Homecoming (-Down), Queens!

Manhattan apartments can be a tough habit to break. Sure, there will always be those individuals who can enjoy it responsibly and walk away when they’ve had enough. Maybe they are lucky and rent stabilized or maybe—as a few conflicted outer borough transplants might prefer to believe—they just haven’t had a jarring enough wake-up call yet.

For Liz Galbo and Partick Haggerty, it wasn’t until their mid-town studio habit had reached $1500. a month that they were ready to admit they had a problem. Ms. Galbo told the New York Times’ Joyce Cohen:

“[Columbus Circle] is so great it doesn’t matter much what your apartment is like. There is so much to do outside. But our luck ended. So that spun us into a little bit of a panic.”

The young couple’s first taste of “cold turkey” came in the form of flavorful wraps from a hip-ish café on Queens Boulevard. According to Ms. Galbo:

“It was the cutest little coffee shop that made me feel I was in Greenwich Village. Any doubt we had, sitting there eating lunch eased our minds.”

In a maneuver that exposed their lingering vulnerability to Manhattan-type trappings, they based their decision to move into a nearby one-bedroom apartment, in large part, on this pleasant lunching experience and were dismayed and terrified to find:

Their street was a busy thoroughfare. Teenagers congregated near their window. Streetlights glared. They [required] earplugs and sleeping masks. The heat and hot water cut out for days.

[Ms. Galbo said] “We didn’t walk down the street at different times of day… Inside, we heard all the chaos outside, and outside there wasn’t much to do.”

Cowering inside their apartment, however, not only spared Ms. Golbo and Mr. Haggerty from congregating teens, but also the expense of the $10 cocktails and dinners out that were integral to their daily Manhattan lifestyle. Mr. Haggerty said:

“A lot of our friends feel like they are struggling and it’s hard to build some momentum, but you really can do it if you stay away from the bars. It’s amazing how quickly you can get yourself to a place where you can build for the future.”

Within six months, their savings had snowballed to $40, 000, enough for a down payment on a beautiful 1,400 square foot, one-bedroom Kew Gardens, Queens co-op. Now Ms. Golbo says of her new, improved life:

“People think [Queens] is a different planet. I think I am in on some secret.”