Living in New York has been a lifelong dream of mine. Wild, because I was born in a small country town in Australia, where I grew up riding dirt bikes instead of reading fashion magazines.
Australia is a vast and beautiful place that offers an idyllic, laid-back beach life, but I’ve always felt the pull of New York.
This desire was further ignited in the 1990s when I saw the city depicted in TV series such as Friends and Sex and the City. So, in 2014, at the age of 40, I dragged my husband, our Bengal cat, and our two sons (then ages 2 and 9) to New York City.
We told ourselves we would come here for a year and have an adventure. Twelve years later, I’m still here. It was definitely one hell of a ride (and ridiculously expensive).
The rent we paid felt astronomical and we moved a lot
Certain areas of New York City, including Lower Manhattan where we choose to live, can get particularly expensive. Ultima_Gaina/Getty Images
In New York City, the cost of rent is no joke.
We traded our beautiful 1890s cottage – three bedrooms, two bathrooms, front porch, huge yard, tree-lined street, 10 minutes from Bondi Beach – for a two-bedroom loft apartment in Tribeca for $8,000 a month. (Not unusual for a two-bed in this neighborhood.)
In comparison, the monthly mortgage on our Sydney cottage was less than half that price after conversion.
Still, we knew we chose to live in a more expensive neighborhood in lower Manhattan, and we did so because it felt like a great place to raise our children. We love the neighborhood, the quiet cobblestone streets, and the access to the Hudson River Park.
Our loft is essentially a big box with windows only in the front. It was also the fifth floor of a walk-up, the downstairs neighbors angrily complained constantly about the sound of kids walking around, and I had to climb five brutal flights of stairs with a toddler and a stroller, and we left in less than a year.
We moved to another loft around the corner, this one more expensive, which lasted over a year until the building was condemned and we had to move again.
At one point, my husband and I considered using our savings to buy a house in New York, but we had no idea how to navigate the competitive real estate market, and it became apparent that our budget would only allow us to purchase a tiny apartment.
The math doesn’t add up, and the risk of ownership scares us. So we’ve been rolling the dice on renting.
I’ve moved about 10 times since my husband and I separated, the kids outgrew the small apartment, and the landlord unexpectedly raised the rent.
My kids got a solid free education, but college costs are hard to swallow
I am grateful that my children were able to receive a good public school education in New York City. Contributed by Natasha Silva-Jeli
One financial reprieve for New York City is that public education is free, although school admissions can be complicated, with factors like zoning and lottery systems affecting where kids end up.
Thankfully, both of my sons attended a highly regarded public school in Manhattan, and I was impressed by their education.
I’m also glad that we (mostly) avoided expensive private schools – except for my youngest, who attends a language immersion school, which costs about $30,000 per year. After he came out, he understood basic Mandarin, which was originally a worthwhile investment─but he later forgot all about it.
Then came the killer: college. After high school, my oldest son was accepted into a prestigious university in the Midwest to study engineering.
Sure, he could have gone to an affordable or public school, but many “New York rats” (as my kids proudly call themselves) want to leave the city where they grew up and their parents and go to college elsewhere. Getting into a respected college also felt like a major challenge, and we all felt the pressure to attend at all costs.
So his dad and I negotiated grades and financial aid and took out student loans for his first year. Add in his dorm gear, the fact that he blew up our Seamless account (despite having a paid meal plan), and the cost of us flying to visit him and back home…that probably cost about $70,000 the first year.
He ended up not staying after the first year, which meant our student loans were due much earlier than we planned. The silver lining of not completing his degree is that, unlike many college graduates in the United States, he didn’t carry four years of debt.
Coming home can feel like an expensive and uphill battle – being away from family is hard
Our ideal time to travel to Australia is in the winter, but it can be expensive and challenging. Dennis Downey Jr/Getty Images
At the given rent, we had very little left in our holiday budget or flights back to Australia to visit family and friends.
As Australians, the ideal time for us to go home is around Christmas, when it’s summer and many people are off work and school. However, round-trip airfare for the four of us alone was a whopping $4,000. On top of that, we had to take two flights each way, for a total flight time of over 22 hours.
It seemed to me that we would need three weeks for a proper trip around Australia, especially since I had to visit my family in two cities.
Considering our son’s public school only allows about a week off this time of year, it doesn’t seem worth the money or jet lag. This also explains why we usually only go home every other year.
Some expenses are even harder to coordinate when living with so many loved ones on different continents and in different time zones. From afar, I watched from 10,000 miles away as my mom got older (she just turned 80) and how my sister had to shoulder the burden of caring for our dad as he faced health issues.
I missed so many milestone birthdays, weddings, funerals, and family events that I will never get back.
Still, I would choose moving to New York City every time
I don’t regret moving to New York City over a decade ago. Contributed by Natasha Silva-Jeli
To be clear, many of these costs are related to the choices we made as we sought to give our families some kind of life in New York.
Do I regret moving despite the emotional and financial pain? Not a minute in New York. The city has an incredible, vibrant atmosphere. We formed great friendships, created new traditions, and embraced an exciting culture.
I also felt connected to the world in a way I never felt in Australia. I can get to the Caribbean in about four hours and Europe in seven – and I meet people from all walks of life.
There’s a vibrancy and diversity you won’t find anywhere else in the world, and a sense that you can do anything.
Regardless of the financial regrets and mistakes of the past 12 years, New York City Home.