Quick life update // kind of a journal entry: So this week we got our lease renewal for our apartment in NYC and found out that our landlord raised our rates quite a bit 🙁
We moved to NYC during Covid (June 2021) and only had a small raise in 2022. We knew a big increase was coming after looking at the market, but even so, it was still a shock. As much as I would love to say “no big deal – we’ll make it work,” I know how big of a deal a large rate increase really is and how it means we’ll have to scale back in other aspects of our lives.
There’s an argument to be made about the inflated cost of living in NYC being worth it…I mean, there are SO many perks. There’s culture, there’s incredible food, there’s Broadway, there’s the ability to get anything you need or want at a moments notice…but if we have to scale back on all the things that make the city fun and special, then is it really worth it? Or does life become sitting at home in the city instead of being out experiencing it?
When we received the renewal, we quickly talked about looking for another apartment in New York, but we LOVE our apartment – and not just the apartment…the people in the building, the location, the owners of shops nearby, our building’s Supe, etc.. We couldn’t ask for anything better from a community standpoint and then the apartment itself is everything we wanted – it’s on an elevated first floor (so not on street level, but also not a walk up), right by the mail and packages, one floor from the laundry and in a quite little section of our building. It just feels like we have the perfect set-up, so to give that up in hopes of finding something better (and at only a slightly lower rate) was a gamble we weren’t willing to take.
Plus, the city was always going to be a short term thing for us (1-3 years) – so by the time we paid new fees, deposits, etc. hired a moving company and put finishing touches on a new place, we figured the difference in that vs. staying put really wasn’t much.
So for now, we’ve renewed the lease starting June 2023 and it’ll run through May 2024 and then we’ll revisit. Personally, I would love to live in the city forever. It’s really really hard for me to picture leaving – even though I’ve known since day 1 that leaving was inevitable annnnd even though it’s a becoming more and more unaffordable.
The city just feels like…me. Everything about it makes me SO happy and I struggle with the idea of trying to find that same happiness somewhere else. Does that make sense? I feel like I’m blabbering – but it’s like, I’m happy in all these aspects of my life (my relationship, my friendships, my job) and I finally feel like where I live matches and elevates me to this overall level of happiness I didn’t know existed. And now that I know what that feels like, I really don’t want to give it up.
I know that circumstances can always change and that we can plan and plan, but we never really know what the future is going to hold…so stressing out about something happening 16 months from now isn’t really helpful. So until a decision actually has to me made, I’m going to soak in as much city time as I can while also slowly wrapping my head around what life would look like outside of the concrete jungle.
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