No landlord is going to rent you a 3k/mo apartment on a 90k salary. Most require your gross annual income to be at minimum 40x the monthly rent, ie $120,000.
The whole point of living in a top-tier city like New York is to experience it and enjoy it. Living like an austere hermit isn't the way to do that in NYC, where so much of the scene revolves around putting expensive things in your mouth in front of other people. Maybe on the West Coast, where people can ride bikes without being ground to paste by ten ton trucks running red lights and walk down elegant boulevards that aren't carpeted with human waste, you can live frugally and experience a good life in the city. But not here.
Fair point. We definitely have more trash though. So much of it. Frozen great mounds of snow-covered hepatitis in winter, and stinking black fermenting vessels full of distilled evil in the summer.
Please. Everything here is either worse or better than it is everywhere else. That's why the whole of the rest of the world without any exception at all is in absolute awe of New York. :)
I don't know amount most places, but Archstone (http://www.archstoneapartments.com/) was willing to rent me a 3k apartment while I was making 70k. I had a roommate that was going to move in in a month, but they did not care when I was signing the lease. They also have apartments in NYC so the option is open.
The whole point of living in a top-tier city like New York is to experience it and enjoy it. Living like an austere hermit isn't the way to do that in NYC, where so much of the scene revolves around putting expensive things in your mouth in front of other people. Maybe on the West Coast, where people can ride bikes without being ground to paste by ten ton trucks running red lights and walk down elegant boulevards that aren't carpeted with human waste, you can live frugally and experience a good life in the city. But not here.