A Week In New York On A $103,000 Salary

Occupation: Researcher
Industry: Public health
Age: 33
Location: New York
Salary: $103,000
Assets: Roth IRA: $57,637; 403(b): $30,778; national retirement savings account from my home country: $28,532; savings account: $6,937; house: $700,000 (my equity on the house: $60,000, but exact number currently being negotiated).
Debt: Mortgage on house: $580,000.
Paycheck Amount (2x/month): $2,544, $2,184 (after monthly deduction for health insurance).
Pronouns: She/her

Monthly Expenses

Housing Costs: $2,100 (rent).
Loan Payments: $3,000 (but my ex is covering this).
Wifi: $40
Phone Bill: $83
Pet Insurance: $32
Con Edison: $80
Streaming: $8.99
Therapy: $200 (weekly)

Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Yes, absolutely. My parents were both the first in their families to attend college, and when I was growing up it was a given that I would obtain a degree as well. My parents paid for me and my siblings to go to college. I moved to the United States eight years ago to start a PhD.

Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent(s)/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
Yes — I learned about the importance of saving and spending less than I earned.

What was your first job and why did you get it?
Tutoring, the summer after I left high school. I got it because all my friends were getting jobs and I wanted my own money to spend as I saw fit.

Did you worry about money growing up?
No — my parents, both working-class kids who did good, did a great job of providing for me and my siblings, and there was always money for extracurriculars, holidays abroad, and eating out. I was very sheltered as a child.

Do you worry about money now?
Lol, yes. Separating from my spouse, which I did last year, was huge — among other things, it’s meant becoming a renter again. I technically still co-own the house with my ex, but I’m looking to get bought out as soon as possible. In any case, I now worry about my landlord raising the rent, inflation screwing us over the way it did in 2022, and health emergencies 100 percent more than I used to.

At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
After college, I lived with my parents for two years before moving to the United States to begin a PhD. So I would say age 24 is when I became fully financially responsible. If I really lost everything, I suppose I could move back to my home country and live with my parents.

Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
In addition to paying for college, my parents gave me a sum of $2,000 when I moved to the United States so that I could set myself up there.

8 a.m. — I wake up next to my girlfriend, M., who came over late last night after having dinner with a friend. I make us crepes for breakfast — toppings are lemon and sugar or jam. I walk my dog and feed her kibble.

9.30 a.m. — Time to start work. I respond to a couple of emails and Slacks, and complete a couple of minor tasks. M. sits on the couch doing her own work and petting the dog.

12.30 p.m. — I make us lunch, which consists of egg and scallion fried rice and a chicken stew I made last night.

3 p.m. — I retreat into my bedroom for my weekly Zoom therapy session. When I moved to the United States nine years ago, I saw about three different therapists before finding my current therapist, and they’ve really helped me through a lot. Today we talk about how I find my interactions with my ex frustrating, as well as our continued financial enmeshment (we co-own a house that I am trying to get bought out of).

5 p.m. — M. and I head out to walk the dog. During the walk, I run into the fishmonger’s down the street for a filet, which I plan on steaming with scallion and ginger later that evening. I absolutely love this fishmonger — everything here is always so high-quality and fresh, and the fishmonger is so friendly and knowledgeable. I was sure that the store had been around for decades but when I asked the guy, he said it’d only been here for two years. I love this fishmonger, I love this neighborhood, I love my new apartment and I feel so lucky to be able to have this new start in life!!! M. waits outside the supermarket with the dog while I also buy eggs and milk. $22.40

6.30 p.m. — Dinner is rice, steamed fish, steamed eggs, and soup with greens in it. It’s all really good and fresh and M. takes a photo of the food and also of me.

8 p.m. — We head down to a play I fortuitously scored free tickets for last week (we take the subway, and I use a Metrocard I topped up before the start of this week). The play is good, but the downside of the nosebleed seats we’re at is that the seating is incredibly cramped. Overall, it feels like I’m on a flight by a budget airline, and the person in front of me has reclined their seat.

10.30 p.m. — I’m so tired I’m falling asleep on the train back. M. offers to take the dog out for me, which is very sweet, but I say it’s fine. M. waits in the lobby while I walk up five flights of stairs to get the dog and we walk her out together. Sometimes, living in a walk-up can be brutal, but I now have very strong legs.

8 a.m. — M. makes us an omelette and some toast for breakfast. I brew us some tea, and we walk the dog.

9.30 a.m. — More work. The dog is the only one who doesn’t have any professional responsibilities. Today I have three meetings, thankfully all with people who are easy to work with. Recently, I’ve been worrying a lot about money and thinking about taking up a side gig, but this would take time away from my creative pursuits (outside of my day job, I write fiction). I have been greatly enjoying increased  financial autonomy as a recently separated person — my ex and I didn’t have a great relationship, and one of the reasons was money. Our finances were completely merged, and we were living paycheck to paycheck even though we could have afforded to be more frugal. Since separating, I have tried to be as frugal as I can while still enjoying my life in the big city. I’ve been saving aggressively to build up an emergency fund and to one day, pending the buyout from my ex, buy my own apartment. Still, the singlehood penalty is real, and even though I love living by myself and the idea of moving again after just one year makes my heart sink, I’ve been kinda-sorta flirting with the idea of getting a roommate after the lease on this apartment is up. I don’t think I will ever get married again, but it would definitely be nice to take advantage of those sweet economies of scale.

12.30 p.m. — In between meetings, M. and I collaborate to make lunch. I make a vegetable stew with eggplant, peppers, and chickpeas that I soaked and simmered earlier this week, while she makes chicken meatballs with some ground chicken she bought earlier in the morning. With the fat left in the skillet from the chicken meatballs I make some rice. It’s all soooooo good.

4.30 p.m. — It’s Friday and I sign off work early, since anything outstanding can be done early next week. We head out to walk the dog. I buy some cookies from the cafe on the corner. When we get home, we do some Pilates and eat the cookies, which are humongous. $9.30

6.30 p.m. — M. heads downtown to have dinner with a relative who’s in town, and I walk 30 minutes to the grocery store that has my unswerving loyalty. This isn’t going to be a big grocery shop, but I wanted to make a Turkish-esque breakfast spread tomorrow morning and need supplies. I pick up tomatoes, a cucumber, tahini, pita bread, and two boxes of pasta. Also a small expensive bottle of balsamic vinegar for my mother, when I fly back home for a visit next week. $38.05

7.30 p.m. — I walk back. I could take the bus, but honestly the weather’s not terrible and I want to get my steps in. I eat leftovers from lunch today for dinner and make hummus.

10 p.m. — I let the dog out for the last pee of the day. M. returns and we end up having one of those conversations that is so delightful and frequent during the early stages of a relationship — it involves hours of processing some really raw and vulnerable feelings and leads to a closer understanding between the both of us. I really love M. — we’ve been together for three months now —  and I love her more now that I understand more about her and her fears and anxieties.

8 a.m. — Even though it’s Saturday, we wake up early because M. has to set out early. The Turkish breakfast is so good: there’s pita bread, hummus, tomatoes, cucumber, halloumi, boiled eggs, fruit, and strong black tea, which I serve in the tea set my mother gave me three years ago — and which I never used until I moved out of the house my ex and I shared and into my own apartment. There’s a metaphor at work here, I think.

10 a.m. — M. and I cuddle a little more before she leaves. I walk the dog and take her on the trails in the park near where I live. I let her off her leash and she’s totally blissed out — just meandering along at her own pace, pausing to sniff a particularly interesting patch of ground before running to catch up with me. After our little walk, I buy a chicken from the farmers’ market. I plan on roasting it soon for a friend, P., who’s going through a hard time. It’s going to be a roast chicken with garlic, lemon, parsley and paprika, and I’ll make some rice with dried fruit, nuts and saffron on the side, along with roast cauliflower $27.70

11.30 a.m. — Try as I might, I am simply too exhausted to run any errands, let alone write. I fall into bed for an hour-long nap.

12.30 p.m. — I rise from bed the way one ideally does after a satisfying nap: dreamily, with no clear purpose in sight, and no urgent tasks. Lunch is a pita wrap assembled from the components of the Turkish breakfast (hummus/tomato/cucumber/halloumi). More tea, this time with milk.

2 p.m. — I sit down to write some copy for a friend’s website — this is my end of a skills exchange we agreed on late last year. (I reached out to them to get a professional headshot — they’re a photographer — and they offered to give me a discounted rate if I’d write copy for their website. They’ve been running their own business for a while now so they thought of everything, even specifying the number of rounds of edits they could request from me.) Even though I’d been putting this off, it’s actually pretty easy and enjoyable. I add a bunch of comments to my draft so that they can see my thoughts behind specific choices I made, and when I send it off I specify that I’m more than happy to make some more rounds of edits. Even though I don’t see this friend very often, I am very fond of them and I hope their business prospers!

3.30 p.m. — I drop off samples of the water coming from my kitchen sink for lead testing. Getting a lead testing kit is free, as is postage for mailing the samples back, and I highly recommend that everyone in New York City does it. Back home, I make some more tea and eat the last bit of the massive cookie I bought yesterday. I also find a brand-new copy of How to Cook a Wolf, the book I’ve been meaning to get M. for her birthday on eBay, for like a third of the usual retail price. Score! $16.28

5 p.m. — More dog walking, shortly after sunset. It’s a lightly rainy and heavily misty evening. I do some packing for my visit home next week and find that, just like the copy for my friend’s website, even though I’d been putting it off it’s actually fairly easy. Object lesson in something? Can’t be.

8 p.m. — Dinner is rice (freshly cooked), the last of the chicken stew I made before Day One of this diary, and some of the vegetable stew that I made on Day Two. The chicken meatballs are all gone, sadly. After dinner, I add money to my laundry account and launder my sweaters on the delicate cycle. Even though I have not done any writing today, this feels like a successful weekend day. I walked around, ran some errands, and had a beautiful nap! $10

9 a.m. — I am slow getting out of bed today. Breakfast is pita bread, hummus, an orange, and some tea. I write, then take my dog on a trail run. This is the first time I’ve gotten to use my new running shoes — I bought them three weeks ago, but it’s been too cold. They’re sturdy, they hold up well on the trail. I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship that must inevitably culminate in putting off the inevitable — replacing them in six months’ time. The dog is off-leash and she’s totally blissed out as ever.

11 a.m. — Zoom session with my writing group. We catch each other up on our various writing travails, write together for 45 minutes, and then break to talk about our progress. I work on my novel some more.

12.30 — Lunch! Fried rice with spring onions, garlic, and my one remaining egg.

2 p.m. — Okay, it’s time to get organized and do a full apartment clean. I clean the bathroom, vacuum, and mop the entire apartment, take out my compost, and wash all the dishes I’ve accumulated over the last couple of days. I end by tidying and dusting all my surfaces and taking an Everything Shower.

5 p.m. — I light a candle, settle into my couch with some tea and chocolate, and finish my library book (A Love Song for Ricki Wilde). It’s a good read and I would recommend it if you enjoy Harlem-set romances with a magical element. I reach the happily ever after and sigh with relief — things were looking a bit knotty for them there! (As another writer once said, the good ended happily and the bad unhappily, that is what fiction means.) The rest of the evening is just reading, taking the dog out, eating dinner (the last of the leftovers), and taking the dog out again.

10 a.m. — It’s a public holiday, so I spend my morning writing. In between, I make Eric Kim’s pasta pomodoro with fresh tomatoes for lunch, which feels like a luxury in mid winter. This is my absolute favorite tomato sauce, and it’s so easy — whole garlic cloves toasted in a lot of olive oil and cut-up tomatoes slowly emulsified over 45 minutes on the stovetop before the sauce is strained to give it this incredibly smooth texture. I put the tomato pulp in a container and deposit it in the freezer for tomato crackers. I place a Target order for 10 packets of freeze-dried berries, as my mother has requested that I bring these back when I visit. $52.07

2 p.m. — The thing about making your own hours is that sometimes you have to do a little work on holidays. I complete a work task that shouldn’t take a whole hour, but it’s a holiday and snowy so the day is going a little slowly. In between, I make the roast chicken for P., rice, and cauliflower. The kitchen is a huge mess. I carve the chicken and pack the food up, and frantically wash a few dishes before heading out to bring the food to P.’s place.

6 p.m. — On my way back, I stop by my supermarket of choice for two packets of Colby Jack, a tub of dried cranberries (both requests from my sister), and a dozen eggs. There is a pack of a dozen free-range large eggs for $5.99, which is unheard of in this economy. $19.07

8 p.m. — On the way home, I receive a text from a friend who’s been in contact with some families in Gaza. My friend is trying to raise money for someone who’s been evacuated to Egypt and urgently needs the money in a week. I promise to amplify this and venmo them some money. The rest of the evening is quiet. I take the dog out in the early evening, and eat my dinner of roast chicken, cauliflower and rice. Some tea and chocolate for afters, and even though I privately debate just taking her out super early tomorrow instead, I end up taking my dog out for her last pee of the night. $100

8 a.m. — Chicken and rice for breakfast. There is literally nothing so luxurious as eating dinner food for breakfast. I make stock from the carcass of the roast chicken — this will go in the freezer.

9 a.m. — I sign on to work and slack my boss about working from home tomorrow, so I can hand my dog off to a friend, R., who’s agreed to dogsit while I’m away. I am so glad that I took the dog out last night, because that means I can take her out later this morning. The snow and ice is completely treacherous, and it gets just a little warmer in the late morning.

1 p.m. — Therapy. We talk about my upcoming visit home, which will be the first following the split, and the anxieties I have surrounding it. They are 100 percent going to ask about my ex buying me out of the house.

6 p.m. — I’m done with work and my friend S. comes over for dinner. I make some pasta with the last of the tomato sauce, and for dessert I make crepes, with an orange butter sauce. S. plays with the dog (who is thrilled to get so much attention), and we catch up. It’s nice! She also does a bunch of my dishes before leaving.

10 p.m. — I see S. off, take the dog out, and wash my remaining dishes. I do a little bit more packing and resolve to do my laundry tomorrow.

7 a.m. — I wake up and do a 30-minute yoga and Pilates workout on YouTube. It’s been a little while since I worked out and it’s very cold, so the routine feels challenging. I make some kimchi chicken salad with the last of the roast chicken, the last bit of the kimchi from the kimchi jar, and Kewpie mayo. Piled on toast, it makes for a perfect breakfast with some milky tea. I take a shower and wash my hair.

8.30 a.m. — I head out to Walgreens to get some sleep meds and SPF. $56.32

9 a.m. — On the way back, I stop by the café for two bags of gourmet coffee beans for family when I’m back home. $35

9.30 a.m. — I settle down to work and of course that’s when my wifi stops working. Service outage until 11.30 a.m., apparently. I slack my manager about it, and we agree to have our meeting on the phone. Wifi is restored just in time for me to make my second meeting.

12 p.m. — I finish a bunch of work tasks before breaking to do my laundry and put together lunch. Lunch is a crispy Thai-style omelette with spring onions on white rice, and hot sauce.

4.30 p.m. — After my last two meetings, I sign off for the day. I drop the dog off at R.’s, fold my laundry, and do a last vacuum of the house. Earlier today, I offered to let a friend of a friend, H., who’s going through a life transition, stay at my apartment while I’m away — I’ve been assured she’s plenty clean, and I’m more than happy to help. What started out as a “make sure my apartment is clean so I have a beautiful space to return to” clean has turned into a “let’s make this person’s stay as comfortable as possible” clean.

6 p.m. — H. turns up. I hand them the keys, and they help me bring my suitcases down the stairs of my walk-up building so I can spend the night at M.’s before catching my flight in the morning. As I’m changing lines, I begin to have doubts about whether the large suitcase is not in fact overweight — some repacking may be in order. A kind stranger offers to carry my suitcase down the subway stairs and I thank him gratefully. I reach Queens and M. shows up at the subway to help me walk my suitcases back to her apartment. We head out for a delicious dinner of dumplings and noodles. $45

9 p.m. — I repack my suitcases so that the larger suitcase isn’t so comically heavy. I’d been thinking about taking public transport to the airport tomorrow morning, but finally crumble and decide to book an Uber, especially since public transport would mean a 5 a.m. start time. We turn in early since I have an early wakeup tomorrow! $51.85

“Keeping this diary was a thought-provoking and clarifying experience. Ever since I separated from my spouse, a big part of my narrative has been that I am now the sole person driving my life, for better or for worse. Although I’ve had less in-built support (like I said, the singlehood penalty is real!), I’ve enjoyed more autonomy — particularly financial autonomy. Over the course of this week, I learnt that even though I have a lot of financial anxiety, I’m ultimately not doing so badly. I earn a solid, reliable income, and am able to put my money and time towards the things that I value, including delicious home-cooked meals, helping other people, and my creative pursuits. At the end of the day, I’m really happy about that!”