How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Everette Green never thought he’d live to see his 60th birthday. Thirty-six years ago, he left a drug rehabilitation center, where he’d stayed for several years after a few months in prison for selling drugs.
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.
“Sixty years old wasn’t in my vocabulary,” Mr. Green said. “This is a whole new chapter I’m living right now. Now all I need to do is live, and enjoy it.”
Now that Mr. Green, 63, is approaching retirement age, he’s asking questions of himself he never imagined he’d get the opportunity to consider.
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’s 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.
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.
A Well-Maintained Home
You never know what your children thought about their childhoods until they’re grown up. So when Mr. Green overheard his son telling friends at the Knicks’ victory parade in June that he spent every summer swimming in the pool in his backyard, Mr. Green felt a jolt of pride.
Mr. Green grew up in public housing on Staten Island with three sisters and a single mother, and “didn’t have much” as a child, he said. “I made sure my kids had more than what I had.”
That has required decades of hard work. Mr. Green bought the house for about $235,000 more than 30 years ago, and it’s now worth more than $1 million, he said.
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.
Mr. Green says he hates paying bills, but makes sure he is never late on them.
He finished paying off his mortgage just last year, after about three decades of monthly payments of $1,400.
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.
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’s protests.
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.
‘That’s why I have my work ethic’
Much of Mr. Green’s 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.
“What I learned, I taught them,” he said. “I told them my life story, I told them I was homeless, I was on drugs, I was in jail. That’s why I have my work ethic.”
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.
He has tried to instill his love for sales and comparison shopping with his clients and his children.
“If it’s not on sale, I’m not getting it,” Mr. Green said. Last month, he bought a carton of milk at BJ’s 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.
Being a committed coupon cutter has allowed him to save money to splurge. He’s already saving up for his daughter’s birthday dinner in September, when he’ll 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.
“The bill is no problem,” he said.
The Summer Is Charcoal Time
Summer is Mr. Green’s season. The way he knows it’s really summer in the city is when he starts buying tickets to outdoor concerts with his son.
His philosophy is to buy relatively cheap tickets to expensive concerts — “just get me into the building,” he says. He recently spent $200 on tickets for a Bruno Mars concert in August.
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.
He’s 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’s 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’ll be up before 5 a.m., marinating meat for his neighbors to grill.
“Every now and then I come out of retirement,” he said, to cook for a big occasion, like his sister’s upcoming birthday party in Delaware.
And he’s already looking forward to next summer, when he’s hoping to get the pool in shape again, years after his own children grew up and moved out, for his 5-year-old granddaughter.
“I have a grandbaby,” he said, “and that’s my world.”
