has had to reprioritize. So the remote wardrobe was not her only money-saving tactic. She also gave up being a blonde.

Before moving from San Francisco last fall, Ms. Werkheiser realized that paying salon prices for platinum tresses in New York would require cutting back on needs like food and shelter. “So I went natural,” said Ms. Werkheiser. “I dyed it dark, a New York brunette.”

She and her friends have also located just about every B.Y.O.B. brunch spot in the city, plotting them out on Google maps. The cost-consciousness, Ms. Werkheiser says, is worth it: She adores New York and lives, with two roommates, in a $3,450-a-month three-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side, verily the center of the universe for Manhattan’s young and hip.

Drinking and eating carry their own complications. Especially if you are, say, Noah Driscoll, a 25-year-old project manager for a Chelsea marketing company whose salary is comparable to what a rookie teacher might make.

“For a little while I only ate grapefruits for my lunch,” said Mr. Driscoll, who pays $400 a month on his college loans, “because they have a lot of nutrients and they got me through the day.”

Mr. Driscoll has since started packing two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch. Dinner might be two baked potatoes. On a recent Monday, it was franks and beans. On a good night, he might spend up to $6.

“To live like a human being on the salary that I make is very difficult in this city,” he said. “You’ve got to forget about brands, you’ve got to forget about, you know, what your mom made you growing up, and take what’s out there.”

Mr. Driscoll’s rent is reasonable: $725 for a room in a converted loft space that he shares with five friends in Gowanus, Brooklyn, near Park Slope. Most of his friends, however, earn far more than he does, and Mr. Driscoll is guilty of that quintessential New York sin: coveting thy neighbor’s salary. One recent night, his roommates went to Peter Luger Steak House. Mr. Driscoll waved them goodbye and stayed home.

Peter Naddeo, a 24-year-old musician, earns $15 an hour working as a temp in Web development in Chelsea, and has perfected the tricky art of stretching lunch into dinner. He moved to New York from Pennsylvania last fall and can barely afford his $80 monthly college loan payments. He listens to a hand-me-down CD player because iPods are out of reach. He pays $600 for a 10-by-10-foot room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that has one saving grace: a window that faces east. For lunch, Mr. Naddeo usually orders a $3.50 plate of yellow rice and beans from a Latin American diner on Eighth Avenue, and eats late to ward off hunger pangs. Sometimes he hits up a bar in his neighborhood where a $6 pint comes with a small pizza. Or he relies on friends to feed him.

“My friends aren’t rich,” said Mr. Naddeo, who is slight. “They’re just nice.”

“Pre-gaming,” youth speak for drinking at home before going out, is another cash saver. So is ferreting out bars that offer free drinks at certain times, information that is handily compiled at myopenbar.com. Another trick is to become a semiprofessional “plus one,” and tag along with connected friends to events and shows. Strapped partygoers the city over often sell the contents of goody bags online. The truly bold scrimper, armed with designer swag, might “return” items to a department store for credit.

Cassaundra Reed, a 26-year-old concierge, lives in the West Village with three roommates, and pays $925 for a narrow room where the only viable sleeping arrangement is a twin-size loft bed. Though she lives paycheck to paycheck, her job comes with heavy perks: She often eats at top restaurants, drinks at trendy clubs and sees Broadway shows, all free of charge.

“A lot of the things that I do in New York, I wouldn’t be able to do, because I would have to pay for a lot of it,” she said. “A lot of the restaurants that I’ve been to, I wouldn’t be able to go to at all, because I wouldn’t be able to afford it.”

Allison Mooney, 27, whose first job in the city was in publishing, often skipped dinner before going out, and instead took along mixed salted nuts in her purse. When things got really tight, she occasionally sneaked a flask filled with vodka into bars. Other times, she reluctantly resorted to flirting.

“I find in other cities guys are more apt to buy you drinks and expect nothing from it,” Ms. Mooney said.

“Here, if they do buy you a drink, which is rare, you have to suffer through flirtations. It’s true,” she said, adding, “It’s really cheesy.”

Now, though, Ms. Mooney is a publicist, and this month received a 40 percent raise. She is also about to move in with her boyfriend, so the hard-core scrimping and forced flirting are behind her, at least for now.

Still, some young men insist that women have it easier. The men say strangers never buy them drinks. Mr. Driscoll recently took a date out for margaritas, to a place that was supposedly cheap. They had four drinks and the bill came to $45.

“I looked at the charge four times and immediately regretted it,” he said.

Grooming presents its own challenges. Mr. Naddeo cuts his own hair with an electric razor and wears hand-me-down clothes from friends. Mr. Driscoll has curly hair that he says requires specific products and “some taming.”

“I wouldn’t go just anywhere” for a cut, Mr. Driscoll said. “Not to sound metro, but I like my hair.”

For women, though, grooming can break the bank. Like Ms. Werkheiser, Ms. Reed gave up being blond. But Ms. Werkheiser went further, renouncing manicures and pedicures, and trolling Craigslist for hair stylists offering cheapish cuts. Andrea Duchon, a 22-year-old freelance publicist, landed a spot as a hair model for Bumble and Bumble, where she gets free cuts. Victoria Varney, 23, a brand manager for the Soundgirl clothing line, schedules haircuts into her trips home to Ohio. She also relies heavily on handouts from friends who work with other designers, and on sample sales.

“That is how you shop,” Ms. Varney said. “There is no need to pay full price here.”

Some indulgences are less negotiable than others. So Ms. Varney, formerly a self-professed “huge Sephora shopper,” allows herself Dior mascara and high-shine lip gloss, which cost about $25 each. “Everything else, I’ve regressed and buy at Duane Reade,” she said.

Ms. Werkheiser refuses to give up her Bumble and Bumble shampoo. “I don’t do drugstores,” she said. “I will eat Pringles for dinner instead.”

Adam Leibsohn, a 27-year-old communications strategist who makes roughly $60,000 a year and pays $1,650 a month for his own apartment in the East Village, says the trick to squeaking by in the city is to swear off impulse purchases and credit cards. He cooks for himself, pirates wireless Internet access and buys electronics from Craigslist or eBay. If he wants new clothes, he unloads old ones first at the Salvation Army, keeping the receipt for his taxes. “It’s kind of a spartan lifestyle,” he says. “I eat a lot of street meat for lunch.”

Sarah Avrin, a 23-year-old music publicist, said she was struck recently by the sacrifices that some people make to sustain their New York lifestyle when one of her friends endured the long, painful process of selling her eggs.

Many young people wonder just how long they will be willing or able to pay their dues to stay in New York until that new job, that big break or that coveted raise comes along. Mr. Driscoll tries to constantly remind himself that he “won’t be eating scraps” forever.

Mr. Naddeo, who has his own band, Archipelago, and plays in several others, said, “The whole plan is that something good will come along eventually, like something will just come my way.” One of the bands recently earned $180 at a gig — not a bad haul, except that 13 musicians were playing.

“I mean, New York’s just the place for that type of thing to happen. And I’m hoping it will soon,” Mr. Naddeo said. “I’ll be rich and famous and this is going to be hilarious.”

NYC is a hard town that's for sure. I believe that's why the Sinatra line, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere". I'm not trying to make this a NY-centric thread, because really, "making it" is an important thing. The ability to stand on your own two feet with no one but you being responsible for yourself. Yes, we have relatives and friends to assist and bail out of situations, but all in all, the idea of making it... of making something more than what you started with...

I read this article and thought to myself, it is part of the carpe diem that is slightly missing from my current self. I'm comfortable with our salaries and our lifestyles. But that won't be satisfactory in 10 years and if don't make the adjustments now I'm not going to hit those goals.

And with all the trips that Skogafoss and I have been taking this year, so far they have been plenty, Chicago twice, LA, Las Vegas, Tampa, Puerto Rico and we just booked yet another trip to Las Vegas. We've started eating PB&J and grilled cheese sandwiches. While it's not the college ramen staple, it is still something out of ordinary for us to scrimp in order to save. We don't have to do it, but then something else in the budget would have to give.

The last time we did this kind of scrimping we did it 100% so that we could buy where we live right now. We did it for 2 years... this time it will be a little shorter, but we have some additional goals in mind. This time it's for a few months, just so that we can take some additional travel in for larger goals.