From $69K Debt to Financial Independence in NYC

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And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. Today is our last episode of our New York City series. This has been so much fun to talk to so many people in the FI community who have reached financial independence all while living in a very expensive city and proving Scott wrong that you don't have to live in a low cost of living area in order to reach FI. Kim Hunter-Borst didn't start her financial independence journey in New York City, but it's where everything changed. After moving from the Philippines and building a high-earning life with her husband, they found themselves $69,000 in debt thanks to lifestyle inflation. Instead of letting New York City costs derail them, they got intentional. They cut out expenses, leveraged a rent-stabilized apartment, and maxed out retirement accounts. Her story proves you do not need to leave a high cost of living city in order to reach financial independence. You just need a plan. Let's get into it. Kim Hunter-Boist, welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today. I'm excited to be here, especially for this topic. Yeah, let's jump right into your story. You were earning high incomes. You and her husband were earning high incomes, but you were still $69,000 in debt. What was the moment that made you think, oh, I got to make a change? So we were, as you said, high earners. And as high earners, we often think, oh, I'll always make that kind of money. I can make it again next year. It's not a big deal. And we were a blended family. And as stepmom, I thought it was my job to bring the fund. So I bought a lot of it. And then by the time, I think six or seven years into our marriage, we recognized that we were both working recession-proof industries. I was in health insurance and he was in health care. We recognized it was no longer recession-proof. So I was in the process of laying off half of my team when I thought, hey, I might be laid off as well. And if I were, what type of position would that put us in? And we were living at that time, not even paycheck to paycheck. It was the day before the next paycheck. that we were going, oh my gosh, we're in trouble. What are some of the changes that you made? Because getting to a place of paycheck to paycheck is pretty easy, but pulling back can be really difficult, especially if you're the fun one. It's difficult to pull back when you're the fun, but it's also difficult to pull back when you are a high earner because you tend to move in circles of friends that are also high earners and they're spending freely. So when you make the decision to make a pivot and say, oh, we can't go to brunch every Sunday or no, I'm sorry, we can't go out tonight for a bite to eat. No matter how great that happy hour is, it's still money spent. It was a matter of making those concessions and decisions to say, what are the things that are important to us? Our oldest was heading off to college that next year. And we were just like, do we want them to end up in a whole bunch of debt? Like we're in debt or do we sit down and have the conversation with them? And that's what we did. We sat down as a family. We talked about where we were with relations to retirement and the income that we had coming in and how we weren't being very smart with it. So we started looking at things critically, like eating out, buying groceries and still eating out, throwing those groceries out and spending money on things like cell phone services and being able to jump to the next phone. Just crazy things that we were spending money on that didn't make sense. We were paying for cable, home phone and internet. Who uses a home phone anymore? No one. The only person that was calling us on their home phone was my mother-in-law. So we just went through and started cutting out things that were unnecessary or things that are needs, but they're wrapped in wants. Like we needed cell phones, but did we need the cell phones that we had? We needed a cell phone plan, but did we need the one that we had? So we just started thinking differently. For example, we had AT&T and we were paying an exorbitant amount of money for AT&T. Nothing against AT&T. We then switched to Cricket Wireless, which was still owned by AT&T, runs on the same network, but we were paying a flat $100 for a family of five versus $300 for a family of three. So those are some of the changes we made. Was it hard to get buy-in from your kids? I think it was easier for our youngest. Our oldest was going off to college at the time. And so we made a deal with them. We said to them, while we are digging out of debt. We're going to need you guys to focus on school. And during the summers, we need you guys to work and your summer earnings are your pocket money. And you'll be responsible for your books when you go to college. And that was the deal. And we said to them, while we're digging out of debt, we don't expect you guys to go into an exorbitant amount of debt. We are challenging you to look at student loans as the last possible option. We found scholarships through this organization called SCOLI. We also went to both of our employers and found out that his employer would pay a third of our kids' tuition. The rest of it, we challenged them. We said, listen, if you can come out of school, the four-year program with $24,000 worth of student loan debt or less, we'll pay it all off for you. But if you come out of school with $24,050, we won't pay a dime. And because we gave them that challenge, they met the challenge. So knock on wood, we were able to dig our way out of debt in 18 months when the plan was two years. And after we dug our way out of debt, we started throwing all the money that we were paying towards debt Towards our retirement. We started investing and and mindy. I mentioned this earlier I'm, not sure if I mentioned it, but I think I mentioned it before that as a blended family We got married late in life. I was 42. He was 47 So by the time we got married, I had all my credit cards. He had all his credit cards So we didn't have one american express. We had three. We didn't have one capital one We had two. Blending a family, blending finances, you end up with all of this stuff that you find you don't need. By going through with a fine comb and eliminating things we were able to recognize that we were paying like one American Express bill we were paying a day in interest Ridiculousness Oh wow So where were you living at the time that you decided to get your financial self in order? We were living in Manhattan. So we live in Manhattan now. My husband, preferably, was in a rent-stabilized apartment. He moved here, I think, when I met my husband, he was raising two children. And the youngest, our daughter, was, I think, born six months after he moved into this apartment. So it is rent stabilized. It is a pre-war building in New York City. We pay half of what our neighbors pay to live in New York City, but it afforded us the opportunity to be able to cut back and live in a manner that was, I guess, a bit more savvy where we weren't spending every dollar. But I think initially not paying so much to live in New York, we overspent in every other category. So we were like, oh, we don't need three or $4,000 for rent. Let's spend that money having fun. And then when we recognized we overdid it on the fund, we had to just dial it back. Walk us through what your housing costs are in this, I think, rent-stabilized apartment. So I have to be honest, we live in a rent-stabilized apartment, but we also co-own a lake house. So do you want the cost of just living here in New York City or the cost of all housing? I would love to get an overview of your whole housing, how you think about your housing costs in a broad sense. Our apartment in New York City costs, it just went up to $1,720 a month, which I guess folks outside of New York, that's a lot of money. But in New York City, that's pennies. And so our rent is $1,720 a month. Our utilities, it comes with heat and hot water. So we just pay for electricity. And that runs between $75 to $125 a month. It depends on if it's summer and we are running AC versus not. We pay for internet, which is $60 a month for streaming. And I think that's it for housing costs. And then the lake house, our portion of that, we taxes, mortgage insurance expenses. We don't pay for sanitation or water because there is a well and we pay for propane. We put $1,000 a month towards that. that's for all expenses plus any emergencies that might come up. How far away is the lake house? Two hours. We own a car. We drive up there. We pay for parking. We bought a used car. We put miles on the car, but we have a great time. We go to the lake maybe one weekend out of the month. Initially, we were going more frequently during the pandemic. But now we go a little less often because we're both retired and we travel a lot. When you started this, we were talking about being $69,000 in debt. How old were you and how long until you retired? It was 2016 when we recognized we were in debt. We got married in 2009 and I was 42. So I was like 48, 49 when we started digging out of debt. And my husband at the time was seven years older than me. So I was 48, he was like 55. And I have to say, being high earners, when you start looking at your finances, you recognize you're not starting from ground zero. So I was fortunate enough to have put money in my 401k. I didn't understand what I was putting money into. As a young 21-year-old, a friend of mine just happened to say, put 3% in to get the match. Just put 3% in every year, increase it. Well, I put the 3% in. And by the time my husband and I looked up, I was still only putting in the bare minimum. I think I got up to like 6% by the time we got married. But at that time, I had been working in my career for quite some time. So I had about $219,000 in my 401k and he had about $17,000 in his 403b. But other than that, we were bringing in about $334,000 a year between income and bonuses. But we were spending every dime of it and then some. But by the time we found out about FI and got ourselves together, got our act together, we recognized we didn't need all that money to live on and we scaled down. How many years into your careers were you each at the point where you're making this $335,000? I think I was 20 some odd years into my career by the time I started figuring out finances. Way too late, I should say. Not too late because you were able to retire. Exactly. At any age. So it wasn't too late, but you could have, I mean, we could talk all of the coulda, woulda, shouldas, but that's not going to help anybody. You know, oh, everybody could have started saving earlier. Everybody could have saved more. everybody could have done whatever. How does rent stabilization work? Because that seems like a huge boost for your FI journey. I mean, we can't discount the high income, but again, if you're spending every single dollar that comes in, then your income, it doesn't matter how much you're making. This is true. Rent stabilization, I don't know how it works everywhere else in the country, but in New York City, there is this organization that oversees, I think it's NYSHCR, I think are there initials for it. I can look that up and give it to you. But it's usually a building that was built prior to 1974. It's usually six plus units. And then you can reach out to this organization and find out. Your landlord should tell you if the apartment is rent stabilized, but they don't always do so. But you can go online and confirm whether or not your unit is rent stabilized. And rent stability just means that they are not able to raise the rent as often and not as high as they would like annually. There are regulations in place that says all rent-stabilized apartments will see a 2% increase this year or a 3% increase. And sometimes it's no increase at all, but that's regulated by the state. Oh, by the state. Okay. Each state has different rules for rent stabilization. This seems very clear-cut to me, right? Yes, you had $69,000 in debt, but you brought in so much income. $335,000 is still probably in the top 25% for sure of Manhattan area for a household in terms of household income. So that's a wonderful income. And that's those are opportunities that are real in Manhattan for many people, not everyone, but for many people, especially after, you know, a few decades in the workforce and ramping one's skill set. But the real cheat code here is the rent stabilized apartment. How long have you or your husband been in this apartment? My husband moved here when my daughter was born. So she is now 27. So he moved in right before she was born and he received the rent stabilization. I don't know what he was paying to live here at that time. But by the time we got married in 2009, our rent was $1,200. When we moved in, I was the person saying, I can't live in an apartment. I've always lived in a home. I own my own house. What is this? This is ridiculous. And I kept saying we needed to move. And he kept saying, this is the only house my kids have ever known. So I would prefer that we stay here at least for a little while while they adjust. They live through a divorce. They're adjusting to a blended family. Let's not outroot them. So I listened. And after a couple of years, especially when we started looking at ways in which to better manage our money, I recognized having this rent-stabilized apartment afforded us an opportunity to live on half of our income. So while we made $334, by the time we retired, we were only living off of half of that. And we were also being generous with our giving, because I think if you are fortunate enough to earn any type of income, if you have the ability to give back, then you should look at doing so. So we were carving out, say, 10% of our income to donate each year. Walk me through, what's market rent for this apartment? How many square feet? What kind of place are we talking about here? So we have a two bedroom, one bath, hardwood floors, 12 foot ceilings. We live in a building that has an elevator, which is huge in New York. We have laundry in the building. It's in the basement. It's not in our unit. But some units, some apartments have been flipped and they now have dishwashers and washing machines and dryers in their units. And those units can run about $3,500 a month, where we're about half of that. Anybody who is moving to New York City could find themselves a rent-stabilized property, right? Absolutely. I had a friend move in down the street from me. He moved in maybe six years ago and his was a rent stabilized apartment. He had the choice between choosing a rent stabilized apartment, which was maybe $20 higher than an unstabilized apartment. And he chose the rent stabilized apartment because he knew that the rent wouldn't go up as much. That's why I asked, how does rent stabilization work? Because I don't live in New York City and I don't live in a rent stabilized. I didn't know how that worked. I was wondering if maybe because your husband moved in so long ago, he got a great rate, but then anybody else wouldn't get that great rate. But this applies to everybody. Yes. The way rent stabilization works if we were to leave this apartment most people with rent stabilized apartments never leave them But if we were to leave this apartment right now we paying Whoever moves in, they can only increase the rent, say 3%. They can't bring it up to a regular market rate. 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When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1,500 corporate guides who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data, and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash moneyfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash moneyfree. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. So from a tenant standpoint, New York City just got a whole lot better. You're looking for pre-1974 properties with six or more units. I think in New York City, you can find that pretty easily. Not all of them are rent-stabilized, but a lot of them are. Some of them received the rent stabilization simply for tax abatement reasons, and it ran out or expired after a certain period of time. But for the most part, the rent-stabilized apartments are either still available or the building has gone co-op, but they can't turn those apartments into co-ops without offering the tenant that's there with the rent stabilized contract, the opportunity to buy it below market value. This sounds like a really big cheat code that it's probably available in other cities, but we're not talking about other cities, but it's not available to me in Longmont. If I were to go out and rent a two bedroom, one bath apartment in Longmont, I'm paying more than your $1,700 a month. There's also, I have neighbors, so they're maybe paying more money that I'm paying, but they're sharing with roommates. Most people that moved to New York City are not moving to New York City thinking, oh, I can afford the rent by myself, or I can afford to buy something. Because in New York City, if you buy an apartment, my mother-in-law, for example, owns an apartment in Manhattan near Lincoln Center, and she pays not only to own the apartment, but she also pays maintenance. Most buildings in New York City, even if you buy them outright, you still have monthly maintenance, which is the equivalent of rent or mortgage. So most folks So when they move to New York, they know it's high cost of living and they're going to split that cost with someone. So my husband and I contribute. So you can look at it as if we're two roommates sharing an apartment, although we're cozy roommates. We're trying to understand what are the relative advantages and disadvantages of fire in New York City. And it seems like I can summarize what I've learned so far. I want to hear your full take on this. But it seems like it's, in this case, rent stabilization and high income, relatively high income opportunities. And those two things are a huge boost to your FIRE journey. Is that what else? It sounds like you're going to react and have more. I look at my neighbors in my building. So we have a mixture of folks. We have some folks that are appointed judges and others are attorneys. But then we have some that are working in the creative space. They are on Broadway or they're traveling or they work for the symphony and they're not working in high incomes. But there are things that New York City affords you that most cities don't. So, for example, we own a car and we only own a car because we have a lake house and we drive up. But if you live in New York City, the subway system is so affordable. And most people that live in New York City and work in New York City, their companies offer them a commuter discount. That commuter program, you're paying less than one percent of your income on transportation, where most people outside of New York City have to own a car and have to pay for auto insurance and gas and a car note and all of those other things. New York City also affords you opportunities that are, I guess, mind-blowing to most people that come into the city for Broadway shows. We have things like the Lincoln Center Theater Group or the Roundabout Theater Club where you pay 70 bucks a year to be a part of it and they give you 60 to 70 percent off on Broadway tickets seven or eight times a year. You get a list that says these are all the shows you can choose from. There are just so many opportunities here. The museums are free if you're a New York resident. Most people don't realize that. They think, oh, I have to pay to go to the museums. We don't. It's just afforded to us. And there's so many things that are happening here that are low cost or no cost. I can go out and eat dinner for as low as $8 in New York City or $200. It's up to me what I choose. It is affordable. Most of the units, they prefer roommates or prefer to have folks move in. And most of the landlords are renting spaces out to multiple people at one time. So instead of one lease, like my husband and I are on one lease, but most of them, because this is a two bedroom unit, they would have two separate leases in this unit. One person will rent one space and the other one will rent the other. And if one person moves out, they can just find a replacement for that one person. Kim, what do you spend on an annual basis? We just had this conversation yesterday. It was so funny. My husband was concerned, but we spend about $125,000, but that's because we are recently retired and we're in our go-go years. So we baked an amount of money for our fun and travel and having a good time. But normally without that extra money, extra spend, our numbers are somewhere about $75,000 a year. And what does the typical day look like on that spend? Or like, what are some of the highlights, you know, from a Tuesday and or some of these big trips? So for example, today, I spent about three hours in the gym. I'm a member of Lifetime Gym. I don't know if you know about it, but it's a bit expensive. And I don't care because it allows me to pamper myself after a hard workout. I can go get in a cryo chair. I can go in a steam room. I can swim a bit. So a typical day is my husband is a coffee snob. So he has a roaster that roasts his beans within the last five days. Otherwise, it's an issue. So I get up, he makes his great coffee. We chat about our day. He may go out and go for a walk. He also plays instruments. So he may spend some time playing his upright bass. I head to the gym. I give myself a routine of allowing myself no less than three hours, three to four times a week at the gym so I can pamper myself. Then we come back. We decide, are we cooking dinner tonight? Are we going to grab something out? Do we have plans with friends? It can be a number of things. We can go to a show. It varies from day to day. We're never bored. And then I have my five friends and our community, our neighbors. We have a community garden that we plant together. We have mixers together We have one neighbor that just recently moved into a assisted living So a couple of neighbors got together yesterday and went to visit her bought a brownie It just a typical day I don't think it's different than anyone else in the other city. Gym, bite to eat, dinner, spending time with friends and family, catching a show, traveling. Like I'm going on a Fintox cruise this coming weekend and we'll travel for a week doing that. You're going to have such a good time. I know. That sounds like a wonderful, wonderful day-to-day life filled with lots of adventure and fun and healthy and wholesome pursuits. So congratulations on what you've achieved. And, you know, I thank you for sharing all of the wonderful perspective on fire in New York City, not just the two obvious advantages of income and relatively low housing costs in your situation specifically. So really, really fascinating deep dive. Thank you so much. Yeah. And most people, I think, think once you retire, you have to leave New York City, but you don't. Not if you got a rent stabilized apartment for $1,700 a month. Yeah. I mean, when I think of New York City, having never lived there, I think that rent, I mean, when you say three or $4,000, I'm thinking I thought it was more. I was on the High Line and I was walking and I saw an ad that said, oh, here's this. And the pictures were beautiful. They're like $10,000 a month. And I thought, oh, is that what rent is like in New York City? No, it depends. In my neighborhood, we are rent stabilized. But I have a neighbor that lives in a duplicate apartment to me that's right next door. And they've been here for some time. So they're not paying $3,300. They're paying like $28. But right across the street, there's a building where a two-bedroom apartment is like $7,000. It depends on the building and the amenities. But that building that has the $7,000, they have a rooftop terrace. They have a gym. They have all these amenities. So when you hear people are paying $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 rent in New York, They're not paying for all these other things that most people pay for because it's all built in. Okay. But still, like, I don't know. I just, I can't swallow $7,000 a month for rent. I can't either. But you know what? In New York City, we have several fire groups. There is the New York City fire group. There's Choose FI. There's the Bogleheads. There's Irish Journey. We never have a mixer where there's, or a meetup where there's less than like 45 of us, But there's several hundred people that are part of all of these groups. There's tons of us doing it in New York. And we just do it together. I love that. And several of them reached out to us. I have to say, there are young people. You probably spoke with Eli, who was a part of the Sparks. We did. Those are the folks that are under 30 trying to figure out how to do this in New York City. And they're thriving. And they're not making tons of money either, but they're being smart about it. I think that's the underlying theme here is that you have to be smart about it. Make good choices. Don't choose the $7,000 apartment. I love that your husband was like, hey, can we just stay here for a little bit? And then you see, yeah, I mean, what if you had moved to the $7,000 apartment? That makes it so much harder to cut your expenses. So start off with as low as possible. My advice to anyone moving to New York City, regardless of how much money you make, that you move here with a realistic notion of not putting yourself in a position where you just recognize it's not a sex in the city movie, living here every day. And you're not walking down the street in Manolo Blahnik's shoes. It's just for everyday life. Find a couple of roommates if you really want to live here and make it happen. That's awesome. Kim, I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us how you make FI work in New York City. Thank you very much for your time. Now, I know that you have a women's retreat. Is it just for women still? You have a retreat, a FI retreat along the lines of Camp FI, but different. Please tell us what that's called. and when it's happening? It is called Is Women a Phi? And it is women-centered events. And we run this retreat annually every April and we just sold out. But the women that come say that they like to bring their partners and their friends that are five, but not really fluent. So now we offer two events a year. We offer a women-centered event in April. And in the fall, we do a co-ed event and they bring their partners along. And it is wonderful. I recognize the fact that women currently are in control of about $1.8 trillion. And with this great wealth transfer that's about to happen, that's going to climb to $3.5 trillion. And if women are not educated and don't have agency over their finances, what are they going to do? Go sit in an advisor and let them charge them 1%? No way. No, they can use an advisor like domain money. Exactly. So we are focused on our mission is to make sure the ladies come, get plugged in and learn from one another and that they continue their relationships in the Phi community, far beyond the weekend event. We also co-moderate a WeWolf collective that was born out of economy. There's about just under 700 women now that are part of that private virtual group on Facebook. And we co-moderate monthly events where we have folks come in and teaching insight sessions. Jackie Cummings Kosky from Catch Up the Phi came in and talked about taxes that every Phi woman should know about, but it's wonderful. So people can follow us, Women of Fi, and join us in person, or they can join us monthly on the We Love Collective. Do you have a waiting list just in case somebody can't go to the April event? Yes, the waiting list should be published shortly. We apologize for that one. It moves so quickly. We saw that in 30 hours. We were blown away. That's awesome. Okay, Kim. Well, thank you. Thank you for starting that group because I just, I think that there's so much value in in-person FI events. So, and now there's one up in the Northeast too. So perfect. All right, Kim, again, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. All right, that was Kim Hunter-Borst. And one of my favorite parts about Kim's story is the fact that she had a rent stabilized apartment that allowed her to really accelerate her journey because she's not worried that rent's gonna go up all the time. And that's just not something that's featured in these lower cost of living areas. You could be living in a quote unquote low cost of living area and still be paying more than Kim is for rent. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast and this series of living in a high cost of living area like New York City. We would love to hear from you and hear how you liked this story. We'd love to hear from you if you have a similar story. You can email Mindy at biggerpocketsmoney.com or Scott at biggerpocketsmoney.com. Would you like more financial independence information? Hop on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com and sign up for our newsletter. We also have free resources, templates, and calculators to help you accelerate your journey to FI. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Indy Jensen saying see you later, Navigator. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. 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