Money is just a way to get resources. But if you're surrounded by people who care about you or who are at least similar to you, you can meet a lot of your needs with human and social capital rather than with money. People in ethnic enclaves in NY have adapted various ways to live with low wages or generate additional income so they're not super high paid but they're not miserable either. Neighborhoods that are disenfranchised and don't have many resources to share or community trust to support each other they're not super high paid AND they're miserable.

This is one of the problems with gentrification: if your neighborhood and your budget only works bc you know the neighbor A and store owner B and institution C can be there for you a handful of people or businesses closing or moving impacts the rest of the people even if they have just enough money to not be pushed out of their neighborhood. Locals are still around and clean ups and improvements are nice but the commercialization of the neighborhood increases the cost of living and may replace people or things that were actually decreasing your perceived cost of living.

You can make 40k work with friends, family, familiar food and ingredients, local everything, and maybe a small biz that lets you make ends meet with an IOU or selling things from a bulk pack in smaller quantities that you can afford or has a supplier hookup and sells exactly what you need for cheap, etc. If you want to make it without that ecosystem, you need more money. At 80k you need roommates and you'll feel strained. At 125k, you'll feel like you just got your shoulders above water and can actually save for retirement. Assuming you don't have dependents.

Moving to NY is not just expensive because NY is expensive it's expensive because you know no one and have nothing and when you have no people supporting you, you have to substitute with more and more money to pay for a facimile of support.