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?

Glennys Torres’s door in the Bronx is, at once, a portal to a small business and a home. Stepping in, a cacophony of children’s voices rises from the first floor. Along the stairs that lead to the second floor are paper tapestries covered in finger paint drying in the midafternoon sun.

These are the early signs of a business beginning to flourish, but one that comes with risks.

For much of her adulthood, Ms. Torres, 36, worked long hours as a teacher’s assistant in Manhattan, living in her mother-in-law’s rent controlled apartment in the Bronx with her family of five.

But after 10 years, Ms. Torres felt as if her wages were stagnating at the same time the city was getting more expensive. Despite a decade of experience, she lacked a teaching degree, which prevented her from getting raises, she said.

So last year, Ms. Torres made the decision to leave behind the security of her job to start a day care — one that she hopes will eventually offer her family the ability to propel themselves across income brackets and ZIP codes.

“I know one day I’d like to have a house with a backyard where my kids can play and get dirty and I can garden,” said Ms. Torres, who immigrated to New York from the Dominican Republic at 18. “I don’t need luxuries, I would still manage my business but just maybe from a house upstate. It would be nice to not worry about rent every month.”

Budgeting with Debt

Before opening the day care, Ms. Torres earned $46,000 annually, which amounted to roughly $36,000 a year after taxes. Her husband, Edward Torres, 39, works part time as a home health aide and his earnings brought the family’s after tax income to roughly $45,000.

The income wasn’t high enough to qualify for small business loans, so Ms. Torres took what little savings she had and poured it into the lease for the day care. That cost $10,500, including first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit.

The family now lives on the second floor of the building in the Wakefield section of the Bronx and operates the day care downstairs.

“I feel proud, but, at the same time, I feel a lot of fear because what happens if none of this works? What will I do then?” Ms. Torres said. “I used to cry every first day of the month because I knew rent was due. I still do cry — a lot.”

At first, the business was slow to take off. For six months, they only had one student. Ms. Torres would compose herself in front of parents, but would often go to an empty room to sob alone.

Today, the family pays $3,500 a month for a renovated 3-bedroom apartment and $3,500 a month to lease the unit below them for the day care. Utilities stack up: roughly $500 in electricity for both units, $200 for the family’s cellphone plan and about $80 a month for the internet.

Ms. Torres, who has an associate degree in business, used credit cards in order to finance her business. The family currently has over $20,000 in business related debt and has had to tighten the spending belt.

“Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,” said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. “Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.”

Her husband earns $19.65 per hour, working 20 hours per week. The rest of the time he is at the center, driving children via a car-pooling service they offer. The family receives SNAP benefits for food, but estimates that they still spend almost $200 a month on groceries.

Affording Summer Camp

While working her old job, Ms. Torres struggled with where to send her children during the day. They would sometimes return home rattled from free summer camps offered by public schools. There were fights, unruly children and overworked teachers, she said. Leaving them at home in front of a screen was no better.

With the day care, she can keep an eye on her children upstairs while she runs the business downstairs. Most importantly, she makes sure none of the children are glued to their devices.

“I have a zero electronics policy,” Ms. Torres said. “If you are with a kid and he’s on a tablet, he’s not processing the world around him. But if you give him a paint brush and a canvas, you see his personality start to come out.”

The day care’s name is a nod to this value: Little Creators Daycare.

The family caught a break with The Fresh Air Fund, which provides sleepaway camps to children in underserved communities, including free gear, transportation and lodging. The family enrolled their three children in a camp set up in honor of 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, who was a victim of gang violence in the Bronx.

Ms. Torres’s oldest son, Ryan, 16, has attended for eight years and is a camp counselor in training. Her other two children, Darius, 11, and Evander, 10, are returning for their third summer.

“I wanted them to be in nature, play in the dirt, get dirty,” Ms. Torres said. “When they came back saying that they couldn’t wait for next year, I knew it was the right decision.”

New Business, New Opportunities

Ms. Torres uses free time to pick up extra work. She prepares paperwork for other day cares, earning $150 per consultation.

After months of struggling, Ms. Torres now has nine students, which pulls in roughly $4,500 a month — just enough to break even. On a recent Tuesday she fielded calls from families hoping to enroll their children. Business was picking up.

“I can feel things are starting to turn around,” Ms. Torres said. “The parents love me, and I have five stars on Google.”

Over the past year the family has had to cut out gifts, activities and expenses in order to focus on the business. Ms. Torres and her husband used to go on frequent dates, but they last went out on Juneteenth. They went to a happy hour at Pier 26, spending less than $50 on a glass of cabernet sauvignon, an order of calamari and a chicken appetizer.

Good news arrived in the spring when Ms. Torres learned that she had qualified for the city’s 2-K program. She expects eight to 12 students in the fall at a higher price point per student than traditional day care, and she will also be able to offer “after-school” day care when the 2-K day wraps up.

When she told her landlord about the new income he cut her a deal: He said he would give her four months rent free as a way to invest in her business so that he could keep her as a long term tenant.

“There was one point when I said to my husband, ‘I think I’m going to give this house back and go back to your mother’s,’” Ms. Torres said. “That wasn’t long ago and my husband said, ‘Stop, you have the experience to do this. You can do this.’ He was right. I left my job for this. I can’t backtrack. This is New York City.”

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?

Ryan Compton knows a thing or two about gigs. To make it in New York, he has worked as a retail associate inside the Museum of Modern Art’s gift store, a cashier for a downtown taqueria and a paint mixer for Takashi Murakami. He has experienced the paradox of a city both known for its artists and for pricing artists out.

Financial constraints forced Mr. Compton, who is from South Jersey, to move away from New York twice over the course of two decades. He has lived in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, but remains convinced the resources and people inside New York are unparalleled.

“You never know who you’re going to run into,” he said. “Everyone’s curious about each other.”

Since moving back in 2022, he has whittled down his source of income to a single gig as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he made $51,000 before taxes last year. It’s his second time at the museum. He first worked there part-time in 2011 before leaving in 2015 to earn his master’s degree in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“I know I couldn’t afford graduate school and the cost of living in New York at the same time,” he said.

A third try at New York life has forced Mr. Compton, now 46, to confront the sustainability behind a career as both an interdisciplinary artist and a security guard — even inside one of the most famous museums in the world.

Love at First Sight (With New York)

As an undergraduate student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Mr. Compton looked forward to spending weekends at his friend’s apartment gallery in the East Village in Manhattan.

A combination of showing face and knowing the right person led to his side project at the time — fashioning 3-d printed stuffed animals with skull faces — which were featured in an issue of Vogue Japan. He even sold a few inside a handmade craft store in Tokyo’s Ginza district for about $1,000.

“I was interested in the contrast between fuzzy-shaped animals and skulls,” he said, later adding, “You know, stuff when you’re a 20-something-year-old being kind of edgy.”

The early moment of success propelled Mr. Compton to chase after opportunities to showcase his work. While supporting himself financially through retail and service jobs, he helped write the artist Roman Ondak’s interactive performance piece at MoMA, “Measuring the Universe;” and worked as a collaborator for “No Souls for Sale,” an experimental project temporarily at Dia Chelsea and later, the Tate Modern in London. Both went unpaid.

“The chance to work in modern art before I was 30 is unheard of,” Mr. Compton said. “It only happens in New York.”

A Slower Pace

Tens of thousands of people flock to the Metropolitan on weekends, and it’s Mr. Compton’s job — one he has found increasingly difficult — to make sure the art is untouched. He believes social media has altered the way visitors engage with the museum. Think more selfies and poses leaned against Hellenistic marble.

The one hour work commute from Parkchester in the East Bronx gives him time to prepare for a long day ahead. He splits a two-bedroom with a co-worker for $1,000 a month and pays $50 in utilities. Heat and water are included in his rent, and his roommate covers the cost of Wi-Fi. He pays $90 each month for his phone bill.

The slower pace of the residential neighborhood matches the stage of life he’s in now. In the last few years, Mr. Compton has slowed down as he has come to terms with the expenses behind his art.

He no longer has free access to fabrication laboratories pegged to his university, and he has opted for the more cost-friendly hobbies of zine-making and book binding. He is, however, eyeing a $1,000 3-d printer. For now, he has settled on $20 a month Photoshop subscription.

The largest constraint tempering Mr. Compton’s spending is his $100,000 student loan debt from graduate school. The window for his deferment period closed, and even with some money he inherited after his mother passed, he says he needs a miracle to finish paying off his loans. “I’m not sure what to do anymore,” he said.

Splurging on Plants and Experimental Harsh Noise Records

Mr. Compton may not have any children, but he is a proud “plant dad.”

His apartment houses $1,000 worth of plants sourced through Facebook groups, pop-ups and by following Brooklyn Horticulture online. He typically pays $30-$50 for medium to large sized plants, but he is constantly on the lookout for deals.

When he isn’t at home with his plants, Mr. Compton treks into Manhattan to do his weekly grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. He prefers the prices there to local spots in the Bronx and estimates he spends $70 each week.

A cash guzzler of Mr. Compton’s food budget is the $20 a day — an additional $80 a week — he spends at the Metropolitan’s staff cafeteria for breakfast and lunch. When working 12 hour shifts, “I’m not gonna go home and make something to bring the next day,” he said.

On his days off, he seeks out affordable food deals. He frequents Vanessa’s Dumplings in Chinatown for their $8 dumpling special.

When in the mood to treat himself, Mr. Compton rides the train a few more stops out to Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn, to visit his favorite record stores like Fringe Records and Nexus Records. An experimental harsh noise aficionado, he spends no less than $100 each visit.

His biggest and most recent splurge was a 10-day trip to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka in Japan in February. He was able to cut his $900 round trip ticket to $700 with credit card points. Add in the cost of hotels, meals and souvenirs, he spent close to $5,000 total.

“I wanted to go because my artwork had been to Japan, but I haven’t been to Japan,” he said.

Looking Ahead

Mr. Compton wants to strike a balance between saving and enjoying the life he dreamed of in New York. To help pay off his loans, he considered applying to be an art handler for the Metropolitan, a job with a slight pay bump. But without his present benefit of overtime pay, he’s afraid he would be making less than he does currently.

Over the years, Mr. Compton has found community among other security guards at the Metropolitan, who, like him, are artists. He has also built inroads with notable names at the museum, one being Sheena Wagstaff, the former chairman of modern and contemporary art, who he said took the time to know Mr. Compton not only as a co-worker, but also as an individual, too.

Because of his connections, he feels like he has nowhere else to go. He considered a quieter lifestyle upstate in Westchester or the Catskills, but believes he will make less money outside of the city. And, of course, he would have to leave the place he’s called home for the majority of his adult years.

“I did four other cities, and they weren’t as good or great as I like New York,” he said. “I always end up here.”