This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elhanan Harel, a 29-year-old business owner from New York City. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
My wife and I moved from New York City to Miami in June 2021 and spent two years there before recently returning to New York.
We moved for survival. Our NYC business, a lice treatment company, took a major hit when the pandemic began in 2020, so we relocated to Miami, where I ran a COVID-19 testing lab for two years.
Initially, it was exactly what we needed. Instead of living in a one-bedroom in Brooklyn for $1,770 a month, we lived in a Sunny Isles condo on the ocean with an extra bedroom, a beachside pool, and a gym for $2,000 a month.
In Miami, we didn’t have to pay an HOA fee or for internet — they were included in the condo price. The only thing we paid extra for was water.
The cost of living was initially half of NYC’s for things like groceries and insurance
In Miami, we bought a lot fewer groceries because in NYC, you don’t have any Walmarts, so you have to go to five different places to do your shopping. Walmart was a lot more convenient and cheaper.
The salaries in Miami are lower than what you make in NYC. Before I started my lice-treatment business, I was a paramedic, and based on my research, paramedics in NYC made $35 an hour, compared to Miami’s average of $20 an hour.
Car insurance was a lot less in Miami — I paid $550 a month in New York for car insurance, and in Miami, I paid $130 a month. Also, it cost less in Miami for us to lease a car.
Miami was a dream for a young couple
It felt like a great move for the first two years we were there. After we had two kids, the dynamic shifted.
Our first child was born in July 2022, and we started paying about $600 a month for day care. While the cost for private day care is expensive in NYC, there are a lot of home-based day care programs in my neighborhood that cost around $500 a month. Plus, NYC offers free transitional kindergarten programs. Having a lot more free community programs for day care was a big factor in our moving back to NYC.
Plus, landlords saw that a lot of people were moving to Miami, so they started to increase their rent prices. After two years, our rent went from $2,000 a month to $2,800 a month.
We moved to a different area after we had our baby — Coconut Creek, a little farther north — and there wasn’t much shopping there. We would go to Trader Joe’s and Costco, but the costs went up a lot when we had kids, with shopping for clothes, baby food, and formula.
We found ourselves missing NYC
There were pros and cons to both cities. We loved Miami’s active, outdoor lifestyle, beach access, and high-end gym culture. The commute wasn’t too bad, especially when you’re looking at your view on the way to work. You see the palm trees and the sun on the weekends, you go to the beach, or you hit the pool, and it almost doesn’t feel real.
We found the social scene in Miami to be vibrant, though very different from Manhattan. As a young couple, the nightlife in Miami is something else. There are a lot more young people in the Miami scene, which was refreshing when you’re younger, trying to connect with people, make friends, or join a social club. People tend to be friendlier in Florida.
The environment in Miami is definitely more relaxed — everybody’s almost in vacation mode. You show up to work in a T-shirt and shorts, not business casual.
Another thing my wife really loved about Miami is that there are parking lots; in New York, if you have to find parallel parking, you might be looking for 30 minutes.
In the end, we moved back to NYC for three main reasons.
1. Extreme summer humidity and hurricanes
The summers in Miami were brutal, with humidity, hurricanes, torrential downpours, and unpredictable tropical storms. When you have a baby, it’s pretty rough when it’s 90 degrees outside from May to October. We had to mostly go out at 6 p.m. when it would drop 20 degrees.
The weather is also very unpredictable. You’ll be in a torrential downpour out of nowhere, then five minutes later, it’ll be sunny like nothing ever happened.
2. Lack of seasons
Miami has incredible winters — we definitely didn’t miss the brutal cold in NYC and its horrible winters.
We loved living with the palm trees, but my wife is from Toronto, and the perpetual heat, with no fall or winter seasons, eventually became a drawback for her. My wife and I like the seasons more.
3. Dramatic spike in cost of living while our wages stayed flat
The cost of Miami became a major issue. By the time we left in 2023, the cost of living had increased so dramatically that the financial advantage had almost entirely evaporated. I didn’t make more money, so our margins for saving for the kids, especially for schooling, took a hit.
We realized we’d have more opportunities if we went back to NYC. The minimum wage went up in New York, and so did a lot of the wages. We moved back to the same area we lived in before in October 2023.
We save money on food costs now by getting everything from Costco, and we’re able to put $2,000 more away each month for our children.
We don’t have any regrets about our move to Miami
It was a vital move for our family and business at the time. The sun was definitely nice, but we’re happy to be back in NYC — when we left, we closed the entire lice-treatment business, but it’s now back to its pre-2020 levels.
We plan to stay in the NYC area until our kids are at least five.
