We landed...sort of

OK, as many of you know we have spent the last months in an agonizing decision-making process. As in, what are we doing with our lives? Do we stay in New York or leave? We have spent every spare moment in searching for apartments and houses (as the case may be) in several different states. We have worn out the buttons on the "cost of living calculator" in our quest to maximize the leverage of a NY salary in a cheaper place to live. Actually, we used several cost of living calculators and averaged the results since we didn't quite trust just one.
We finally made our decision--it was to move to Boulder, CO, a place we have always wanted to live and have almost moved to before. Our inner tree huggers were stirring back to life, as our inner city slickers clung to the things about the city we were preparing to say goodbye to.
But alas, things are rarely that simple, and after a meeting with his supervisor, it became clear that Brett's company is not currently in a position to support him living away from one of their U.S. offices (even though they had offered exactly that a few months ago). In fact, many of the other options we were considering are no longer available to us either, such as living abroad in Dubai. Have you heard what is happening there? You can go to jail for breaking a lease, and many people have abandoned their belongings and cars and just fled, once it became clear that the worldwide recession resulted in massive construction projects being stopped indefinitely.
So his company generously offered that we could relocate to any of their offices--Virginia Beach, Houston, Jacksonville, Oakland and New York. After much consideration, we decided to stay here. The first three choices are locations that are uninspiring for us, and while Oakland is tempting and on the West Coast, it is another big city that is expensive and we just got to know this one. Also, much of their work is in New York for the rest of this year and any move would mean more travel for Brett and a less secure position since extra travel that other employees don't need means that he is an expensive worker for them to consider. This week they just had their first round of layoffs--after months of reporting that business was stable and they didn't think it was going to happen.
The New York market is finally really feeling it--I am seeing so many things in our price range that weren't there previously. We have been looking all over for rentals, and also looking to buy. We decided not to buy right now--it feels like things are still too unstable, and buying here means buying into maintenance fees and neighborhoods we aren't totally comfortable with and the looming economic crisis will likely exaggerate the rough neighborhoods even more.
So, we found an apartment to rent for a year while we wait and plan our next move. It is clean and nice and 2 bedrooms, 900 square feet, very close to the North end of Central Park and an express subway stop. It is a small building--like a brownstone with only 4 floors and it has a rooftop deck with a BBQ grill. There is a washer and dryer in the apartment and nice new appliances and exposed brick wall in the bedroom. The landlord is nice and flexible and proactive and there are planter boxes outside and the apartment is on the ground floor. There is a bit of sketchy 'hood around this part of town, but quite honestly, it isn't much different from where we are now, so we aren't that concerned about it. The NE corner of Central Park is one of the prettiest areas, with the Harlem Meer, playgrounds, the Lasker swimming pool/ice rink and the North Woods.
The day we found this apartment I had been in tears over what $2,000 a month gets you here. We were trying to push the envelope on saving $$ AND finding a nice place. The last one we saw that day was in a Section 8 building--meaning, it used to be The Projects and now they are converting it to nicer apartments. I feel for anyone living in such a building--while they have roomier gardens and playgrounds than most blocks of the city, the buildings are so awful and industrial and oppressive that I could barely go into it once just to say no to the apartment the broker was showing. If you have ever wanted to spend a year in NY, do it now--some neighborhoods are 30% less than their rents were last year. We weren't able to go as low as we had hoped, but we are considerably lower than we are now, and the apartment we are renting has already been lowered several hundred dollars a month.
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We gave directions to a visiting Brit on a bus the other day and she said "Those rich New Yorkers, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing!" That phrase has been repeating in my head since we have spent so much time talking about money the past couple of months. It is true that money is a huge thing to consider right now, especially with jobs less stable than ever before in our lifetime and living in a place with such a ridiculously high cost of living. But we are hoping to take a deep breath and start moving on to spending our energy on other things than obsessing about money and the price of things.
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In a flurry of trying to see all the things we haven't seen in New York yet, when we thought we were moving away, we have set up field trips to a lot of interesting places--The Federal Reserve Bank of NY (is there any gold left after all of this?), The United Nations, The Whitney Museum, The Skyscraper Museum...we have lots of theater and outings of all kinds on the schedule for the next couple of months. This week we saw two different versions of plays about Harriet Tubman--I thought it would be interesting to see how two contrasting companies told the story and it was.
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So we aren't saying goodbye to New York quite yet. Still feeling mixed feelings about the whole thing, but excited about having a new place to live. We move the end of March.