Where are you finding apartments for $700 to $1200 a month in NYC?
Speaking as a landlord, I would prefer my tenants not install their own appliances.
Actually, in parts of Queens you can get a studio for $1200 or a little less but I said
Why would they when they can rent a bedroom for $700-$1200/month
A bedroom, not an apartment. It’s possibly a new thing , but landlords are renting each bedroom in an apartment separately. Instead of renting a three bedroom apartment to one person or jointly to three roommates, they rent each bedroom separately so that when the person in Bedroom #1 moves out , the others don’t have to pay that person’s share of the rent. They also don’t necessarily have a say in who the landlord chooses to rent that room to.
So… essentially renting it as three studio apartments with kitchen/bathroom/etc. as common areas with your neighbors. It’s an interesting approach.
I’m not sure it’s interesting so much as it’s almost certainly illegal - which I’m sure is why the landlords who rent this way ( it’s not all of them) tend to avoid written leases.
I know people who have gotten permission of their landlords to upgrade appliances.
Also, i own my house and have Formica kitchen counters. I originally planned to replace them. But i grew to like them. They are really easy to maintain, and granite is too hard. It goes “clink” when you put down a dish, and it’s easy to break something. I have a 2’x2’ piece of granite next to my stove. It’s unsealed, natural granite, so i can take the broiler out of the oven and put it on the granite. That’s enough granite.
Individual leasing (as opposed to joint leasing) has been legal everywhere I’ve rented.
I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing - but renting individual bedrooms with locks on the bedroom doors is illegal in NYC unless it’s an actual SRO/hotel. It might be legal if there aren’t any locks - but I don’t imagine too many people are willing to live with people they had no say in choosing without a lock on their door.
I know of dorms set up exactly like this. With locks on the bedroom doors.
Assuming the company I work for continues to do well for the next 20 years and the stock market doesn’t collapse in the meantime, I’m currently projected to have about $2.5 million in the bank when I retire.
And I honestly wonder if that’s gonna be enough to support me for the rest of my life.
This. Some landlords are more casual than others. When I was in grad school, my roommate and I got permission to install a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. The landlord bought the parts, my roommate and I provided the labor. Win-win: my roomie and I end up with a garbage disposal for our use, and the landlord ended up with an apartment that was more attractive for future tenants.
We never pulled a permit for wiring the new outlet under the sink (and switch above the sink), but the landlord didn’t seem to mind. 
That’s actually an interesting concept in terms of retirement housing.
I suspect that you’d need to set such a place up with some strict rules regarding use of common areas, and perhaps a cleaning service that handles cleaning those areas.
It would be a step removed from a formal assisted living scheme; a lower-expense version of senior independent living apartments.
I would personally want (well, NEED) my own bathroom though.
That’s ballpark what we’re hoping to have, a lot sooner than 20 years from now, and I’ve got the same concerns!
Our planner at Fidelity insists we’re doing fine. Some recent stories re Social Security solvency are less reassuring. I’m now less interesting in quitting ASAP.
Hell, I’m retired last year with ~$3M and I have the same concerns. And my CFP also insists I’m fine. I suppose everyone retired with less than say $10m feels the same.
I think a lot of those worries have less to do with the amount of money and more to do with people’s personalities (for lack of a better word). My husband and I have very different feelings about the same amount of money - he’s worried that we don’t have enough while I’m pushing him to retire already (we are both 60 and I’ve been retired for two years). My pension will continue paying the same amount until we are both dead and the way I figure it, we may never need to take anything out of our retirement accounts * if he works until we can collect SS so we can afford to make some withdrawals if we need to for him to retire now. And we’ve got way less than $10m, even if I value my pension as the equivalent of $1.5m in savings.
Funny thing is, he’s the one who plays cards at $25 a hand while I play penny slots.
* Withdrawals become mandatory at some point - but that doesn’t mean we will need the money we withdraw.
How’s your Social Security, and how’s your mortgage? I retired on less than that, and we’d be setting world records for aging before we even come close to running out. You are certainly fine, unless you are real into senior hookers and blow.
I’m 62 and haven’t taken SS yet. Maybe at 65, not sure. My mortgage won’t be paid off ever, but my equity is in the range of $600k, so worst case I can sell and downsize someday and walk away with a wheelbarrow of money.
Can all you “I retired with x million in the bank and I’m still worried” folks at least tell us roughly where you live for some context?
I live in Aptos, CA. My locale is in my SDMB profile. But I suppose most posters don’t add a locale, so it’s a fair question.
Thank you. Yeah, living in that area I wouldn’t be super comfortable sitting on $3mil either. As opposed to where I live (Cleveland), that would afford me a hookers and blow retirement.
Yeah, I mean, damn people, you retire with 1 million here in NW Indiana and as long as you don’t get stupid with lottery tickets and casinos (or hookers and blow) that’s a comfortable, if modest, retirement.
Where I and a few friends plan to relocate for our retirement it should be even less of a problem.
It blows my mind that someone with 3 million dollars is terrified they’ll run out.
Maybe and it’s a fair point. My concerns are quantifying my money burn rate - my first year retired last year, I put a new roof on my house ($30k!) bought tires for my car ($477), had a blood clot in my leg ($900), CA came after me for a 2018 tax thing ($10k!), had a tooth extracted ($1200) etc etc. These were expenses I couldn’t not spend. I think my normal money burn rate is fine for my given amount of retirement money if you handwave these extraordinary expenses, but I keep having extraordinary expenses.