AskDong

I realize where you live is a deeply personal choice, and many people have good and great reasons for living where they do. I myself and am unabashed of urban living, and urban living in larger more expensive cities. The reasons most often cited by people is culture. Personally, I’m not sold on culture. I feel that all places small and large have it’s own unique cultural offerings. The fact is also for all the museums in Boston, I hardly ever go to them. Culture, or at least museum culture, is certainly not the reason that keeps me in the city.

City living gets a bad rap for being more expensive. On the surface this is true. Rent and groceries are definitely more expensive in the city. I thought I would do quick comparison of what the cost of living is between different places. I used Google’s cost of living calculator with I actually spend a month. For health care, I made estimate of both my and my company’s contribution to insurance is.

Yikes! Good thing I don’t live in Manhattan. Cost of living calculators are rife with problems. These problems are magnified when dealing with cities. The biggest “problem” is not even a problem in the classic sense. Individuals will make different choices depending on where they live. For example if I lived in Lancaster, PA I’d probably drive to work. Here in Boston, I take the train to work everyday. A perfect apple to apple comparison would have me drive to work, and park my car for $600/month. However by virtue of the city I live in I can opt not to have a car, forgo gas, and be perfectly happy a month riding public transportation.

A similar analogy can be made to what is the biggest cost difference, housing. Not only does the cost of housing vary widely in a city even across a few blocks, the living arrangements are different. We can’t and shouldn’t assume that someone who lives in a 2 bedroom house in Grand Junction, CO will be getting a 2 Bedroom house in Manhattan. The fact is that most young people in the city will live with roommates to keep the cost of housing down. I realize many individuals might see this as tradeoff. I see it as just different if not better option. I’ve always liked living with people and even when I could afford to live alone, I still preferred living with others.

Now that I’ve deconstructed the idea that living in the city is so much more expensive than living in more “rural” areas, what are the benefits?

• Food - Cities have more and better restaurants. It’s hard to argue otherwise.
• Commute times - We typically think of commuting as between work and home, but commuting is also about commuting from home to activities like eating out, visiting friends, going to museums.

However, the best reason to live in a city are the opportunities that only a city can afford. The fact is that there are better job opportunities in cities, and more people to meet. This is not to say that it’s necessarily easy to get to know people in a city. It’s not, and I wouldn’t be surprised that most people have an easier time getting to know people in more rural areas. However, if one is willing to get out of his or her comfort zone cities offer the best opportunity to meet a wide variety of people, and network. The density of the companies means that the next better job is floor above or below, and the next person you meet might be that connection to that job. In my own career, I made a move across the street because I was friends with someone who worked at the new company. Today, I have my current position because I ran into a former colleague at a bar.

I take more than my fair share of vacations. Last year I took about 3 one week or longer vacations. What I didn’t do very much was go away for the weekend. Vacations serve a utilitarian purpose. They are an opportunity to recharge. The daily grind is that for most people, a daily grind. Vacations can be great opportunity to break the what can be the monotony of work.

However, I’ll be the first to admit that I often have a hard time getting back to flow of things at work when I get back from Vacation. It’s hard at time to hit the floor running after a week in paradise. This year I’m thinking about taking more short vacations to augment my longer vacations. Short to me is 2 to 4 days.

So what do you prefer?

I was listening to On Point with Tom Ashbrook talking about how young people are having kids later in life. I would fall in this demographic. I’m yet unmarried, and don’t have children. I just turned 32, and can’t imagine being a Dad until I’m at least 34. Apparently 52 percent of 1st time college educated mothers are over the age of thirty these days.

While the discussion centered around the debate if better or worse for parents to wait until they are older, many of the topics were centered around money. As is often the case many decision involving close relationships (in this case the creation of a child/parent relationship), money is important part of that relationship, especially in the case of children. There were arguments from both sides. A younger woman who decided wtih her husband to have kids earlier rather than later felt that their youth allowed them to be more flexible in spending. They were able to make do with IKEA and Craigslist for their furniture needs -furniture that doesn’t need to be protected from the destructive tendencies of most three year olds. On the other hand, many “older” parents are more mature and feel better prepared financially for the burden of children.

While older parents might be more financially secure, they are also likely to be more set in their ways. Older parents with years to spend money on themselves may find it harder to cut back than younger parents who never got used to spoiling themselves. Raising children is not easy and involves sacrifice. Is it easier tosacrifice at 25 or 35? I’m hoping it’s easier to make sacrifices at thirty five given that at this point in my life, I have no choice in the matter.

One the bigger issues embedded in the parenting question is a career dilemma Women are often unfairly put in situation of choosing between career and family. While the choice should apply equally to both men and women, more often than not it’s the woman who has to choose. Many woman feel that they have to delay starting a family in order to jump start a career. Interestingly one caller to the show, a young mother, thought she would have leg up because she would be ideally situated in her early thirties, finished with the most grueling years of parenting, when others would be pulled parenting needs. Yet, many parents feel like there’s no choice at all. Tom’s producer, Julie Diop, who was featured on the show spoke of her own situation. She’s a producer for public radio show, and her husband a private school teacher. Living in the costly northeast, it would be difficult for them to live on either income alone.

I set a new record on consecutive daily weekdays posts On Wednesday. I only set it because I broke the streak yesterday when I failed to make a post.  Even though I set a new record, I can say with a clean conscience I’m am not in the Mitchell report.  Like Roger Clemens I have never tested positive for steroids, and unlike Roger my face has never been suspiciously puffy except after eating too much.

I’ve been extremely busy at work this past week, logging about 60 hours over the last 4 days. It’s kicked my ass. In general my work schedule is pretty good. I work 40-45 hours week, basically 9-6. I don’t need to be in exactly at anytime, and can easily take some afternoons off or show up late every so often. However because of the nature of my work, I go through some very busy periods. This past week was one of them, and I can look forward to another stretch of long hours in the few months after the new year. Times like this make me think, it would nice to know that I can be home by 6pm everyday. However then I think about not having the flexibility to sleep in every so often, and am glad that I have flexibility.

What do you prefer?

The past three years, my girlfriend and I have hosted an annual holiday party at our apartment for about 30-40 people. This party is pretty much the one big social event that we host a year. We have people over for dinner throughout the year, and I host poker games every so often. However there’s a big difference between cooking for 6 versus 40.

Last year was culinary extravaganza.  I made food ranging from fresh spring rolls to empanadas. We even had a Turducken.  The food turned out only OK. It’s extremely difficult to both set a menu that’s appropriate for a wide range of people, and to prepare it in a manner so it’s warm when it should be and cold when it needs to be.  More importantly, it was bone tiring.  We were preparing the night before. We were prepping the morning of.  We were still cooking when guests arrived. I ended up serving the cold food warm, and the warm food cold.

This year we decided to do something different.  We had half of the food catered. Catering may not be right word.  We didn’t have waiters and waitresses in white shirts serving hor’dourves.  We had big tins of pasta, salad, and eggplant from our favorite local whole in the wall pasta place, Basta Pasta.  The catering was $200 for pasta, salad, and a eggplant parmigiana like appetizer. I was taken aback originally by the cost of the catering, but in the end I relented.  I wanted it easy.

All said and done the cost of the holiday party this year was about the same as what it cost last year.  While the ingredients for the catered food would’ve run only about $70 at most, catering was still a good deal.  Part of this is a result of my own predilections . I prefer cooking many different dishes rather than a big batch of something.  Partially it’s just not very easy cooking pasta for 40 at home.   Had I opted to make pasta, I would’ve made pasta for 10 and paella for another 10 or something like that.  Cooking different dishes is almost always more expensive.  Ingredients are not used as efficiently. More importantly, having half the food catered was a real time saver.  I was actually able to interact my guests before 9pm, and even managed to shower before they arrived which they were greatly thankful of.