If you live in New York City you know that because we are masochists, when you have a car and no access to a garage (likely 300-600$ a month!), you spend one or two days a week sitting in your car so you don’t get a ticket. It’s called Alternate Side of the Street Parking and it blows. You can also double park your car and run inside your apartment and then run back out an hour and a half later when the street cleaners are done, but I live in Flatbush where we do things differently. Also, I’m a mom and we like to do things in our cars. Like write and text. You can get a lot of writing done in your car, ask any writer mom who has a car, she knows. I know writer moms who have written entire novels in their cars.
Some of us New York city drivers sit in our cars and don’t move them, and the street cleaner goes around us, like we’re all engaged in a ritualistic, small time protest in which our refusal to move gets us unclean streets and the pride of knowing we thwarted the street cleaner.
Because, legally you can’t get a ticket if you’re sitting in your car. Because on the other side of Prospect Park in very white Park Slope, they only have to move their cars once a week. Because parking tickets are the ultimate city grift. Because once I called the city to find out how to get your local streets to shift to one day a week alternate side of the street, and found out that after something like three to four years of “proving” you can keep your own streets clean, you can make a petition or file a request or some such nonsense. I don’t think that’s going to happen over here where I once to my great delight found a discarded package for a giant dildo in the tree lawn by my car. Gosh, I hope they had fun.
It does seem pretty fishy to me that on my side of Flatbush, which I affectionately call the Black side, we have to move our cars twice because we’re dirty and on the other more white side, they only have to move their cars once.
Also, let me be plain. I’m a gentrifier. I’d like to deny it and make excuses for myself, but I am a white queer disabled person of Swedish, German, English, and Cuban family origins who moved into a mostly Caribbean neighborhood. Do I prefer people of color to white people? Often, yes. Would I rather live in a neighborhood where most everyone has regular jobs—teachers, principals, MTA drivers, and nurses, to name a few occupations in my building. Yes. Do I want a yoga studio to open up down the block. Sure. But we just got a Black woman-owned Pilates Studio, so that’s pretty great. Do I think I somehow did a better, less gentrifying thing by buying a delapidated coop apartment built in 1963 instead of a new fancy condo? Maybe. Am I wrong about that? Probably.
I did not mean to write about all of that. But hey, it’s my blog, and I try to go with the flow.
Moving along.
Hello from my car, can you give me some money? January is a lean month for me and so far all of my efforts to secure extra income this month are failing (Take a class with me! Hire me to be your writing boss! Help me start my Only Fans page! Can a professor have an Only Fans page? She can dream can’t she?) So subscribe a little? Give a mama some cash?
Sometimes I like to imagine what my readers think of me, and because I’m a depressive with fairly low self-esteem, it’s not always great. One thing I imagine, every time I ask for money is that people are like, “Why is Carley always so broke?”
I have also come to learn that most of the things I think about myself are completely untrue. For example, this New Year’s Eve I did stand up again, and I thought I was bombing, like epically, and so I stopped my set after what seemed like two minutes. Later, when I watched the video, I saw that actually I made it to six minutes and that people laughed the whole time. Not only are my feelings not facts, often my sense of what is happening is completely wrong.
But transparency is always good when it comes to money and shame, so here is my monthly intake/outtake:
Take home monthly pay from my primary job as professor at NYU: $5000 (I’m going to round up or down a bit on all of this, but it’s somewhere between 4950 and 5000)
Bills:
Mortgage: $880
Maintenance: $950 (another cool NYC thing, which I really do believe in, is that when you buy a coop, all of the shareholders pay maintenance together for the upkeep of the building. My building is kind of a mess, and yes, we’re trying to fix this, so what can I say, but yeah this is going to go up forever and nobody is happy about it)
TIAACREF Loan Payment: $500 (I took out this loan so I’d have part of a down payment on the coop)
Con Edison Electricity: it varies but can be anywhere from $150 to $400 in the summer. This month I paid $150 on a bill of $400
Phone: $160
Taxes: $200 (Did you know that if you can’t pay your taxes all at once, you can set up very low interest payment plans with the IRS!) Cool story bro, my taxes have been through the roof for the last three years, because during COVID because of the COVID CARES ACT, I could finally, for this one time in my whole goddamn life until I retire get into my retirement account for the rest of my down payment. As per Federal Government guidelines, when you take out money from your retirement account before you retire, you are taxed like a motherfucker. So I basically took out $150k and had to pay back to the IRS over the next three years, 50k, and me being me, I was not as careful with that 50k as I could have been, but also I had to pay for movers, I bought the car for 6k, there were closing costs I couldn’t have imagined, homeowner’s insurance, etc…). That 50k is almost paid back, I think I owe like $2000 more on that, but probably in two years, I might get a tax refund. Donald Trump has never paid a dime in taxes, but we all sure do. I’m excited for the 2024 election, AREN’T YOU?
Loan payment I took out to pay off a bad credit card situation: $400
Cable and Internet: I don’t like have cable channels but I have high-speed internet and a Roku, $100
Geico: $210 (I know, like why do I even have this wonderful little used Kia Soul, I bought in Asbury Park from a family of six Kia owners while on a first date with a kinda helpful, kinda mean lesbian and her snappy dog Ezra? Well, because I’m disabled and having a car makes me feel mobile and helps me drive to Trader Joe’s and all around Brooklyn and I like that feeling of mobility and getting groceries and being free)
529 College Fund: $100
Life Insurance: $50
Medical Stuff (co-pays, meds): varies but let’s say $200
Cat stuff: $125
Gas: $100
Grand total bills: $4125
So that leaves me with about 850$ for food for me and my kid and any thing else that comes up. Pretty tight and usually I go a little overboard at the beginning of the month with a haircut or dinner out or a treat for my kid.
I also have another credit card that is maxed out and closed by the bank. I owe those assholes 12k. I see you NYU Credit Union for destroying my credit rating.
Still, I know I have it easier than many people in this country. I’m curious to know how folks are doing right now? Is your budget as tight as mine? How do you make extra money? How are you doing?
If you don’t live in New York City, now is your time to feel smug about all of the smart choices you made—like having a whole house with a driveway and a garage, or buying a much cheaper house. Or just living in a less expensive city. But my job is here, my kid is here, her dad is here, and so is most of my chosen family and community. Also, I like it here mostly. It’s interesting, and there’s always some weird street I’ve never been on, and millions of funny people, and a lot of therapists.
Some of you who know me from NYU might say, well didn’t you live in a nice dorm apartment for eight years rent free. To that I answer, I didn’t pay rent, but I did do a whole other job of living with 260 new first-year students every year and planning and accompanying them to four to six events every month. I didn’t save any money. I wanted to, and I might have if I stayed married and had a two-income household. I tried, but mostly I lived like what I wish everyone could live like in this country. I did my one and quarter jobs, and I mostly had enough money. I went out to eat once a week or so, I had drinks, I bought my kid the normal amount of kid stuff, and I joined a nice gym. Oh, and I went on vacations to Maine once a year for a few years.
As I write this, I worry my tone is defensive, and maybe it is, but I think that’s because we’re all defensive in capitalist boot strap America because we’re not supposed to complain about money, ask for money, need help, want help, demand equal pay for equal work, and/or hope to work just one reasonable job. The scramble and the shame keep us exhausted and quiet.
Maybe that’s changing. There are more unions than ever, and after a year of very intense negotiating with NYU’s lawyers, about who can and can’t be counted in our bargaining unit, my contract faculty co-workers and I will likely have a union. I’m not sure what that will mean for my salary, but I hope it will at least deal with compression and boost me up some. I started 23 years ago at the totally sad amount of 42k. They say women loose hundreds of thousands of dollars over their whole careers for not negotiating. I don’t know any woman my age who was taught to negotiate and if she did try, rewarded for doing so.
I kinda never know what these Substacks will be about until I write them. It’s a writing gift (this freedom to wander) I’ve tried to give myself, as opposed to the essays and novels I write where I do have plans for what they will be about.
I don’t want to end on money for some reason, so here are some things that have given me joy in the last few weeks. All of the protests against the genocide of over 20,000 Palestinians and the calling for a free Palestine. Not joy really, because what has happened is defies comprehension, but the power of movements and people coming together to say no. My own coming out of silence on Palestine and Gaza. I’m sorry I was too slow on this, but I’ve educated myself and I’m not silent anymore. Let’s keep the pressure on. I still want a #ceasefire and freedom for Palestinians. I want the hostages to return home as well, and political prisoners to be free.
Now for joy: Picking my daughter up from her friend’s apartment on New Year’s Eve and seeing how happy she was. The movie Poor Things. The Instagram account Decolonizing Love. The novel, The Girls by John Bowen. The Spike Lee and Zine shows at The Brooklyn Museum. The caramels on the counter at The Hamlet Coffee Shop. Joining the group chat in my building. Joining the parent group chat in my building. Hanging out with Elke by the bar during the Ego Free Jam at Delight Factory. Eating steak tartar with Rosa. Watching the light show at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens with Amy. My office party this year. Planning the Kickstarter for my debut poetry book with Michael. I really love figuring out fun content for each day of it, and also special prizes. Watching The Righteous Gemstones, The Crown, and Modern Family. Surprisingly, I’ve also enjoyed celibacy for the last almost eight months.
Enjoy the typos,
Carley xoxoxo
Love this and you!
Thank you.