If you don’t have rich parents or a trust fund you’re getting yourself into trouble. Keep in mind that rent isn’t the only huge expense. Almost everything is significantly more expensive in NYC, starting with food. If you have a car parking and insurance costs can be brutal. The only exceptions are clothes and luxury goods because there are just so damned many stores selling them.

Don’t let yourself get starry eyed about living in NYC. I spent four years in Manhattan. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot about NYC that’s wonderful, especially if you love design, and it can’t be found anywhere else. But it’s also loud, filthy, smelly, soul-crushing etc. For the last six months I lived in Manhattan I had the daily privilege of walking past a one-legged wino and stepping over the piss puddle that dripped down on the sidewalk from his wheelchair. For that privilege my rent was–and I am not joking—$5,000 a month for a two bedroom apartment. Patton Oswalt wasn’t kidding about what living in NYC can do to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYMT9PZzo9A

Also, if you are young and want to build a design career, do not move to Manhattan. All the cool kids and most of the businesses that want to hire them are in Brooklyn now. If you live in Manhattan you’re going to have to go to Brooklyn every time someone has a party or brunch or dinner or most networking functions worth attending. Also, unless you can afford to live in a fabulous new building, Brooklyn is a mostly dumpy lower working class neighborhoods full of people playing Emperor’s New Clothes and pretending Brooklyn isn’t awful because they’re all embarrassed that they pay so much money to live in a roach infested dump building with steam heat and sketchy hot water. But if you go to Brooklyn avoid Greenpoint. Greenpoint is very popular with hip young designers because it’s literally built on toxic waste so the rent is cheap.