How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?

Jill Parsons knew it was going to be tough to go to graduate school for a Ph.D. in biology and that living in New York could make it even harder. Most of her friends in the city work in banking or consulting and have a lot more disposable income than she does.

But her better-off crew has turned out to be her saving grace as she navigates New York City on her $49,522 Columbia University annual stipend. Her friends — a mix of people from Milford, Conn., where she grew up, and Williams College, where she studied biology — put her up on their couches when it’s too late to take the subway home. They float her drinks or dinner. They agree to eat tacos (again) even when they can afford omakase.

“I’m always blown away with how generous my friends have been to me during all of this, and I think that is the way that I’m really able to get through, especially when things get hard,” she said.

Ms. Parsons works about 50 hours a week in a biomedical research lab with mice, studying metabolism and nutrient biology. She lives in Columbia student housing, which keeps her rent at a manageable $1,524 a month. Her medical care is subsidized.

So her biggest optional expense is going out on the weekend, when she wants to have fun. She tries to keep the tab for her one big night out a week to about $100, but it’s not easy.

Days at the Lab

Ms. Parsons, 25, lives near her lab in Washington Heights, so she is able to walk to work. Breakfast, typically yogurt and some cereal, costs about $3. Almost every day she brings lunch to the lab, which she prepares the night before.

As a former competitive ice hockey player at Williams, she learned about nutrition and how to eat healthy. She keeps her grocery bill tight by only buying what she will actually eat.

Typically, that means buying chicken, turkey and a few vegetables, which she will often cook in her air fryer. For snacks, she gets a variety of fruits and extras like popcorn, protein bars and almond milk. The bill comes to about $35 a week at Trader Joe’s, and about $50 per week at Whole Foods or Morton Williams for odds and ends.

She keeps weekday evenings simple. After dinner in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with a roommate, she usually works out. In a huge money saver, her sister teaches at a New York Yoga studio, which allows her to take classes there for free. And her $100 annual membership to the weight lifting studio in her building was free because she won a fitness competition by doing 13 pull-ups and bench pressing 120 pounds.

“It wasn’t that impressive,” she said.

She also plays in a ball hockey league, which is basically hockey on a basketball court with a ball and sticks. Dues for the season, which runs April to November, are $150. She also paid $100 for the jersey, as a one-time expense.

Weekend Willpower

The weekends test her willpower. She often heads to downtown Manhattan, where most of her friends live, for a festive night out at a restaurant or bar. Even when they are splitting the check, she is careful with what she orders. “I definitely pick the lower price points,” she said.

She typically looks up the restaurants her friends propose, and if the prices are really outrageous, she suggests a more affordable option. Some of her favorites are Roey’s in the West Village, where you can split a pizza and a salad for a bit more than $20; Grey Dog for basic classics; and Taqueria St Marks Place for $4 tacos and $9 margaritas.

She looks for cheap ways to keep up with fashion trends, spending $20 to $25 for a shirt at Old Navy, or on a splurge — $50 at Aritzia. Sometimes it’s more. She spent $250, plus tip, on highlights in June to celebrate passing a qualifying exam for her doctorate. But taxis back home when it gets late are out of the question at $50 to $100. So occasionally she ends up sleeping over with friends, which is fun, “but kind of feels crummy sometimes because you feel like you’re imposing,” she said. “That’s really where it feels like the financial situation kind of weighs on you.”

Her tight-knit group, anchored by four close female friends, have made it clear they understand. And that makes the frustrations manageable.

Some nights, they will buy her dinner or cover her drinks, telling her it’s not a problem because she traveled all the way downtown to see them. “Or they’ll be like, ‘Oh, you get the next one.’ And then I go to get the next one, and they’re like, ‘No, no, no, I got it.’”

The Sacrifices are Worth It — For Now

She has to say no when her friends go on skiing trips or take island getaways. But the hardest thing may be looking into the future. “In a few years if they wanted to maybe buy a house or do something — I don’t think that I would really be in that position for a few years longer than that.”

To make matters worse, science funding has been under fire, and there are no guarantees of a sustainable career. She saw that first hand when the Trump administration froze Columbia’s federal research grants in 2025, just as she was choosing where she would do her research. In the past year or so, she has become more open to mulling over what other career paths she could take after graduation.

“When I came in before everything went crazy, I definitely was pretty set on staying in academia,” she said. “But I think with so many labs that are not getting funded, even though they’re doing exceptional research and they would normally be funded in other years, it’s definitely made me open to reconsidering.”

Working for a pharmaceutical company, in consulting or venture capital may feel less noble, but it could put her on a more secure financial path. With about $20,000 in savings from waitressing, parents who can offer limited help and three or four years left in her studies, that is something she has to take seriously.

For now, though, she feels the trade-off of being a graduate student in New York is worth it. She thinks her research, which is studying a kind of good fat in the body called brown fat, is vital, and she prefers it to working 80 hours a week and hating the hours, like some of her friends in consulting and finance.

“I think research is a lot of fun,” she said. “I’m not just staring at an Excel spreadsheet or getting told what to do by someone far away. It all feels very tangible and nice.”