150k is perfectly liveable in NYC, even in Manhattan heart. It’s probably not feasible to have a three bedroom apt in Manhattan on that budget but it’s very doable in the less hot parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx. If you think of moving to Long Island, you can even rent a house with a yard.

You will probably need a partners income if you want to live in a unit where you can raise a child, and will need significantly more for the both of you to raise multiple children.

I'm in the center of NYC so I'll answer this question. Currently, it's about $2,800 for a studio and $3,500 for a one bedroom. If you're single I'd say you need around 120k to live somewhat okay. That's 6.6k a month after taxes so minus about 3k it's 3.6k a month for bills, food, and however else you want to budget the rest. Depends on your lifestyle of course.

If you want a three bedroom then you'd want to live outside of NYC and commute about an hour by train. It'll be around 3k-4k then.

Yeah...what about retirement accounts? If you're not putting money away into retirement, you're either bad at managing money or just scraping by.

Not necessarily. My retirement plan is to kill myself in a one of the larger city parks at night. Call 911 first to give them a rough location so that can recover my body but not be able to arrive soon enough to save me.

Little reason to have a retirement account if your retirement is that brief.

3 bedroom apt in NYC? There's not a lot of those and that's going to be insanely expensive, like $5k+/month for sure.

I lived in NYC for almost a decade and I don't remember anyone having a 3 bedroom.

I lived in 1 bedroom in Astoria (Queens) for $1.5k-$2k

Lots of tech jobs pay 150k or less in NYC. I'd think its probably just below median.