How Much Money To Move To La

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:57 am

How much money should you save to move to Los Angeles: In 2010 I packed up my car and moved from New York to Los Angeles with the vague goal of working in entertainment. Over the next 5 years, I worked with Emmy-award casting directors, helped negotiate 6-figure book-to-film deals, and helped develop TV pitches with award-winning screenwriter/NYT bestselling author.

I also waited tables for a year, ate peanut butter sandwiches to save money, and nearly broke down multiple times.

To do all this, first I had to save up enough money and figure out how to make the move. Hopefully, this post helps you do the same.

Disclaimer: I left Los Angeles for New York City in 2016. The general advice remains the same, but market prices may have changed. Cuz, you know, inflation.

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You're ready to make the move to Los Angeles.

Maybe you've dreamed of getting into the entertainment business. You're an actor, a writer, an editor. You're obsessed with working on the silver screen in some capacity.

Maybe you long for the sunny west coast, and you know that the sun-kissed LA streets and beaches fit the bill.

Or perhaps none of the above. Maybe it's just time for a change of scenery, and for whatever reason, Los Angeles calls to you.

No matter what the reason, you know there's one thing you need to figure out first to make any of these dreams come true:

"How much should I save to move to Los Angeles?"

Then, you need to save those dolla dolla bills.

In this article, I'll show you how to think about the numbers so you can figure out what's best for yourself. I'll also show you the actual numbers behind my move and how I made the move from New York to Los Angeles for less than $5,000. It's certainly not easy. In fact, certain moments were devastatingly difficult — like a 6-month stretch of unemployment or thousands of dollars I owed in taxes because I didn't understand how being an independent contractor worked.

I got through those tough times. Eventually, I found jobs. Some even paid. Then I found jobs that paid well, and other jobs that I loved. It's doable.

But first, you have to know how much to save to move to Los Angeles.

How much money should you save to move to Los Angeles

Calculating costs to move to Los Angeles

There are four high-level costs to moving to Los Angeles. I'll introduce them here, and below I'll go into more detail and explain how much I then and we'll go into each one in more detail. They are:

Your moving costs
Your first apartment costs
Your startup costs
Your "oh shit" costs

Your moving costs: $200-$600

You could drive or fly to Los Angeles. According to Google Flights, the cost of a one-way ticket from JFK to LAX can be as low as $169. Obviously, this number is going to fluctuate, depending on where you're flying from and when you fly.

Even if the flight is more expensive, you can use credit card airline rewards to get the plane ticket practically for free. Credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card or the Barclays Arrival Card offer 30K – 50K award points after a minimum spend (usually $3,000 in the first three months). That will cover your entire flight, for the cost of the annual fee.

Long story short, there are various ways to reduce the costs of physically moving to Los Angeles, so we have to give this a healthy range.

My actual costs to drive from New York to Los Angeles? $202. My moving to Los Angeles costs

Want an easy way to calculate your moving to LA costs? Sign up for the LA Email course and get the calculator. Both are free.

Your first apartment costs: $3,000
Some back-of-the-napkin costs to rent in Los Angeles:

Studio / One-Bedroom: $900 – $1,100
Two-Bedroom: $1,200 – $1,500

Ideally, you can find a roommate and split rent (and initial start-up costs — more on those numbers later). For now, let's use the ballpark figure of $1,000 per month for rent. To secure an apartment, you'll need first month's rent, last month's rent, and a security deposit.

That's $3,000. Congratulations — you're now the proud renter of an unfurnished, empty white box of an apartment, with no furniture, food, and high-speed internet.

How much money should you save to move to Los Angeles

My first apartment I split a 2-bedroom with two roommates, so my monthly nut was less than $500.

Your startup costs: $1,500

Here's where you are: You've physically moved to Los Angeles. You're renting out an empty white box. You have no food or Netflix.

Next, let's start fleshing out that apartment. First, some essentials to account for, like gas, electric, internet, cell phone bill, car insurance, and fuel. We'll ballpark that at $200 – $400 a month.

Other start-up costs (buying furniture, dishware, other trappings of home) will vary, depending on what you moved out with and where you decide to shop (hello, Craigslist!).

Starting with the empty box of my first apartment (two-bedroom shared with two people), I paid about $1,000 to set up. My second apartment, also starting close to scratch (one-bedroom shared with one person) cost $1,800.

Startup costs: $1,500

Your "oh shit" costs:

Your "oh shit" costs is how much extra you want saved after moving and getting set up in your first apartment in Los Angeles. You can calculate this number with a simple formula:

Cost of living per month x Average # of months unemployed

First, calculate your cost of living per month. This is a close approximation to typical fixed costs for a young pup in the entertainment industry — but notice while I included numbers for "groceries" and even a 15% cushion, it doesn't include money for "savings" or "going out."

Remember, these are rough fixed costs. Yes, you may be able to pare some of the costs down and eliminate some categories altogether, but a lot of these are here to stay.

(I included a link to a calculator below to help you calculate all of these costs.)

Average # of months unemployed is a very subjective number, but fortunately, it's pretty simple to guestimate. First, ignore all the impressive-sounding numbers like unemployment rates or the national GDP. All of that is a distraction from the two variables that apply to you:

How many jobs have you held in the past? and
What's the longest period you've gone unemployed?

History is a good indication of future performance. What does your history say about you? If you've never held a part-time job in your life and have zero skills, you're not going to be a desirable candidate for any employer — and rightfully so.

If you've bounced from job to job and have a handful of skills to offer (tending bar, waitressing, typing, computer maintenance) you're going to find a place to put those skills to use.

For now, we'll use 3 months as the average to calculate your "oh shit" costs

My "oh shit" costs = $1,500 x 3 = $4,500

If we stay conservative and total these numbers up:

Moving costs: $600
Renting your first apartment: $3,000
Startup costs: $1,500
Cash reserve: $4,500

We arrive at $9,600, which we'll call $10,000 to give us a nice round number.

Want help with these calculations? Sign up for the LA Email course and get the calculator. Both are free.

How to move to Los Angeles with only $5,000

Yes, really. If you dreamt of moving to Los Angeles, $5,000 is enough to get started.

I know $5,000 sounds ridiculously low. You can blow through $5,000 in 10 minutes on Rodeo Drive. Hell, you can blow $5,000 in 30 minutes at JCrew. I hesitated before even suggesting it. Why not urge people to play it safe and save more?

Because it can be done. It's hard, but it's doable.

There are no assurances

Having $5,000 in the bank leaves enough wiggle room to get started but not much more than that. Circumstances need to fall your way. You've got to get lucky.

Luck can take on any number of forms.

For one friend, it came in the form of a 39-year-old cougar he met his second night out. He moved to Los Angeles, determined to save money by sleeping in his car, parked at Wal-Mart until he found reasonable housing.

He spent a total of one night in that car.

By the second night, he was hooking up with a woman he met out and living in her beach condo.

I also had an intern named Jackie, whose luck took the form of a boarding house for women she found on Craigslist. It required no credit check and no security deposit. If you had cash and they had an open bed, you could stay.

Luck happens. $5,000 can work.

What Are You Willing to Sacrifice?

It requires living tighter. You can't be frivolous at the start.

As Seth Godin described Spike Lee's early years in New York City:

"He survived on mac & cheese to free himself from this thing called money, so he could do what he loved."

If everything falls your way, could you still go broke? Of course — there's no 60-day money back promise. But that's true for life. There's no guarantee you'll cross the street safely. Or get in your car and make it to the grocery store without getting in an accident.

Here's the other reason I'm a proponent of setting a $5,000 floor is: what's the alternative? You can strive to bank a lofty amount of money ($10K, $15K, $20K) and feel "secure".

But security based on money in the bank is a false one. People with vast amounts of savings have gone broke. In 2008, millionaires lost everything overnight. In February 2018, Bitcoin crashed and wiped out $67bn in value. There are riskier ventures than making a bet on yourself and moving to Los Angeles.

If you set the goal at $10K or $20K, you may never earmark enough money to move to Los Angeles. We get complacent. Life (car payments, vacations, gifts, etc.) gets in the way. It's easy to set a big goal so unattainable that it perpetually remains out of reach, like Tantalus straining to ease his parched throat.

$5,000 buys you a start

Do you really want it? Or are you so worried about failing, about the potential shame of returning home, that it prevents you from ever leaving in the first place?

$5,000 will get you out to Los Angeles.

After that, hunger and need for shelter are strong motivators to push you to hustle. One thing we should never underestimate is a person's ability to make money when their survival depends on it.

It may feel melodramatic, but if you want to make $5,000 work, you have to think about it like you're going to war.

How to move to Los Angeles with only $3,000

I know.

It's cray.

But again — it's doable. I did it.

Moving to Los Angeles with $3,000 should only be attempted under optimal conditions. You have to know you're going into the situation with a competitive advantage, an edge over others attempting the same thing.

I can't tell you what your edge is, but let me share mine.

Looking for your competitive advantage

Here's what I had going for me that made me comfortable to make the move with less thanhalf of what I'd recommend others to save. Hopefully it sparks ideas of your own competitive advantage:

I moved to Los Angeles with a friend.I knew at the start I could already cut the opening renting costs (as well as utilities) in half. Don't have a buddy who plans on moving out with you? Neither did I, at first. It took an extra year of waiting to get the timing right, because we both knew in the long run, it was crucial to start off with a roommate. In fact, for the first two years, I lived with two friends, so I was paying less than a third of what I estimated above.
I could cut costs of living per month down to nothing. In the past, I've lived with just the absolute minimum overhead (rent, utilities, groceries).It wasn't just something I thought I could do. I already did it. Once you've lived out of a backpack and budgeted yourself $5 for food a day, and slept on someone's couch for weeks at a time, it gives you the confidence to say, "I could do this again if I had to."
I knew I could find some kind of work. By Hollywood standards, I was unemployable. I knew absolutely zero about the industry: what's the difference between an agency and a management company?; between management and development?; what's development season?; what are the fall pick-ups? I mean, I was less than clueless. But what I did know: I worked four jobs in college. I waited tables for the last 10 years. I could land in any city and I'd find a way to make an income.
I could buy on credit.If I really became strapped for cash, I had two credit cards. Buying on credit isn't ideal and I would almost never recommend using a credit card you couldn't pay off immediately. However, if it's a choice between eating and some debt, you should probably eat.

It's important to strike a balance between what you calculate and your own gut feeling for what you'll need. Always be looking for the edge you have on other people who might be doing the same thing. Be willing to get to the edge of your comfort zone.

Most importantly, regardless of how much green you got stashed beneath the mattress or tucked into your underwear drawer, you should move out mentally and emotionally capable of cutting costs for the sake of getting started. That's the not-so-secret secret sauce to moving to Los Angeles with only $3,000.

How much money should you save to move to Los Angeles? … Conclusion

To summarize, if you're moving to Los Angeles, here are your benchmark savings goals:

If you see yourself as conservative with money, or you're risk-averse, minimum savings: $10,000
If you've traveled before and are used to living out of your comfort zone, minimum savings: $5,000
The absolute floor for me personally (as in me, myself, I): $3,000

More important than the actual number is eliminating what I callarbitrary number doubt.

The problem with saving up to an arbitrary number because some guy on the internet told you to, is that even if you reach that number, you won't have the confidence to pull the trigger.

Subconsciously, your mind will tell you: "this is not a good plan" and you'll fail to execute. The way you hack this is by seeinghowandwhy you reached your number, as we did above.

Ultimately, how much you choose to save is a personal decision. I could move to LA with $3,000. Others could probably do it for less, while still others could save $40,000 and never make the move.

Hopefully, this post cracked open the door for you. Now it's up to you to walk in and kill the room.

Break a leg.

Resources

Next, check out the full archive of posts on moving to Los Angeles here. You'll get the inside scoop on everything you need to successfully make your move to LA.

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Photo Credits: Nemanja Pantelic, Chris Ford, Annelope

How much money should you save to move to Los Angeles