Meh. They certainly "can" . . . it's more like "they don't want to."
My read on their situation is that they're just bitching about reality. They don't "have" to live in Manhattan; they WANT to live in Manhattan. One does not go to law school, decide to get into securities legislation, and yearn for the corn fields of Iowa. One does not get a graduate degree in accounting, go into private equity, and dream of setting up shop in Biddeford, Maine.
They want to be the NYC power couple. They're just now realizing that to be the NYC power couple, they're going to have to pay some serious, big-time dues.
This is yet another example of a couple of young people getting smacked in the face by a little thing called "reality."
I don’t really have any sympathy for them. I’m just saying that those other options aren’t really available. I used to work sort of on the fringe of the financial industry as a lawyer, and while there are probably a few jobs here and there in significantly less expensive cities like Chicago and Houston, the great majority of U.S. jobs in “securities litigation” and “private equity” are still in NYC, and then maybe in California (equally expensive).
Of course they could change careers entirely, but that ain’t all that easy either. Those are very specialized sub-fields, and it’s a very unwise career move to step down from developing a mastery of complex, high stakes securities litigation to competing against every ambulance chaser and DUI defender out there, trying to hustle up enough dough from people who don’t have it to make your law school loan payments.
You can also blame them for their original life choices, and yes, it is idiotic to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational debt that can only be paid back by working in a vary narrow set of high-wage jobs, but understand that those sorts of decisions are made at the age of 19, 20, 21, not exactly a time when most of us have very much in the way of perspective on the world.