Little trick I learned from living in NYC.
There’s free street parking in neighborhoods like Ozone Park near JFK on streets that don’t have street cleaning, for example on 120th St between 133rd Ave and Sutter Ave. You can park there, and then take public transit or uber to JFK. I’ve done this at least twice now.
This is fairly low risk if you’re not going away for more than a week. The only issue is if you leave the car for too long I imagine it might be reported as abandoned and get towed.
You can do a similar sort of thing near LGA, which I’ve done MANY times now, but there are no streets without street cleaning, so you either need to make sure your trip is 6 days or less, or cough up the $65 ticket for street cleaning.
The nice thing about LGA, is that street parking is close enough to the airport that you can just walk to the terminal, or take a kick scooter and then lock it up at one of the bike racks outside the terminals.
I love not needing to spend $60-80 for airport transportation and being able to drive myself 95% of the way there. I usually walk to LGA too instead of taking an Uber after finding a spot.