1) Home

- Apartments are expensive. Can get 4x more space in Chicago for same price.

- Difficult to shop for home. Wanted a desk for my bedroom. None of the stores in the city, included Target, offered reasonable-priced desks that could fit. Had to buy online, which came with own issues.

2) Services

- Services are expensive. Want to get your hair dyed blond from someone you saw on Instagram? It's $600 and they ruin your hair.

3) Food

- Groceries are expensive and inconvenient. Get delivery or Whole Foods and pay 30-70% over Trader Joe's price. Or you need to walk/Uber to Trader Joe's, wait in line, then walk/Uber back. Local bodegas? Usually bad quality and high prices (eg watermelon is $25).

- Restaurants are expensive. Entree's in Manhattan are usually $25-35.

- Food isn't uniquely great. I recently went to a well-rated David Chang restaurant in Chelsea. Meh.

- Grocery delivery is usually done by foot. Sometimes this is great, sometimes it leads to food being delivered hours late, warm, and gross. This happens across platforms.

4) Transportation

- Can't have a car in Manhattan. Parking is $600/month in my building. Btw, the doorman gets 50%, so $300/month (yay!).

- Car rentals are quite expensive in the city. Want to rent a van to go camping? That's even worse.

- Uber and Lyft is extremely slow in the city. I generally prefer taxi's since drivers understand how to get around faster. They're also priced competitively.

5) Airport

- Traffic between airports is quite bad. Usually about an hour. Makes me jealous of the 20 min SFO commute.

6) Healthcare

- Want to book a doctor or therapist? Go to Zocdoc, enter your insurance, try to book - they call you in a day saying they're booked or don't take your insurance. Great healthcare providers are tough to find.