In NYC you can qualify for an apartment if your annual salary is 40 times the monthly rent. I wa shocked the other day when a friend was angsting about moving into a $1450 apartment, because I know she makes at least $75K, if not more. When I was making $57K, I paid $1350, and lived just fine.

I still haven't decided what to do about the fact that the last slip revealed the brand spanking new assistant makes the same salary as manager level been here three years me.

This is part of why it pays to change jobs. I had a peer making $45K, because she had been there 10+ years, and usually only got COLA, if that. In the three years I worked at that place there were no raises, not even COLA.

Why were you dubbed "charmingly Jamaican" for having the second dream job?

Well, they were teasing because properly Jamaican would mean three jobs. It's one of our stereotypes in the US, I came to learn.

Or if there's a word for the worldview where only the things you can quantify exist...

I can't think of a polite one. Some guy once said "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" and I gotta go with one.

That's the problem with a word like unique. It's kinda all or nothing.

12.8%!!! 12.8%!?!

OK, I've got to stop laughing at some point. I'm just glad that my rent is now no longer 1/3 of my gross.

Wow, I just did the debt tally again. About a grand more total than I make in a year.

My rent is currently 15% of my pay, pre-tax. (Which will get worse if my roomate moves out, but manageable if I slow down payment on aforementioned debt.) It seems like I won't ever be able to dig out from this!

I'm going to go see Bride and Prejudice very soon! With my aunt! Yay!

I have no idea how much I make a year. Maybe $3000ish? I make $9 an hour, but I only work 11 hours a week, and I've had an incredibly hard time getting a summer job, in the past few years, so that doesn't extend through the summer months. I also have a nice chunk of debt, and I need to go take out another loan, actually, which sucks. And my rent sucks, and just adds to my debt, since I basically have enough to feed myself, and do little things, like movies and books and occasionally eating out-- also known as mental health activities, but that's about it. But I have no car payments, because I have no car. So, that's an unfortunate plus, of some sort.

I swear, for most of my working life, my rent has been very close to half of my take-home, and it's been OK. That's what I get for living in eastern cities.

Well, they were teasing because properly Jamaican would mean three jobs. It's one of our stereotypes in the US, I came to learn.

There was a skit on In Living Color: "I got four jobs, mon!" "Four? Mon, my cousin's got six jobs!" Like that.

you can see something's wrong just from the averages, where the median salary for a single male is $26,700 and for a single female is $18,160.

And I must be East coast-spoiled (and middle-class spoiled), because I cannot concieve how anyone can survice on $18K, much less that it's a national average.

I make $29K right now, but that comes with a footnote because I took a big paycut when I started this job. (Different industry, plus I had been fired, and any job beats no job.) My husband makes more than twice as much, which makes me feel guilty. Our rent is $1600 a month. I have no idea what our total debt is.

ok I did the math, my housing costs are 26% of my gross and 35% of my take home.

2 years ago I was paying 17.5% of my gross but I think that is the best ratio I have ever had in NYC.

From flickr, mappr: [link]