Originally Posted by
libra89 I'm going to take your word for it. Congrats on almost finishing grad school! That must be intense.
I don't want to be super far from work, but at the same time, I don't want to be super far from the school I have in mind. I have a city in mind (2 really), it's just a matter of finding what I can afford there. Everything is $$ it seems, but probably not as much as you deal with in NYC though.
So here's the thing. I've seen my rent rise by $100 over the course of the nearly 7 years I've been here. Doesn't see like a lot, but it is. Ideally you want to be in a situation where your rent/mortgage accounts for a max 30% of your net monthly expenses for things to be sustainable in a safe way.
When I first got the apartment, it was at 35% for me, with another 15% in travel expenses. And this was before factoring food costs and other essentials. Now, I live in the NYC metro area with a higher cost of living so wages are supposedly higher to cover (so you see if you take pay cuts or make less money, you're Trump groped). You'd think my travel costs were too expensive but keep in mind I was doing this without a car and the cost of maintenance of a car in the Northeast is much more expensive than most places. So yes, I was going the cheaper(!) route. Now, it's over the years to be about 60% of expenses just on those two items...And before I had to quit my job, I had 1 raise in the last 3 years and the most I received as a raise was a 1% increase, which at one point was a net increase of $20 per paycheck.
Having fun so far?
). I'm not even calling him by his current job title (which includes 45).
