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[cooperstreet]

How do people live in places like New York and San Francisco on a grad student stipend?  I mean, 20k a year won't even cover rent in NYC.  How do people manage?  Do schools in really expensive areas help you out with housing?

[wildwest]

A few loans , and lots and lots and lost of credit card debt--I mean LOTS.  :-(   I wasn't too extravagant--no designer clothes or anything like that, but I wasn't willing to live like a monk either.  I did put out for the occassional opera tickets, dinner out with friends, research trips abroad.  Oh--and don't forget academia expects you to present at conferences but makes you pay out of pocket.  There were no conference funds for grad students at my institution. 

Been there, done that.  Five years in NYC for grad school.  At the time (late 90s), T.A. stipends in the humanities at private research institution were only 13k/year.

Finally paid off the last of the grad school credits cards in 2006.  My loans are manageable and will probably be paid off in about 10-15 years, depending upon how much extra I throw at the principle. 

Don't know if I would do it again--but it was a blast.

Actually, if I could do it all over again.  I'd quit with the master's degree and go do something "fun" and moneymaking--like marketing, advertising, hell--even work for the airlines as a stewardess.  The life of the mind is overrated.

[balancing_act]

How do people live in places like New York and San Francisco on a grad student stipend?  I mean, 20k a year won't even cover rent in NYC.  How do people manage?  Do schools in really expensive areas help you out with housing?

In addition to high debt, I suspect students have lots of roommates.

[sciencephd]

Yes, roomates.  Cost of living should certainly be a factor in your decision making process.

[bread_pirate_naan]

Do schools in really expensive areas help you out with housing?

Sometimes.  This is basic research you should be able to do independently.

Find out if your Unis of choice have housing waitlists that you can place your name on before acceptance.  The cost of living was a major reason I did not select a top program in NYC, and that's not just rent. 

You have to balance out all of the other factors, faculty being an important element.  Do not choose an expensive city and find yourself dependent on a single mentor.  Hot shots move around and you will need more support and a Plan B/C/D.

[inthelab]

I went to Stanford on a $7500/yr stipend while Labspouse was finishing his degree on the East Coast.  It was nearly 2 years before Labspouse joined me and started his post-doc.
1) I had no roommates (being married, that was out of the question for me). I lost the Stanford housing lottery. I had our car (Labspouse had free busing to lab) and moved 25 miles away to a cheap apartment in a safe (and beautiful) seaside town. The commute was definitely worth it.  I had no traffic.  Gas cost me about $20 per week.
2) I had a strict budget; I ate a lot of pasta, peanut butter, eggs, tuna fish. 
3) I took advantage of every student discount for prescriptions, movies ($1 on campus, maybe $1.50 in Palo Alto), music scene in SF, free refills at Peet's Coffee.

I took out no loans and ran up no credit card debt.  When Labspouse joined me as a post-doc, we could finally afford pizza out once a week, and meat.

[psychgrad816]

Like everyone else here said, roommates. Also, many expensive cities have good public transportation so you can save money by not having a car.

If you are creative enough with roommates (i.e. willing to sacrifice quality of life) you can make big city rent approximate what you may have paid in a less expensive place. For example, a friend of mine lives in Brooklyn and pays $500/month in rent by sharing a house with a bunch of roommates that is a bit of a hike into Manhattan.

Being in grad school often comes with a lot of freebies that you won’t get once you are outside. When I was a grad student public transportation was free to students in the city. (This wasn’t in an expensive city, though—I doubt that any expensive US cities have that kind of deal for students.) I could go to the gym for free at my school, and now that I am not affiliated with a school I pay $50/month for a gym membership. I realize that this isn’t the case for many grad students, but my health insurance premiums were paid for by my department and so health insurance was entirely free for me.

Also, depending on the state in which you live, you can get substantial tax breaks as a grad student. When I was a grad student I did not have to pay state, local, or social security tax, which saved me about 13% of my income a year. And obviously when you’re only making $20,000 you are not going to pay a lot in federal taxes either.

I’m not trying to say that it’s awesome to live on a grad student stipend. I now live in a very expensive city post-grad school and I wonder sometimes how on earth students get by here. But then I remember that since I’m not a student I have a car, live in an expensive neighborhood, pay a lot of taxes, eat dinner out a lot, etc…all things I wouldn’t do if I were a student here.

[larryc]

I lived in a small southern city in the mid 90s on a $7000 stipend. I rented a room from a woman who needed some work done on her house and worked off part of the rent that way. I drove an old Toyota truck with a canopy and it was both my transportation and my lodging on many research trips. I cooked a big pot o' food every Sunday (chili, pea soup, etc.) and parceled it out into my army of tupperware lunch carriers. I got the syllabi in advance and either checked the books out of the library or photocopied them. I lived mostly in the library but did get out to do some hiking and sight seeing every now and then.

It was a blast!

[beryl]

Many of the students in my program came from solidly middle class or upper class backgrounds. Their parents gave them cars or helped pay rent, or even put down payments on condos for them. They got by on the stipend, because their families could supplement it. Mine couldn't, so I took out lots of loans. I was not willing to live in poverty for six years. Even with loans, I was hardly living the high life. I rarely travelled and frequently struggled to pay bills. But much of the time, I had money to get drinks with friends, go to dinner with my partner, and buy books (too many books really). I'll be paying back loans for a long, long time, but I'm ok with that. It sucks having a chunk of my salary taken every month, but at the same time, I live better than I did as a grad student if not as well as my colleagues who didn't take out loans.

[psychgrad816]

I want to add: Even though there are ways of making grad school in an expensive place work, I would recommend going to grad school in a cheap locale if you can. I went to grad school in a small city that was about the national average in terms of cheapness. It was enough of a city that I had fun, but cheap enough that I didn’t have to sacrifice a lot quality of life wise to get by (e.g., could live alone and have a car without taking on any debt). You can get by on a small stipend in an expensive city (provided that you don’t have dependents, prior debts, etc), but you have to know that you will either have to sacrifice quality of life to do it or will have to go into debt to fund your lifestyle. You won’t be able to have it both ways.

[juillet]

I'm doing my Ph.D in NYC right now.  The stipend at my university for students ranges between $21,000-$30,000.  I'm on the higher end, with a stipend of around $26,000 for twelve months.

They will help you find housing but not help you pay for it -- I live in an apartment in upper Manhattan with one roommate.  We pay $1850 a month (and our rent's going down to $1800 next year, yay!)  If you go to school in an expensive area, like NYU's Greenwich Village, you just don't live there.  Students who don't live in the on-campus housing at Columbia's main campus live elsewhere because the Upper West Side is expensive.  Most of my colleagues live above Central Park or in Brooklyn or Queens.

I don't have credit cards, I don't have any loans besides the one I took out for start-up costs (my security deposit, furniture, computer), and I save $200 every month.  And I don't live like a monk, either.  I just live frugally, and I've learned how to entertain myself without spending a lot of money.  Of course, I have no car; a monthly unlimited car is less than the cost of gas for a month ($89).  I buy inexpensive clothes only when I need them (I am still wearing the clothes I wore in undergrad -- don't gain weight!).  When I want to read something I go to the library -- New York has an excellent public library system.  The thing I spend the most of my money on is eating out -- I love to eat out.  I haven't seen my mother in a year -- she's coming to visit me in a couple of weeks and I'm really excited.  IF I go on a trip this summer, it'll be Florida for a couple of days.

I don't think that the cost of living should deter anyone from doing a program that is an excellent fit for them in NYC because there are just too many ways to make it work -- not everyone who lives in NYC is a Wall Street tycoon.  There are poor families here, too.  My salary right now is a little less than half of what my father supported a family of 5 on in NYC (I grew up here).  It's definitely doable.  And it's a small sacrifice for 5-6 years to go someplace you really love and fit in.  I hate carrying my groceries home and sometimes I wish I had a car to jump into when I want to take a trip to the beach or down to my fiance's AF base.  But I am absolutely in love with my program; everyone is so supportive and great and I'm thriving, and it's totally worth it.

I'm going to be honest -- I'm not really sure how the humanities students here do it on $21,000 though.  But that's $1750 a month.  If you split a cheap apartment or house out in Brooklyn with some roommates and only had to pay like $500-600 in rent a month that would be more than doable.  It's really not as bad as some people make it seem, unless you're used to living the high life or something.  I came here straight from undergrad and I never really had much of anything, so just being able to buy a Wii game or a pair of shoes once or twice a month is exciting to me.

[systeme_d_]

I hate carrying my groceries home and sometimes I wish I had a car to jump into when I want to take a trip to the beach or down to my fiance's AF base. 

http://www.spacesavers.com/routca.html

I lived in NYC for a few years, on a much lower stipend than yours.  This thing was indispensible, especially since my elevator was sometimes broken, and I lived on the eighth floor for a couple of those years.

[prof_smartypants]

I was offered a 10K a year stipend (w/ teaching) at Columbia. My husband and I would have been cramped in a 1 bedroom (or studio) with our dog - probably in Brooklyn or Queens with a hefty commute.

I was also offered 15K with no teaching in Texas. All of a sudden, my cost of living worries diminished. I took the Texas gig. Best decision I ever made.

Many schools have grad student housing. But it's typically really crappy and is even more difficult if you have a spouse, pets, or kids.

Don't forget that you are a student. I know a lot of people who expected to live the same lifestyle as their peers who had "real" jobs. You can't. Not without taking on lots of debt.

[reprobate]

I'm going to be honest -- I'm not really sure how the humanities students here do it on $21,000 though.  But that's $1750 a month.  If you split a cheap apartment or house out in Brooklyn with some roommates and only had to pay like $500-600 in rent a month that would be more than doable.  It's really not as bad as some people make it seem, unless you're used to living the high life or something.  I came here straight from undergrad and I never really had much of anything, so just being able to buy a Wii game or a pair of shoes once or twice a month is exciting to me.

As one of those humanities students, well, it ain't pretty, but it's doable. Stipend last I checked was in the low 20s, which is subject to state and federal taxes, so by the time you get done you're really in the high teens in terms of what your actual take-home pay is. As everyone else has said, roommates - you basically don't have a choice in this regard. My rent is about $850 a month in a rather nice university-owned apartment, but if I were prepared to commute I could definitely find cheaper housing; I just happen to like being able to walk to campus.

Other things; like LarryC said, making food in bulk (I practically live on chilli), eating in as much as possible (it took me a while to realise that $8 a day on a hero and a bag of chips for lunch was really going to add up, especially when I could make my own brown-bag lunch for far less). Do reconnaissance, too, when you first get there and have a little time; I cut my grocery bill by about $20 a week simply by being prepared to walk beyond the immediate environs of the campus to do my grocery shopping at less high-end stores. Had to cut down on booze, alas - alcohol with meals and in bars really puts a dent in a budget fast (which is not to say you can't have a blowout from time to time, and often departmental functions will provide free alcohol if you know where to find them).

I also pick up a little bit of part-time work where I can find it; your program may or may not frown on this, but in my case I've never done more than 8 hours per week, so it didn't interfere too much with my studies, and it was all related, at least tangentially (I have a few in-demand language skills that were useful for picking up a few bucks here and there). Not enough to live on of itself, but it did stop the bank balance from depleting quite so fast, and that was the important thing.

You'd be surprised what you find you can live without when you have to pare things to the bone; the ironic thing was that I had previously been living in a place overseas with an even more insane cost of living, so the city in question is actually the cheapest place I've ever lived.

And it's not like there aren't upsides, too. Every morning for a long while after I got there I would go out onto the street and think to myself "Hell, yeah! I'm in [city redacted], baby!". Still get a buzz out of that.

[racketsports]

Do schools in really expensive areas help you out with housing?

It depends on what you mean by 'help'--at my particular university, there is a giant, newish building for grad school housing. The only thing is that it's ridiculously expensive--by law you must buy a meal plan as well as paying your rent, so it comes out to over $1000/month. And you know that if you were living on your own, you sure as h#ll wouldn't be spending upwards of $500/mo on food!!!