Living in New York on $30,000 with Sean
Living in New York on $30,000 with Sean
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Sean Ho, Mid-Level Full Stack Developer. He is going to talk about how he survived in New York for three to four years on a $30k annual salary.
Podcast Notes
Prior to working at The Financial Gym, Sean worked for the New York City Department of Education as a teaching assistant. He worked with special needs children from kindergarten to eighth grade. He was also a starving musician.
At most, he made $31,000 a year, and if he hustled extra, he could make an extra $10,000.
At the time, he was living on his own, but the place he lived at was a bedroom in someone’s house, so rent was only $300 a month. He split that cost with his girlfriend at the time.
As he continued working and hustling, he was able to save quite a bit of money until he decided to shift careers. One of the things that helped him was to take $500 per paycheck and drop it in a high yield savings account.
Sean liked to party, eat, and drink and he still likes to do those things.
One of the things that helped him was that he grew up in Flushing, Queens. It is known to be the “real” Chinatown of New York and the food is insanely cheap. You can get four or seven potstickers for $1.00. Grocery shopping in a Chinese-owned supermarket will save you a ton of cash and it adds up. Over time, Sean got accustomed to living like that and he could still go out. He tried to go out during happy hour or drink less.
During that time, he was able to travel to places like Thailand and some places domestically, like California and Nashville.
There are ways to live a fulfilling life in New York City, even though you aren’t making that much money. There are ways to have a lot of fun and save money.
The money Sean saved during these years went toward travel and toward his education to become a developer, which brought him to The Financial Gym. It taught him to save money first and automatically every paycheck.
It can be a struggle and there are sacrifices he has to make. As he gets older, he wants to drink a little less and eat a little less, for his health.
It is all about determining what is important to your health. It doesn’t matter how much you are making, there is a way to survive. It can be rough.
Sean would give himself $1.00 for lunch, which he would use for a pack of almonds. He remembers a week where he had a bag of spinach, a pack of almond, and a stick of butter and he ate it together. It was nice to go to his parent’s house to have a home cooked meal.
Sean learned to cut down on expenses that were frivolous.
Saving money wasn’t always a priority for him. He saved money to prove a point. His girlfriend at the time looked at him one day and said, “You don’t even have a savings account”, so he saved money to prove he could. Sean started seeking higher paying jobs at the same time for the same reason, but he is happy how it all turned out.
Sean found that when he left New York City and didn’t go to another big city, he didn’t spend that much money. When he was in Thailand, not including airfare and lodging, he spent about $500, because the dollar stretches further over there. He also found that hotels in Nashville are cheap.
Being a starving musician, he wasn’t able to expense any travel and he bought used gear.
Sean loves eating fast food and there is a lot of Crown Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Little Caesars where he lived in Wood Haven.
In Flushing, there are a lot of places to eat cheap. He doesn’t know the names of them, though, because they are all in Chinese. The biggest expense in Flushing is bubble tea, because it is a trend right now. In Flushing, food is good and cheap.
Sean’s choices when going back to school were to become a developer or to get his master’s degree in education. He had a friend who went to a coding bootcamp and it inspired Sean. He didn’t want to be an educator the rest of his life. Sean studied really hard and moved back to his parent’s house for a year to save more money. This ultimately increased his salary.
If you are struggling financially and are just getting by, remember that you can do it. If you want to shift your career and not pause your life, it is a risk, but there are a lot of other jobs out there. The Financial Gym can help!