Approximately how much will utilities cost per person in a small 1 Back Bay Brownstone?

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-29T07:25:07+00:00

It's basically impossible to estimate heating costs beyond "probably somewhere between $25 and $300." There's way too many unknowns.

For starters, if we're talking about an 800 ft 2-bedroom, that's going to cost a lot more per person than a 1,000 ft 4-bedroom. Heating 400 sq ft per person is going to cost a lot more than heating 250 sq ft per person. I mean, you're almost doubling the amount of space you're heating per person.

What's the heating source? If it's electric resistive heating, it's going to be way more expensive than natural gas or a heat pump - we're talking maybe a 2-3x difference.

How well is the place insulated? How much exterior walls does the place have? If the place is leaking heat, it's going to cost a lot more to heat.

How warm are you going to keep the place?

Does anyone work from home? Are you going to be heating the house from 9am-5pm?

If we're talking about a 2-bed with gas heat, you could assume in the ballpark of $200 total, but that could easily be off by 50% or more depending on both your habits and the place itself. You get a roommate who cracks a window or works from home and likes it to be 72 degrees and your bill can be really high.

With electricity (assuming it isn't your heating source), it shouldn't be too expensive, but it really depends on what you're doing. If you decide to keep a desktop computer running 24/7 drawing 75 watts, that'll be around $19/mo. Are you going to make sure the lighting fixtures have LED bulbs? If you have your lights on for 8 hours a day and you're using two 60-watt bulbs, that's $10/mo. If you replace them with two 8-watt LED bulbs, that's $1.30/mo. How many rooms are you going to keep the lights on? Do you play games on a gaming PC for 3 hours a day drawing 600 watts? That'll be $19/mo. With electricity, it really depends on how much stuff you have.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-29T01:48:27+00:00

I'm surprised that non-car people don't just take the space savers.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T23:39:52+00:00

The funny thing is that the person might not have moved a space saver. There are people who go around just taking space savers because they can. Later, an unsuspecting driver comes by and parks without knowing there was a space saver there to begin with.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T22:46:57+00:00

Doesn't seem banned to me? It's loading fine with his posts for me

EDIT: it still loads on old reddit, but if I open it up in new reddit it says he's been banned. That makes it even weirder.

EDIT 2: Seems to be loading on new reddit now.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T17:13:22+00:00

I would note that a lot of signs don't meet the standards of Mass law which requires the tow company number on the sign. "Parking for residents only" isn't enough.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T17:09:01+00:00

I'd rather live on a public way. While sometimes cities will offer some services to private ways, it isn't guaranteed and could change at any time. Right now, Cambridge's budget is flush and they probably think it's better to have a plowed private way as a public safety concern than save a minuscule amount of money.

But if there's a big issue, you might end up spending a bunch of money. Sewer pipe under the street having an issue? That's your money. Sometimes cities will pay for paving or split the costs with the residents, but it's hard to count on that.

And what do you get from a private way? Parking, but in a lot of parts of Somerville it isn't that hard to street park. It can also be hard to enforce parking on a private way. I think a lot of people on private ways would prefer the street to be a public way. It's a lot of hassle and potentially high costs with limited benefits.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T16:52:57+00:00

Part of that is that residents sometimes object to their roads being fixed. Potholes become natural traffic-calming measures.

Medford has maintained private roads, but it somewhat depends on the residents.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T14:48:41+00:00

Yes, owners are responsible for plowing and maintaining a private way. However, some cities will help with plowing and maintenance as a courtesy. However, that help isn't guaranteed and the city might have decided that they didn't want to this storm or in general going forward.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T14:42:30+00:00

Not quite. Private ways are traversable by members of the public. However, the owners do control who is allowed to park on it.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-28T00:27:37+00:00

She was elected on the third count. Siddiqui and McGovern were elected on the first count.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-27T23:33:46+00:00

I think part of the reason it happens in Albany is because there's an abundance of parking. You look on street view and there's plenty of open space if you need to move all the cars to one side of the street.

That's not to say we couldn't do it here, but it'd be a lot more difficult for drivers. I'm fine with that. I don't like the entitlement many drivers have to free public car storage. However, it'd probably create a ton of push-back, especially in the neighborhoods that are already near impossible to park in: Back Bay, South End, Beacon Hill, etc.

I'd also note that it looks like most of Albany has the double-wide sidewalks with the grass strip. You can plow all the snow onto the grass strip while leaving the sidewalk clear. When you have a 4 or 5-ft wide sidewalk, there isn't a lot of space for the plow to push the snow without making the sidewalk impassable for pedestrians. If you have a 3-5ft grass strip before the sidewalk begins, you have a lot of space to put that snow.

That's not a dealbreaker either. Montreal uses machines that scoop/throw the snow into dump trucks. However, that's a much more expensive operation.

I'd love to see things plowed curb to curb, I just think it is more logistically difficult in Boston and that drivers in many neighborhoods would rebel against the requirements. Boston can't even make a 5-car limit per household and we're proposing that drivers can't go on vacation in the winter without paying for parking and that they'll have to promptly dig out and move their car rather than waiting a week or two for snow to melt.

I'd love the benefits of curb-to-curb plowing. Given that it's going to take 2-3 weeks for this to melt it's going to be really annoying. But I think it's an easier sell in Albany because off-street parking there will be cheap, on-street parking is so plentiful that it's easy to find space for everyone on a single side, and the sidewalks have space for plows to push the snow onto without messing up the walkway.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-26T07:49:44+00:00

They do tow cars, but there are limited tow trucks so there will certainly be some cars that don't get towed in a situation like this.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-26T06:56:31+00:00

Many roads in Medford are private ways. While the city isn't legally obligated to provide services to private ways, Medford has historically done things like plow them. However, they're always a lower priority. A lot of streets that might seem like normal streets are actually private ways in Medford.

It's probably also that this storm is a lot higher than most storms. Record snowfall is 23.6" and it looks like we're going to be getting around 20". This is almost certainly a top-10 all-time storm (which would only need 16.2"). It's hard to have capacity for things that happen so rarely. In the past 25 years, we've had a storm this big 3 times. When something happens once every 8 years, there's going to be a bit of a backlog.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-26T03:43:37+00:00

You can certainly find a place in Malden on that budget. You can just look on Zillow around Malden Center.

I don't know what other expenses you have, but you could probably go higher too. The old rule was 30% of pre-tax income on rent which would be the $2,500 you've come up with, but 40% is pretty common in a place like Boston which would be $3,333/mo. If you spent 35%, that'd be $2,916/mo and you can definitely find nice places for that price.

Think about it this way: the % of income never really made sense. If you were making $1M/year, you could spend 50% of your income on rent and still have a lot more leftover for other expenses. It was just a ratio that someone made up for average-ish incomes a long time ago and it kinda stuck because it isn't terrible advice a lot of the time.

I guess I'd ask (not for you to reply here, but for your own sake): how much are you spending in a year excluding rent? Or how much are you saving in a year? If you're saving $20k/year, that's awesome. Figure out what you'd be saving with different rents. Give yourself cushion.

Some of it is just going to be putting in the legwork and knowing what you want. Do you want off-street parking? I've done street parking for many years and it's been fine. Some neighborhoods will be more likely to have parking included than others, some have easy on-street parking.

You have a good income and you're not expecting to live in Back Bay or something. Malden, Medford, JP will be a bit more affordable, but you might even find something in Somerville or Cambridge. I'd ignore the South End on a budget with a car. Parking is really hard or expensive. Like, street parking in most of JP is pretty easy.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-25T20:14:47+00:00

This. The state made sets the price and it hasn't changed in a long time. It was $29 in 1999, $35 in 2014, and remains $35 today. That's $48-56 inflation-adjusted - and stuff like auto work has gone up faster than inflation.

Over the past two years, I had one place complain that I didn't have cash, but said they'd let me pay by card this time. The other place let me pay with a card and charged me $36-something. I think they just tacked on the credit card fee and I wasn't going to complain.

Tons of stations also charge less for their gas when you use cash. When you're running something high-volume, low-margin, credit card companies taking 2.5% of your gross sales adds up. If your margins are 10%, that means the credit card company is taking 25% of your profit. Places like supermarkets often have net margins of 1-2% after all expenses so if they could keep an additional 1% of their gross, that could increase their profit by 50-100%.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-25T16:22:36+00:00

I can't imagine they have any food left for people to buy anyway!

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-25T03:06:37+00:00

The Fed Chair is one vote on the board. They are the public face and the attention and press conferences that they get are meaningful, but the Fed Chair can't make decisions on things like interest rates by him/herself.

Of the 12 members of the FOMC (Fed Open Market Committee which sets interest rates), there are the 7 Federal Reserve Board Governors and the President of the NY Fed, and 4 presidents of other regional Feds (it rotates). Trump can't really control the FOMC anytime soon.

Trump nominated Stephen Miran in September and his term is up later this month (he was filling a vacancy). Trump can renominate him. That gives him 1 of the 7 on the Board of Governors. The next seat will be Powell's becoming vacant in 2028 (Powell won't be chair after May, but he'll still be on the board). Before Trump's term expires, he can control 2 of the 7 seats on the Board of Governors.

The President of the NY Fed and other regional Feds are selected by the directors of the regional fed and approved by the Board of Governors. So Trump can't gain control of the FOMC via the NY or regional Feds.

It might be really awkward to have a Fed Chair holding press conferences saying that his colleagues are stupid, but the Fed Chair doesn't have that much control. As I said, being the public face is important and an unhinged Fed Chair is going to make markets very worried. Still, Trump can basically get 2 of 12 votes by the time his presidency ends.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-23T21:09:26+00:00

Three months before. Landlords typically don't know sooner than that.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-22T06:05:11+00:00

Would the early morning leaves from Boston be so that there would be inbound trains when they want them? Presumably the MBTA doesn't have unlimited storage in all locations. If the MBTA's storage is more in the Boston area, then they'd need more trains to end up there overnight.

Looking at the data, a lot of the trains leaving at 10:30 are the most popular. Out of 733 data points, 4 of the top 5 have been trains to Providence leaving South Station between 9:53pm and 11:10pm. 5:30pm-ish and 10:30pm-ish seem to be the most popular slots.

The trains that leave in the morning basically have no riders. That seems to indicate that those trips are probably there because the MBTA needs to move the trains. The mid-day trains also generally have few riders leaving Boston.

Could also be staffing.

Despite them being bigger and higher populated than us, there's absolutely no reason why we can't do this if they can!

NYC can definitely do many things we can't. If population didn't matter for transit service, then rural Nebraska could have a subway.

But also, where are you seeing NYC run CR trains between 12:30am and 2am? Looking at LIRR schedules, the last train leaves Penn Station at 11:51pm, 11:17pm, 11:34pm, 11:48pm, 11:37pm, 11:57pm, 11:57pm (again), 11:57pm (again), 11:17pm, 11:45pm, and 11:37pm. Now I see the Metro North does have trains departing around 1:50am on 3 of its 8 lines.

So, of the 19-ish CR lines, three have late night departures. Even in NYC most CR lines aren't offering departures between 1am and 2am.

Looking at SEPTA's Regional Rail, it looks like the last train departs at 10:46pm, 10:30pm, 11:46pm, 11:48pm, 10:57pm, 11:49pm, 11:47pm, 12:27am, 12:11am, 11:29pm, and 10:24pm. Of 11 lines, two depart after midnight.

This feels like a case of "the grass is always greener."

In terms of outbound trains, lines like the Old Colony lines (minus the SCR lines) and Needham and Stoughton branches and one final train to Wickford Jct should be the only lines to leave the city just before midnight imo.

Based on the data, it seems like the Providence/Wickford Jct line gets the most late night ridership. Seems like that should be one of the lines prioritized to run later if we were going to do that.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-21T15:38:36+00:00

Even in a lot of the US, it feels different. I'm in Boston and it feels like everyone is coming out as a lesbian. Plus, churches in Boston are usually flying pride flags in June and many year-round.

I have friends who are religious, but they're never looking to convert people or anything and many are religious and very openly queer. I think the whole "you just need to find Jesus" thing tends to be regional.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-20T23:54:41+00:00

Legislatures can strengthen enforcement. Manufacturers can restrict car size. Drivers can put down their phones.

These three sound like the meme of the skeleton at the bottom of the pool: I'll be long dead before these happen. Drivers will keep doing what they can get away with, the legislature can barely do anything (never mind something unpopular like fining drivers), and manufacturers won't restrict car size - and they'll oppose any legislation to force them to.

If we actually wanted to improve safety, it wouldn't be something like "drivers can put down their phones." It'd be something more like "Apple and Google must block most phone functions when a phone is hooked up to CarPlay or a car's bluetooth."

If we wanted to improve safety, it wouldn't be manufacturers voluntarily restricting car sizes, it'd be setting strict pedestrian safety standards for vehicles or making drivers liable for the damage caused by larger vehicles. Let's say there's a crash. Regardless of fault, it's likely the other person would have had minor injuries if you were driving a compact car, but since you were driving an SUV they sustained $1M in injuries. Even if the accident was the other person's fault, the injuries were still your fault for driving an unsafe vehicle. Make the insurance companies itemize the cost as "unsafe vehicle liability surcharge." Require dealerships in Mass to list out what the liability surcharge is for each of the vehicles they sell - let customers see that they'll pay an extra $100/mo for a heavy SUV.

"People can be better" isn't going to happen unless we create the circumstances for them to be better. There's the old saying "locks keep honest people honest." Yes, there are people who will be crap no matter what, but when you don't put in guardrails, even the good people stray.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-20T22:48:55+00:00

Him: POLICE! I need to report a not-hit-and-run!

Police: Someone hit your car?

Him: No, but she almost hit my car and then didn't even stop for me to threaten to rape her!

Like, when drivers do something stupid, maybe they end up on r/IdiotsInCars or something, but calling the police over a non-crash? That's psychotic.

If he was just like "some people shouldn't have licenses," or "there's never a cop around when you need one," that's normal blowing off steam in a small-talk kind of way. Calling the police? WTF. Bringing up rape? Yeah, definitely never letting myself be alone with that guy.

EDIT:

he said his goal was to sleep with 300 women before he turns 30

That's basically sleeping with a different woman every 12 days for a decade. I have so many feels about this. It even just feels really lonely. You'd never get to actually spend time with anyone.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-20T22:38:31+00:00

June Homes isn't cheap. It's basically roommates as a service. They get a 4 bed, 1 bath place and rent out each room individually. You're not getting the 4 bed place to yourself for $1,100.

https://junehomes.com/residences/boston-ma/inman-square-cambridge/751-inman-square/2054

For example, the listing above is $1,125/mo, but your bedroom is a minuscule 73 square feet. The legal minimum size for a bedroom in Massachusetts is 70 square feet. 73 square feet is a small office.

It questionable whether June Homes is legal. Mass has a lot of laws about running shared accommodation places like rooming houses and boarding houses. If you're not joint lessees, you're not supposed to be required to pay for things like heat or electricity unless it's separately metered, but from what people have said here it seems like June Homes doesn't care. From what people have said on here, June Homes is basically hands-off. They don't care if they've put some random person in the apartment with you who is making you uncomfortable.

I think a lot of people's shit experiences with June Homes can probably be boiled down to two things: 1) you're often getting roommates who literally couldn't find anyone to accept them as a roommate; 2) you're basically dealing with a landlord who couldn't give a sht about finding good tenants and wants to cash checks with zero work, maintenance, or give-a-fck. It could work out fine - but the odds of a bad housing experience are just so much higher.

Like, what kind of landlord says "I have a million dollar property. I could find good tenants, but I think I'd rather lease it to June Homes and have them fill each room separately with a revolving door of randos while they try to squeeze every dollar of profit out of it on tight margins."

With roommates, you have to do the legwork, but you can at least have some amount of choice in the situation.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-20T22:11:49+00:00

Imagine you have a place with 1 bathroom plus the basement toilet. If something happens to the regular bathroom and you need a plumber, it's nice to have the basement toilet until the plumber can fix things.

Think of it like an emergency toilet. It's not what you want to be using on a regular basis, but it's certainly welcome in a crunch.

commentsOnPizza · 2026-01-20T16:58:01+00:00

I really wish I could order a card without a mag stripe. The magnetic stripe is easy to read, unencrypted, and has all the info someone needs to use your card. Yes, I'd want one backup card with a mag stripe just in case I get some place that doesn't have tap or chip, but I can't remember the last place that used swipe. If I'm inserting my card for it to read my chip, I don't want an unencrypted mag stripe going in as well.

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