This heartbreaking human interest story details the lives of several young New Yorkers who are struggling to make ends meet. The article profiles the various strategies these youngsters are forced to employ to stretch their inadequate wages: dining on franks and beans, shopping at Salvation Army, and even (gasp!) going brunette to save money at the salon. The article is accompanied by sad-looking pictures of its subjects holding the franks and beans they're forced to eat and posing in their walk-in-closet sized apartments.
Given the tragic, slightly Upton Sinclair-ish tone of the article, you'd think these kids were working at McDonalds, or at least Americorps. But wait! Laura Werkheiser, who stopped dying her hair, is...a publicist. Noah Driscoll, of franks and beans, is a project manager at a marketing firm. And the dude who shops at Salvation Army and subsists on street meat is a communications strategist who makes $60,000 a year!
In case anyone is wondering, the median household income in New York in 2006 was $40,000. That includes couples and families with children, making the actual average income per adult somewhat lower.
If a single person with no children and (in most cases) relatively little debt from school can't survive in New York on a salary in the $40-$60K range, something must be terribly wrong.
Oh, wait.
"Adam Leibsohn [the communications strategist] pays $1,650 a month for his own apartment in the East Village.""Cassaundra Reed...lives in the West Village with three roommates, and pays $925 for a narrow room where the only viable sleeping arrangement is a twin-sized loft bed.""Ms. Werkheiser [the poverty brunette]...lives, with two roommates, in a $3,450-a-month three-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side."
Clearly these young men and women have succumbed to New York real estate insanity, laboring under the delusion that if you don't live in Manhattan below 14th Street, you might as well not exist. But they are also partially the cause of this insanity. Rents in these neighborhoods, which are already obscene, will keep going up as long as there are fresh crops of idiots like these who are willing to pay them.
I do wish someone (preferably a working-class single mother) could walk up to these people, smack them on the head and say, "Hey, idiot! You have it better than more than half of New York, so stop complaining and make a freakin' budget!"
The problem for these people is not that they are poor. The problem is that they've obviously never had to think twice about money before now. If they had, they would realize that paying 50%--or more--of your monthly income in rent is not sustainable. Or they would realize that if you have to do crazy shit like selling your eggs, you may need to rethink your lifestyle. But clearly the people in this article live in a different world than me. Among the items they lament having to forgo: Dior mascara, trips to Peter Luger Steakhouse, mani-pedis, and iPods (hand-me-down CD player! the shaaaaaame!). The article also contains a lengthy section on the various strategies these folks employ to get drunk, from sneaking flasks of vodka into expensive bars, to not eating dinner so your watermelon martini will pack more punch, to (horrors!) flirting.
Now, I do realize that in many lines of work, one is expected to be well-dressed and well-groomed. Socializing is often expected to get ahead in your chosen career. And if you're young, straight, and single, you may consider a certain level of bar-hopping and personal grooming mandatory. But apparently no one told these kids that getting soused weekly is NOT mandatory. Nor is $25 lip gloss or a designer handbag.
You may note, dear reader, that I keep referring to them as kids, although everyone interviewed in the article is approximately the same age as me (between 24 and 27). I guess people just seem much younger when they clearly have very little idea how to survive as adults.
My first job in New York after graduation had a starting salary of $24,985. After taxes, that was a take-home pay of about $1,400 a month. With that, I paid my rent ($467); I paid for 1/3rd of the utilities in the apartment I shared with two roommates, my cell phone, a monthly MetroCard, food (and, I must admit, copious amounts of alcohol), and the minimum payment on my students loans ($82 with a 30-year consolidation repayment term). I paid $50 a month dues to a political organization I belonged to. I also paid about $200 a month on three or four credit cards, which was the minimum payment for the $11,000 in credit card debt I was in. I went out several times a week, although I rarely paid more than $6 for a drink. And I lived in Manhattan, although the young folks in this article probably don't even know there is a 149th Street.
I'm not trying to glorify anything here. It was stressful. Our apartment was a New York horror story, complete with rats and a Biblical flood of raw sewage one Labor Day weekend. I ate more Wendy's, Taco Bell and Hot Pockets than any person should reasonably eat. I hated my job. I worried constantly about money. And my worries were justified, because $25,000 a year is not a living wage in New York City, not even for a single person.
I guess the point of all that was that now, four years later, when I am earning a salary in the same range as the people in this article, I appreciate it a lot more, and I know how to use it. I've never paid more than $600 a month in rent. If a shirt costs more than $20 or a pair of pants costs more than $40, I probably won't buy it, because I really don't think anyone should be paying more than that for a piece of cloth. I do spend money on things that I like and are important to me--going out with friends, discovering tasty vegan restaurants, theater, classes, and books. I paid off that $11,000 in credit card debt and was able to save around $18,000 for grad school.
I sure hope that I never lose my poverty-induced price awareness. It makes me feel miles more prepared to survive in this unforgiving city than the poor schmucks in this article. And to the $60,000-a-year-earning dude who shops at Salvation Army: cut it out. There are actual poor people who need that shit. At least step it up to Beacon's Closet.
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