Monday, July 14, 2003
Cost of Living in NYC
The frong page of the real estate section of the Times also had a piece on the cost of housing in NYC and how rediculous it is. The average home costs $300,000 in Bergen County. But that figure isn't quite accuate. That number is an average, so it includes areas of Englewood that are very poor and the schools are taught by the semi-literate. In towns with decent school like Tenafly or Ridgewood, there are no houses that cost $300,000. The sheds start at $300,000.
In the real estate section of AOL, they have a handy-dandy mortgage calculator. You plug in how much money you make and your life savings for a deposit, and the calculator tells you how much you can afford. We can't live in a shed in Bergen County.
And we are doing okay now that Steve is gainfully employed. Yes, we have enormous student loans and we have no savings because we squandered our twenties in graduate school, but we're doing better than most. The average salary for a family in our country is $40,000.
Still, even with Steve's healthy salary, we're not going to find a decent home in a town with a good school in Bergen County. We have several other choices: 1. Move to a town with bad schools, like Mount Vernon, and send the kids to Catholic school. 2. Move to a working-class town with mediocre schools, like Dumont, and move after a few years. 3. Move to Rockland or Orange county and never see Steve. 4. Continue living in the walk-up and permanently destroy all my back muscles.
The frong page of the real estate section of the Times also had a piece on the cost of housing in NYC and how rediculous it is. The average home costs $300,000 in Bergen County. But that figure isn't quite accuate. That number is an average, so it includes areas of Englewood that are very poor and the schools are taught by the semi-literate. In towns with decent school like Tenafly or Ridgewood, there are no houses that cost $300,000. The sheds start at $300,000.
In the real estate section of AOL, they have a handy-dandy mortgage calculator. You plug in how much money you make and your life savings for a deposit, and the calculator tells you how much you can afford. We can't live in a shed in Bergen County.
And we are doing okay now that Steve is gainfully employed. Yes, we have enormous student loans and we have no savings because we squandered our twenties in graduate school, but we're doing better than most. The average salary for a family in our country is $40,000.
Still, even with Steve's healthy salary, we're not going to find a decent home in a town with a good school in Bergen County. We have several other choices: 1. Move to a town with bad schools, like Mount Vernon, and send the kids to Catholic school. 2. Move to a working-class town with mediocre schools, like Dumont, and move after a few years. 3. Move to Rockland or Orange county and never see Steve. 4. Continue living in the walk-up and permanently destroy all my back muscles.
