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Amina Srna: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Srna filling in for Brian today. Now we'll end today's show with your calls on your spending habits in New York City, particularly this question. What do you splurge on and how do you afford it? How do you spend, save and scrimp in your budget? 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text. It's no secret that cost of living is a major concern. New Yorkers chose the mayor in large part because of a campaign based on the word affordability. When costs are already high for necessities, budgets are even tighter for the fun stuff. Being a New Yorker is about making it work, right?

Listeners, how do you make it work? Where in your budget do you find savings to make room for indulgences? Do you meal prep all month for one night of fine dining? Maybe you host friend hangouts at home to afford your monthly Broadway tickets? Do you buy all your clothes at the thrift store to Splurge on designer shoes? 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text. With me now to talk about our budgets is New York Times reporter Eliza Shapiro. She writes the Affording New York column where New Yorkers of all incomes share how they make it work. Eliza, welcome back to WNYC.

Eliza Shapiro: Thanks for having me.

Amina Srna: You write about the cost of living for The Times. We've had you on to talk about the cost of childcare in the past, but the Affording New York column is new. You just started it this year. What's the origin story for the column? How'd you get on this beat?

Eliza Shapiro: It's been such a incredibly fun, illuminating few months since we started this Affording New York column. It's funny, our original idea for it was making it work, that exact phrase that you just used. I think everyone has a really simple question right now. It's like, how are all these people around me living here? How are they doing it? What do they spend on rent? What do they spend on food? Do they do they have enough money to have fun?

I feel like we're living in such a crunch time. We just really started with this simple premise of like, okay, New Yorkers, rich, poor, in between, whatever, tell us how you do it. The idea is to have a really vast range of incomes. We've had people who make $23,000 a year. We have had people who make $500,000 a year. We'd like more and more and more just for people to tell us how they actually spend and save their money and what makes living in New York worth it to them despite this affordability crisis.

Amina Srna: Listeners, what do you spend on? What do you save on? We can take a few of your calls. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Eliza, who gets featured in your column? Could you tell us about a couple of the people you've profiled, maybe their jobs or how much they make or where they live?

Eliza Shapiro: We want anyone and everyone, and I hope people continue to write in. My email is eliza.shapiro@nytimes.com and nominate yourself. We basically want to feature the widest range of New Yorkers possible. There are no special requirements. You just have to live in New York and be willing to tell us how much you make and basically how much you spend on your housing, and we can take the rest of it from there. We've featured-- This week, my colleague had this fantastic column about a geologist who just recently started making about $200,000 a year, much more than his previous salary, and how he's adjusting to thinking about having a much more comfortable salary.

He lives in this really interesting co living space with I think 16 or 17 other roommates. We've featured a florist. We've featured a house cleaner. We have featured a retiree, a physical therapist. I think part of the joy and fun of the series is also just to look at just how many different jobs New Yorkers have. If you're listening, I really want a DJ. I want people who work overnight. I want people who show up to work at midnight. I just want to show a huge, vast range of jobs, a lot more city workers, home health aides, nurses, doctors. We want to hear from everyone. There's nothing special. All you need to do is be a New Yorker who's willing to chat a little bit about how you spend your money.

Amina Srna: Here's a New Yorker, Janet in Washington Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Hi. I'm sorry, I was on speakerphone. I had a fire that broke out in Bushwick along my block and it destroyed my home. When I decided to relocate, rather than relocate in Brooklyn, especially North Brooklyn, where it just felt like the competition was heavy and the quality was really low and the market was really oversaturated. Rather than pay a premium for a less attractive place, I left all of my social life behind.

We still get together, of course, because I still live in the city. Rather than live in really close proximity to my friends and the area that I've been living in for over 20 years, I moved for the first time to a totally new and unfamiliar neighborhood that's way quieter and much less sceney, just so I could have space and be in a building that had a strong foundation and good walls, and I wouldn't have my ceiling falling in, hopefully.

Amina Srna: Janet, thank you so much for your call. Eliza, I want to read you a very similar text. Another listener writes, "After I got priced out of my old neighborhood, Gowanus, I had to move to a neighborhood without super convenient transit options because the rent was below market rate. Now instead of walking or taking the train places, I splurge on car services to get where I need to go quickly because my rent is $800 lower than it would be in my preferred part of Brooklyn. You do talk to several families, I think, who moved, right?

Eliza Shapiro: Absolutely. That reminds me, I featured a family who lives pretty close to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. They have two small kids. The husband works at a hotel in midtown Manhattan and basically he has to get to work very early. Part of the reason their rent is pretty affordable is they live quite far from the train, like a 20 minute-plus walk to the subway.

Basically he has to spend money-- He leaves the house I think at 4:00 in the morning most days. He has to spend money in a Lyft or an Uber to get to the train to then get to Manhattan. While of course there are cheaper rents to be found further away from transit, there are also those hidden costs, just like this listener wrote in of getting in a car or even city biking, which is actually increasingly expensive to a bus or a train stop, which I think is a hidden cost people don't think about as much.

Amina Srna: We have several callers and texters who have some tips. Let's take Michael in Brooklyn. Hi, Michael. You're on WNYC.

Michael: Hi, it is so nice to speak with you. I really love this session because it really is a great help to the community. Part of my things that I like to tell people to do is enroll in balance billing at Con Ed because in the summers when the energy bills are like $400, $500, it's actually nicer to spread that around the year so you have a predictable amount you're supposed to pay.

That's something I've really been-- saved my butt a lot of times. Then also, I don't take Lyfts. I don't take Ubers. I'm a creative consultant, so I do a lot of freelance. I'm also a very big cheapskate when it comes to those things. I also don't do doordash or any sort of food delivery things, because they are all scamming you. That's what I do.

Amina Srna: Michael, those are some great tips on how you save. Do you want to share something that you splurge on?

Michael: Oh, yes, I will splurge on my neighborhood restaurants that are really nice. Can I endorse some restaurants, please?

Amina Srna: Oh, yes, sure.

Michael: I live in Bed-Stuy, so Santa Panza is one of the best pizza places in Bed-Stuy that's criminally slept on. It is one of the best places ever. Then there's a Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood called Trad Room, which is fabulous. It is the best sushi you will ever get. Those are two places. When I splurge, I love to splurge within my neighborhood because I know that money is going towards the small businesses I really love. Then also, I love getting a coffee, passion fruit coffee.

Amina Srna: Excellent. Michael, thank you so much for your call. Here is another way to save. Somebody writes, "Cut cable, bought a $16 antenna and cut out most streaming services. Kept my annual donation to PBS, which allows me passport status of extra shows between Passport, Tubi, Pluto, and other assorted free internet streams. There's plenty to watch." That goes to the entertainment aspect of it. We live in New York City, but we still need to be entertained.

Eliza Shapiro: Yes. It's so funny. I've had so many conversations, including one this week about people who have either cut out their cable bills. I talked to someone this week who was like, "I don't buy groceries. I don't have coffee in my house. I eat out cheaply for every meal, but I love my shows. I pay for all my streaming services and I pay for cable." Of course, a huge draw for so many of the people I talk to is dance, theater, art, music.

That is so much of why we're here. Of course, there is a whole separate massive affordability problem for artists of all kinds in New York. I think people go to great lengths and find really creative ideas. I love that Con Ed suggestion to make sure that they can see the theater and art that they love, and they find hacks and tips and tricks to the cheapest tickets on the cheapest days from the cheapest places.

Amina Srna: What's the most indulgent splurge you've come across in one of your subject's budgets? What did they do to scrimp in order to afford the splurge?

Eliza Shapiro: It's so interesting. I think one of the things that I really love about this series is that I think it's written and received in a way which has been wonderful that is actually incredibly non judgmental. I think that the spirit of the thing is just like, "We're just curious and we want to share with each other as New Yorkers about how we make this work." I wouldn't necessarily use the word indulgent.

I spoke with one family who was really cautious about their budget, like shopped at wholesale retailers for frozen meat twice a year and was really thoughtful about how they got food into the house. Almost never ate out at restaurants, but felt like it was really important to throw both their daughters big first birthday parties to celebrate their first year of life. They spent thousands of dollars on the venue rental and food and alcohol and everything for the party, but they were serious about saving on groceries, which I thought was just a really interesting trade off.

Amina Srna: We'll have to leave it there for today. Thank you all for your calls and your text messages on what you scrimp and save and splurge on. My guest was Eliza Shapiro, reporter covering New York City for The New York Times. She writes about households of all sizes and income brackets on how they make it work in her column Affording New York. Eliza, thank you so much for today.

Eliza Shapiro: Thanks for having me.

Amina Srna: I'm Amina Srna. This is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Stay tuned for All of It.

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