Subway to Port Authority and home after concert … $4 Round-trip bus ticket from Port Authority to the Meadowlands … $9 Ticket to Iron Maiden concert, Continental Airlines Arena … $80 Groceries at deli on Eighth Avenue … $14.37Ĭheeseburger, beer, and bourbon, Corner Bistro … $12.25 Mixmag (British electronic-music magazine and CD), Casa Magazines … $9.75įried chicken and corn, Dirty Bird to Go … $10.26īagel with tofu spread, Murray’s Bagels … $3.82 Groceries at Gristedes (olive oil and mayonnaise) … $15.08īacon-turkey-and-Cheddar-melt sandwich and water, Così … $9.65 Salad bar and Orangina, Garden of Eden … $7.62 Each month, Brian pays $125 for cable and Internet access,$59.31 on his Verizon cell-phone bill, and $96.67 for a shared desk at Paragraph, a writing space. The rent for his half of a West Village two-bedroom is $1,800 a month, most of it covered by his parents. His parents pay his tuition as well as a $140-a-month gym membership at Equinox. candidate in fiction, earns a modest living from teaching, assisting professors, and writing magazine articles. Somehow, we all find ways to afford something that meets our definition of luxury, like our grad student who recklessly splurged on, yes, Iron Maiden tickets. And having money doesn’t mean spending it lavishly-our … $700,000-a-year investment banker spends … $3,000 a year on vacations. And we wonder, How does everyone else do it? To see how money shapes our daily lives, we asked six New Yorkers of varying incomes to track every penny they spent in week the figures provide a picture of urban life that is both heartening (even the richest among us drink deli coffee and sometimes take the subway) and somewhat less so (compare our junior professional’s grilled-chicken takeout with our trader’s … $520 dinner tab at Da Umberto). Our spending patterns, if we think about them, tend toward the irrational-we drop … $200 on jeans, then agonize over whether to take a cab or the subway home. You went to the ATM two days ago and suddenly you’re there again, trying to remember how it went so fast (oh, yeah, that … $46 you blew on vodka-and-sodas). Where does it all go? It’s a question that puzzles all New Yorkers.
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