Your post tells me your unaware of cost of living in NYC. To put things in perspective a buttered bagel and small coffee is $7 in Brooklyn. My heating gas bill was $165 and it’s not really cold here yet. A 1 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn is $1900/month in a “bad” neighborhood, $2500 in a “safe” neighborhood and $5k in a “nice” neighborhood. Tiny 1 bedroom Condo is about $600k with $700 month maintenance fee. Forgetting fed tax, just ny state and city take 15% of what we make. Quick google search says average pay in nyc is 107k, so 6 figures is average and nurses make below average pay. Although we’re more educated than average, have harder than average jobs and more dangerous than average jobs (believe it or not nurses are hurt on the job more often than police officers) we would be happy with average pay.