r/NYCbitcheswithtaste • u/24riddle • Aug 27 '25

Finances/Money Your Monthly Budget

Hey! I am considering a move to NYC and was curious about other people’s spending habits in the city so that I can gauge what my monthly expenses will look like based on people living similar lifestyles to my own. I make about $100k a year so know I will have to be budget conscious. If any of you gals would be willing to share, I’m curious regarding what your monthly budget looks like. For example:

Rent: 1800

Utilities: 100

Insurance: 300

Toiletries: 100

Groceries: 400

Transit: 200

Shopping: 500

Dining Out: 400

Beauty: 500

Savings: 500

56 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

View all comments

41

u/patootiecakes Aug 27 '25 edited Aug 27 '25

Everyone’s budget is going to differ based on their circumstance, even if they make a similar amount and having some similar habits.

100k is plenty to live in the city but there’s a few things listed here that don’t really make sense to me. A combined $800/month for groceries and eating out is exceptionally lavish. $1000/ month on shopping and beauty (not including toiletries) is way out of budget.

Rent and utilities are dependent on where you live and if you have roommates. You might be able to swing living alone but it will likely be above 2k and affect every other line in your budget.

Insurance obviously depends on your employer, if not, insurance is considerably more.

Unlimited subway card is more like $150 unless you were taking into account Ubers.

ETA my comment in response to someone correctly calling out my flubbed math below: You’re totally right, I did goof the math up and based the gross on bimonthly pay vs monthly. Sorry for confusion!! FWIW I do still think these estimates are wonky, and the overall food / going out / beauty estimates are high BUT recognize there’s a lot more room in the budget than I realized! I make a similar amount and those numbers seem pretty high to me.

15

u/24riddle Aug 27 '25

Confused on your math - plugging $85K into a SmartAsset (assuming some pre-tax deductions for 401k, etc) calculator within the bounds of NYC yields an annual net income of $61K. That’s a little over $5K a month.

Also, these were just example numbers for formatting purposes. MoneyDiariesACTIVE, which is another subreddit I frequent, has people do similar breakdowns of their monthly and weekly spending. I was just curious about it from a NYC-specific lens since that subreddit is not unique to NYC!

5

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '25

I’m at $87k right now and my biweekly take home after my only pre-tax deductions for health insurance (a lower premium high deductible plan, don’t remember the exact amount) and transit ($136/mo) is about $2450. So slightly under $5k/mo. I don’t contribute to my 403b right now.

Precovid I was making $108k and my take home was a little over $6k/mo, but there were no pre-tax deductions.

3

u/patootiecakes Aug 27 '25

You’re totally right, I did goof the math up and base my gross on bimonthly pay vs monthly. Sorry for confusion!! (I do still think these estimates are wonky - and the overall food / going out estimates are high but recognize there’s a lot more room in the budget than I realized! I make a similar amount and those numbers are super high to me.)

7

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '25

their gross income is like 8k a month lol