Michelle Edwards, a 50-year-old New Yorker, keeps cash on hand and cooks her own meals to stay within her budget. She has no Netflix subscription, and she stays home whenever she doesn't need to leave for work. Her habits are part of a broader pattern researchers found among New Yorkers earning below $50,000 a year, who are quietly rewriting their daily routines just to make it through the month.
Those coping strategies are detailed in a new study from the Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit that surveyed low-income residents about their financial decisions, banking habits, and trade-offs amid rising costs and stagnant wages. The findings were shared exclusively with Gothamist, which reported that focus-group participants ranged in age from 18 to more than 60 and that some earned below $15,000 a year. According to a 2025 survey cited in the study, roughly 60% of low-income New Yorkers said they were unable to make ends meet, and about three-quarters said they weren't saving for retirement at all.
Anne Devin, a 38-year-old participant, told researchers she saves money by skipping take-out, movies, and concerts altogether. She doesn't take Ubers, but when her subway line stops running, she'll split a ride with fellow passengers heading in the same direction rather than pay for a car alone. Other participants described cutting out what researchers called “lifestyle creep” — discretionary wants that once felt routine but no longer fit the budget.
Bulk Beans Replace Steak as Grocery Bills Climb
Participants in the focus groups described swapping salmon and steak for bulk purchases from Costco, along with beans and chicken, according to the study relayed by Gothamist. Some also eliminated streaming services like Netflix and Hulu entirely. The cutbacks track with a separate October 2025 finding from Robin Hood and Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy, which found that 36% of adult New Yorkers and 42% of families with children experienced food budget shortfalls in 2024 — up from 29% and 34% before the pandemic. Affected families needed roughly $205 extra per week on average just to meet their food needs, per that report.
The squeeze extends well beyond groceries. Participants told researchers they set aside money for rent, utilities, and childcare before anything else, and about 60% still said they couldn't cover a $400 emergency expense, per the 2025 survey figures cited in the study. Some used a form of purchase rounding to build a cushion — one participant described rounding a $4.50 purchase up to $6 to stash the difference. Others simply hid cash in bags, coats, or furniture rather than keep it in a bank account.
Rachel Swaner: Adaptive Strategies, But Not a Fix
Rachel Swaner, vice president of policy, research and advocacy at the Community Service Society, said the coping mechanisms researchers documented reflect real ingenuity under pressure. “People described thoughtful and adaptive ways of managing very limited resources,” Swaner said, according to the study. But she was clear that budgeting tricks have limits: “Limited-resource strategies cannot make an unaffordable life affordable,” she said.
Participants leaned heavily on digital tools to manage what little they had. Zelle, Venmo, and Cash App were popular for sending money, holding grocery funds, or automating a child's allowance, while Credit Karma and Experian were used for credit-building. Many said banking staff were genuinely helpful for fee waivers, fraud resolution, and understanding financial options, and some relied specifically on credit unions because they lacked fees or balance minimums.
Buy Now, Pay Later Apps Cover Medication and Meals
Buy Now, Pay Later services like Afterpay and Klarna came up repeatedly as a way to cover larger, unbudgeted expenses. Devin said she used Klarna to pay for medications not covered by her insurance, and the study noted that food delivery apps now accept Klarna payments as well. But participants also raised concerns about these products, including hidden fees, privacy issues, and a lack of personal support when something goes wrong.
Those concerns echo a shifting regulatory landscape. In May 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau withdrew a 2024 interpretive rule that would have subjected BNPL products to Truth in Lending Act disclosure requirements, according to Holland & Knight, effectively shifting oversight to the states. New York responded in February 2026 when Governor Kathy Hochul and the state Department of Financial Services proposed a first-in-the-nation framework requiring BNPL lenders to obtain state licenses, capping interest rates at the state's 16% civil usury limit, and restricting late fees, per the New York Department of Financial Services. Swaner said policymakers should ensure strong consumer protections for BNPL and financial-planning apps, and argued that financial literacy workshops need updating to reflect how widely New Yorkers now rely on them. Financial products, she added, can be difficult to understand and often lack clear protections or ways to resolve problems when they arise.
A City Where Even Careful Budgeting Isn't Enough
The 41 focus-group participants' individual strategies are unfolding against a backdrop of citywide hardship that dwarfs any single household's budgeting tricks. Robin Hood and Columbia University reported in March 2026 that New York City's poverty rate climbed to a record 26% in 2024, affecting 2.2 million residents — more than double the national average of 13%. The same research found that nearly 5 million New Yorkers, or three in five, lived below 200% of the federal poverty line that year.
Housing costs are a major driver. The city Comptroller's Office reported that June 2026 residential rents hit an all-time high, up nearly 6% year-over-year and 35% above pre-pandemic levels, while Rent Guidelines Board data showed 45.5% of rent-stabilized tenants without vouchers were rent-burdened. City officials responded that same month by voting to freeze rents on one- and two-year leases for roughly a million rent-stabilized apartments, affecting more than two million residents, a move the Community Service Society noted was backed by its own research showing 67% of low-income rent-stabilized tenants struggled to make ends meet. The city also expanded Fair Fares NYC eligibility in June 2026, raising the income threshold to $31,920 for single adults and making an estimated 1.3 million working-age residents eligible for half-priced transit fares.
Swaner's takeaway is that financial education alone won't close the gap. She said such programs should ultimately give people more power within the systems they're forced to navigate — banking, credit, and the growing web of apps New Yorkers now depend on just to keep their households afloat.
