Living expenses

AoDay
Mon, 11 Apr 2016 19:56:22 +0000

People will have different monthly expenses based on their own spending habits and financial constraints. You can definitely estimate it ahead of time and see if that lines up with what you are able to cover given a part time job, work study, or spending thresholds from your parents. Just look at what you do in a normal week, write them down, and then find average costs for those activities in the city.

You have to account for what living expenses are paid upfront already such as dorm, campus meal plan, etc because everyone’s situation is different. I’ll give a rough estimate based on loose assumptions which may vary widely from person to person but I’ll exclude the meal plan for all intents and purposes:

If we look at a normal 4 week period, that’s 28 days x 3 meals = 84 meals.

Lets say an an average meal at Chipotle, Chopt etc. is $10, so that’s $840. You have a base line for your food costs so lets see what you could potentially take out, maybe you can just buy cereal, bagels, etc. to cover all your breakfasts (cereal you can get for $5-$7 box, 1 gallon of milk ~$5 so lets just assume $12/week for breakfast, that’s $608.

This is all assuming you eat out for every lunch and dinner, which depending on how diligent you are about actually cooking can change your monthly spend. Keep in mind that I don’t think the freshman dorms have individual kitchens, instead there are community kitchens that you have to reserve. Most of the upperclassmen dorms have individual kitchens.

As for rough estimates of other expenses:
$15-20 movie ticket
$8 beer at a bar (non happy hour)
$12 cocktail ($18 at clubs, lounges etc.)
$20-35/person eating out (this can vary extremely depending on where you decide to eat out, but I guess this would be a rough average, it’s kind of representative of the Restaurant Week prices as well $25/lunch $35/dinner)
$116 30 day unlimited MTA card
$5 Grande latte at Starbucks

Any consumer goods like shampoo, cereal, paper towels, etc. you could also just order from amazon or boxed, you’ll get it much cheaper than at the bodegas and duane reades. Usually if there are common purchases between me and my roommates we just order them in bulk and split the cost, everyone wins.

So depending on how much you consume the above items, whether you need an MTA card, and how much you go out, I’d say a range you could work with would be $600 if you’re being conscious of your spending and maybe $1,400 if you go out at night, eat out once or twice a week at decent restaurants, and watch a movie once a month along with a number of groceries each week.

Hope this helps, but you can honestly just amazon everything these days.