Life in New York is nothing like Friends. “Those apartments would cost at least $3,000,” says Kera Bolonik, “because studios are going for $1,900 these days. There’s no way, not with their jobs. Except maybe in Queens.”
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As an editorial assistant at HarperCollins, Bolonik met Jennifer Griffin, and the two hit it off immediately. Griffin, says Bolonik, played Dorothy Parker to her Fran Lebowitz. “We felt our brains wasting away, and after reading hundreds of terrible book proposals and exclaiming after each one, ‘I could do better,’ we decided to write a book together.”
Frugal Indulgents: How to Cultivate Decadence When Your Age and Salary Are Under 30 (Henry Holt) provides practical how-tos for such postcollegiate problems as finding and furnishing an apartment (or dispensing with one through house-sitting and couch-crashing). It gives dating advice (don’t ask, don’t pay; date people in higher tax brackets). It lists the financial pros and cons of dating and relationships, and it provides amusing multiple-choice guidelines on picking a drug for Saturday night. There’s also a glossary of terms, like exfriendable (“an expendable friend”) and glambidextrous (“the ability to look fabulous with the poise to make it seem easy”).
