I have a love-hate relationship with New York City. New York will eat you up and spit you out. It is an intensely stressful place full of intensely stressed-out people, and the stress is not an accident. It is the cost of entry.
The Cost
Everything is incredibly expensive. $200 to go out with two friends at a medium-nice restaurant. The working class lives far out in the outer boroughs because almost no one else can afford to live in. To literally do anything in the city costs an arm and a leg.
And there is a specific dimension that makes it worse: the lack of third spaces. Almost nowhere to just be without paying. No porch. No bench with shade. No quiet coffee shop that does not feel like renting a seat by the minute.
For most of the country, a city is where you live. In New York, a city is what you buy yourself into, every single day.
The Tool
New York is a tool.
It is a container for some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Most of the people who move the most capital, shape the most culture, and set the most policy pass through New York on a regular cadence. If you have a mission that requires proximity to that concentration, the math of being there works despite the costs. The costs become an operating expense of the mission.
The Test
The question you have to answer before investing real time in New York is: do I have a way to activate the wealth and power here for the mission I am working on?
If yes, the $200 dinner is a line item. The outer-borough commute is a rounding error. The lack of third spaces is irrelevant because you are not there to hang out. You are there to work, and the work happens inside rooms that cost real money to be invited into. See why you go to the gala for the mechanics. See speaking the language of capital for the fluency the rooms require.
If no, New York is a very fast way to go poor. You will pay the costs without collecting the returns that justify them. You will spend a year exhausted and broke, wondering why the city did not love you back.
Austin Is The Home. New York Is The Business Trip.
Austin is where I live. See why Austin. New York is where I go when the mission requires it. I do not live there. I go there to work, and then I come home.
Treat a tool like a home and it will bankrupt you. Treat a home like a tool and you will never put roots down. The mistake most people make with New York is the first one.
The city is worth the cost if you have a mission that can activate its wealth. Without that, it is the most expensive place in the country to quietly go broke.