You live in NYC, make $15 an hour, and work 35 hours a week. I feel you. When I first moved to Chicago, I made $12 an hour, and that isn't livable in a major city. I got a job bartending one night on the weekends, and I started pulling in $1, 000 cash. Now, I had experience, and I was working in the most popular club in the city, so that isn't standard, but you could definitely get a job working in the food service industry for one day a week and make good extra money. One of my former students is an actor in NYC, and he works 2 days a week at Le Pain Quotidien in the Financial District, and he makes about $800.