Last week I found my old Rogers Park keys in a jacket pocket. Two brass keys on a ring from a hardware store, one for the front door of the building and one for our unit on the second floor. I gave the real set back in June 2024, so these were the spares Tess had cut for me after I locked myself out the first winter. I sat on my bed in my parents' house and held them for a minute, then got out the club sheet.
Because this month I paid off the last of the credit card balance that apartment built. And I wanted to finally write down what living there actually cost me, not what I told myself it cost.
The number on the listing
Tess and I moved into a two-bedroom in a brick walkup a few blocks from the lake in August 2022. I had just started my billing job, I had a Corolla I'd paid cash for, and I felt extremely grown up. The rent was $1,850, split down the middle. My share was $925.
That's the number I quoted to everyone. My mom, my coworkers, Priya. "It's only $925, and you can walk to the beach." All true. Also not the whole story.
The number nobody puts in the listing
Here's what a normal month really looked like for my half, once I pulled two years of bank statements and sorted them:
- Rent: $925
- Utilities (electric and gas, split): about $70, more in January
- Internet, my half: $30
- Renters insurance, a street parking permit and laundry quarters, averaged out: about $65
- Groceries: around $210
- Takeout and delivery: this is the one I didn't want to look at
The fixed stuff alone was $925 + $70 + $30 + $65 = $1,090 a month. That's already $165 more than the number I bragged about. And that was before I fed myself.
The takeout line averaged $240 a month over two years. Some months it was $120. One February it was $390, which I can only explain by the fact that it was dark at 4:45 and the sushi place was on the corner. Tess and I had a running joke that our kitchen was decorative. It was funny at the time. It's a little less funny in a spreadsheet.
So my real monthly cost of living there was closer to $1,540, on a take-home that was around $2,700 back then. Add student loan payments once they restarted in October 2023, gas for the car, a phone bill and the occasional concert, and you can see where the gap came from. The gap went on the card.
I never had one big disaster purchase. Nobody stole my identity. It was $40 here, $85 there, a month where my utilities share was higher than I planned and I just put groceries on the card "for now." By the time Tess's job offer in Minneapolis came through in spring 2024, I owed $2,350 at 27.24% APR, and I had made one 30-day late payment on a student loan in November 2023 because I hadn't set up autopay. Both of those were still sitting on my credit report when I started this blog at a 668 score.
When the lease ended in June 2024, I looked at my options. Find a new roommate and stay, find a cheaper studio by myself, or move home to Wilmette for a while. I picked home. I'm 25 and living in my childhood bedroom, which is a sentence I still say with a small wince. But I pay my parents $300 a month, and I've watched the card go from $2,350 to zero in about three months.
What I'd tell myself in August 2022
I don't regret Rogers Park. I loved walking to the lake after work, I loved the Morse stop rattling past at night, and Tess was a great roommate. The apartment wasn't the mistake. Not knowing my real number was the mistake.
If I could hand my 22-year-old self one thing, it would be this: add up a full month, every line, before you decide what something costs. Rent is the headline. The real cost is rent plus everything rent forces you to pay, plus what your habits add on top. For me, the habits were the expensive part.
I'm going to want my own place again someday, and when that happens I want to walk in knowing my all-in number to the dollar. Mine in Rogers Park was about $1,540. The listing said $925.
The keys are going in the junk drawer in the kitchen. My dad says that's where keys go to retire.
