How to live on $432 a month in America

I've often felt this way about some of today's complaints. I grew up in area like what was mentioned in this article and I long for the day I can go back there. I would in a heartbeat if my partner shared the same mentality as me.

I don't really see a point in living a big city with the remote job I have and that many others have if I can live in a smaller area that still has humans but much cheaper way of living. Everyone claims it's about living in a city with available services but I see those same people decry how much the food costs and also that they have no friends and can't find someone to date. My thoughts aren't as articulate as I'd like them to be but I guess I'm ultimately trying to say is if I'm going to be miserable, why not do it on my own land for a lot cheaper.

I've lived most of my life in (or outside of) small towns, and some of it in a city. I've noticed that my small-town friends who moved to the city would often talk about all the culture and food choices, but when it comes right down to it, they mostly eat at chain restaurants and go to the movies, same as they could in a smallish town. They might occasionally go to a pro baseball game or the zoo or something that's only available in the city, but country people can make a day trip to do that too.

I'm sure some city people do take advantage of all the diverse options the city gives them, but it seems like a lot of them ended up there for other reasons and then use that as a rationalization for staying where everything costs so much more.

I agree with you for the most part, and think a lot of people think they need to live in NYC/LA/London/etc. because of unstated social pressure, not because they actually utilize all of the megacity’s amenities.

However – I do think there is a sweet spot. If you can get a remote job that pays decently well and doesn’t require an excessive amount of time – and live in one of these cities – you can actually manage to see and do everything.

For example - I lived in New York for a while doing exactly this. I worked remotely and so could avoid rush hours on the subway, at restaurants, etc. and I had enough time and pocket money to explore the city.

> Everyone claims it's about living in a city with available services

The reality is that it's mostly about living in a city with available jobs

What's the job market like near this lovely little $432 per month place described in the article? How am I going to pay for it?

I recently visited New York City for the first time and honestly wasn't impressed. Outside of a few neat things like visiting the cronut place, I could do nearly everything the same back home.

The bagel places were indeed good, but not noticeably different than the hipster bagel places in my city.

Wood fired pizza was good at several places, but again...none were noticeably different than the wood fired oven fancy places in my small city.

The game stores are much bigger in my city due to lower real estate prices.

Times Square was the biggest disappointment. It's literally just standard big box store crap like GAP and M&M store and stuff like that. I guess that one's on me as it's a tourist trap.

Central Park was cool, but not as good as the multiple large parks in easy driving distance.

I could go on and on like that, but essentially I can own a home for a fraction of the cost to rent there. The only real difference is in a metropolis like NYC, you can meet up with people for any interest you want practically. You want to learn Klingon? I'm sure there's people doing that in NYC, but not like a city of 150,000.

Edit: the tap water was superior to my towns.

I moved from SF to smaller towns around California. I so much more enjoy the smaller towns. When I lived in SF I ended up going to the same 5 restaurants or cafes and while it was fund in my 20s to be around a lot of people my age as I got older and now have a family having more space is nice. Plus, I still go to the same five places in the smaller town I live in and don't have to usually wait in lines.

No one that lives in New York goes to Times Square, save for the subway station.

The great thing about New York is the prevalence of basically every nationality, with its own designated neighborhood. Places like Flushing, Corona, Brighton Beach, etc. These are also the areas that inexperienced tourists don’t visit.

If you visit again, definitely try to venture out to those areas.

They suggested working part time at a gas station or seasonally somewhere else which is incredible.

I have had to travel across the country multiple times to “live where the jobs are” so I find it hard to believe that the whole time I could have not done that and just picked some remote isolated corner and live like my great grandparents homesteading?

This is addressed directly in the article:

>And for those who might be quick to point out that there could be a dearth of jobs there, note that when people say “there are no jobs” in a given area, they generally mean that there are no jobs that could produce a normal, upper-middle-class lifestyle there. Which, even in Massena and Ogdensburg isn’t entirely true. But even if it were, the Stewart’s gas stations in both towns are actively hiring part-time cashiers at $17/hr. These places will let you work just one day a week if you like, and seem to be pretty good about flexible hours. In this case, you could work just one ten-hour shift per week, and in so doing, earn more than 30% of what you need to live well at this particular house with just four days of work per month.

The real trade off here is cheap rural land but no ability to ever retire.

Sure, I could live in the middle of goddamn nowhere, grow my own food, make my own clothes, build my own house, etc, etc, etc, but at the end of the day it's never over. I'll be out in my 70s and 80s doing that until I die. Sure, that might be an ideal life for someone, but that someone is not me.

Sure, medium cities that aren’t shitty and still have some vibrancy are a solid middle ground. Bonus points for being somewhere close to nice natural areas or outdoor recreation.

But I grew up in a town of less than 5k in the Midwest. The nearest cities and towns were all less than 50k population. Rent is, of course, incredibly low. There are even dozens of small universities in the area. The nearest city of 100k plus is more than an hour away.

There are vanishingly few hipster spots in these places. You get chains, more chains, suburbs, and a couple of mom & pop restaurants. Some of which are decent, but most of which are disappointing. The variety of cuisines is extremely limited. To see any kind of major entertainment, like comedy or concerts, is a two hour drive. The major airports are two hours away. Your options for outdoor recreation and activity are extremely limited: not enough people for lots of recreational sports. Too much farmland for beautiful parks. Too flat for winter activities. Too few people to have a variety of cultural events or festivals.

You can, of course, be very happy living here. But what you get is extremely different from city life.

Like you say, there are small cities that can check a lot of boxes. But I’d go out on a limb and say that’s not typical for small town America, and not everyone is happy in suburbia either, even if they have their own cookie-cutter home!

I think it goes beyond that. A city offers a lot more possibilities. If you like plays, museums, going to the movies, being able to find more than three people to play Dungeons and Dragons, or Settlers of Catan with (without driving 1.5 hours) - then being somewhere really rural is going to be unpleasant.

i did the same but had my wife as a guide, she dated a musician who lived there before we met and so she had been a lot of times. The different neighborhoods and just the scale of it all were pretty cool but, yeah, no desire to go back or live there. Is it required by law to play that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys "New York" song at all times everywhere there?

I've had the opposite experience. Having moved from the boonies to a downtown in a Tier 2 US city has caused a lot of my old friends and neighbors to point out that I could buy a 27-bedroom house on a 100 acre lot in the country for what I pay in rent in the city. They fail to realize that not having to drive two hours each way to have fun is worth the 35% premium in housing for me.

Before I moved I owned a house and justified living where I did by saying stuff like

> country people can make a day trip to do that too.

...but I was lying to myself. Rounding friends up to drive 90 minutes then hop on light rail for a half hour before even getting in the vicinity of where you're going has a very real chilling effect on planning fun time. Most people just end up drinking Mai Tais that a bartender pours out of a plastic jug at a riverside dock bar instead.

Different strokes for different folks, but I think everybody should give each paradigm a shot and decide what they like.

I agree. With no jobs in the area $432 may as well require to work a lot more for lower pay, whatever is available in the area.

Living in a city (or other high COL location) also means you can save more. Sure, you're spending more, but that 5-10% of your earnings you put into saving is a lot more when you're making city money vs not. And when it comes time to retire, having saved 5% of $50-150,000/year every year adds up to a much higher amount to retire on.

I agree with the possibility but many people just end up staying home due to traffic, money, or being an introvert

And when those gas station jobs fill up but there's still empty houses around?

I always found it kind of fun to wander through Times Square in the evening, every now and again (on the order of once every few months).

Pointing out that it's the same old big box stores doesn't really connect to the draw of it. Most people don't go to Times Square to shop, they go to _experience_ it, and its entertaining. But it's not the place you're going to on a normal Saturday night with your friends.

I love the stupid math in this paragraph. One 10hr shift is ~30% of what you need. So multiply that by 3.3 and... oh hey you're working nearly 40hrs a week to afford your impoverished lifestyle in the middle of nowhere. Just like everyone else in this country, only now you get to own a shed. Also you have to take the bus, which runs from 5am-6pm, so you need to beg your boss to not be an opener or closer. Your coworkers will love you for that.

That's true! And many don't!

With the caveat that I've only really visited a dozen or so states, and only lived in 2, my experience is pretty different than yours.

NYC pizza (and even north of the city) is generally a step above most other places. You can find similar quality pizza most places if you look hard enough, but it's nice being able to stop almost anywhere in NY and get good pizza, better than the best you'll find without having to do real research in most places. The common open-front place in NY has great pizza. Where I am now (suburbs of another fairly large city), I have yet to find a good NYC-style pizza.

Bagels in NY fall into a similar bucket. If you search, you can find good ones elsewhere, but it's downright easy to find good ones in NYC (though that's less true outside NYC/Long Island than it is for pizza).

And man, the black-and-whites. To date, I've never found a good one outside NYC.

Times Square is an experience, not a place you go to shop. And not a place you go to wander around on an average Saturday night. Yeah, it's a tourist trap, but that's the experience it is. It's entertaining to walk around/through; on a rare basis.

I loved working in NYC (I lived about 90 minutes north of it at the time, but didn't need to go in every day, so the commute was less of an issue) and I very much miss living in NYS. Rarely, I'm there on a business trip (it's been years) and I plan my time out so I can have pizza for dinner.

The thing about places with more jobs is that they also tend to have more job-seekers. The two tend to vary proportional to the population. It's really the ratio of jobs to job-seekers that matters.

Of course, it depends a lot on the job. Some jobs only exist in cities, while others are almost exclusively rural.

All of these articles need to come with an "About the Author" section that describes how the author makes their living. They claim to be living the outlined lifestyle, but I doubt they are working part time at three gas stations.

> One 10hr shift is ~30% of what you need. So multiply that by 3.3 and... oh hey you're working nearly 40hrs a week to afford your impoverished lifestyle in the middle of nowhere.

Are you possibly confusing "per week" with "per month"?

> but when it comes right down to it, they mostly eat at chain restaurants and go to the movies, same as they could in a smallish town. They might occasionally go to a pro baseball game or the zoo or something that's only available in the city, but country people can make a day trip to do that too.

This hasn't been my experience at all. I live in an urban area and I haven't eaten at a chain restaurant outside of road trips in years. I only eat at chains when I'm on a road trip and need a bite in the middle of nowhere. Once I drop into where I'm staying for vacation off the road trip, I'm eating local restaurants or cooking for myself if I'm out in nature. The fantastic food scene in my area is a huge factor in why I live here.

FWIW one can make the same comment about large US suburban home dwellers. Most of them just store stuff they rarely if ever use. Most of their less frequently used things are in varying states of disrepair and many of these folks would probably be better served by using communal amenities kept in good condition rather than storing sports equipment that they use once every 5 years in a dusty, mothball filled storage closet. Most folks in car-oriented US suburbs use their cars as mobile living rooms and do all sorts of illegal things (like makeup or doomscrolling their phone) in their car and only incidentally use them as transportation vehicles. But that doesn't stem the demand for folks who want to live in these homes.

The fact is, aside from job considerations, there are people who choose their density based on their actual preferences. One set of preferences may seem silly coming from a different set but that doesn't make them right or wrong; it just makes them preferences.

Time Square is a tourist trap, an area I always avoided at any cost.

NYC lives on the fumes of its former reputation. Corporate chains have changed the city into basically a shopping mall.

When I was a kid I was drawn to NYC by the little hole in the wall restaurants, delis, coffee shops, funky stores. All owned and frequented by colorful local people. Technically these things still exist but they're mostly corporate chain versions of what used to be there. The unique experiences that the city still has to offer are too expensive and exclusive to be accessible.

Ironically, if I want unique food or local weirdness nowadays, I can find more of it in my lame hometown than I can in most cities.

Well yes, it's not a brilliant observation that in the US you are given the option to work at around $15-30k a year ($17/hr part time is going to wind up around there) and use that money to fund an impoverished lifestyle.

"Why aren't more kids embracing a life of poverty? How dare they ask for anything better in a country that produces more wealth than any other?"

I could live in my hometown, rent a studio apartment, have an iPhone and a car, and work at the pizza place like I was 23 again.

Have more amenities, not live in a shack, and sure it would cost 4x more per month but certainly not as decadent as the author claims living in “the city” (read city of 25,000 more than an hour away from anything larger) is.

The type of place being talked about in this article is a place with more houses than people. It's the sort of place that children move away from as they mature because there are few opportunities to build a life there

One 10 hour shift is ~30% of what you need per month

40 hours per month is much less than 40 hours per week

> give each paradigm a shot and decide what they like.

Hard agree. I think the article is right that most people haven't even come close to trying the lifestyle he's suggesting.

> ...but I was lying to myself. Rounding friends up to drive 90 minutes then hop on light rail for a half hour before even getting in the vicinity of where you're going has a very real chilling effect on planning fun time.

1000%. I would complain about driving the 12 minutes just to get out of my subdivision (before moving into town). Just what you say, there's a "chilling effect" when everything you want to do is 30 mins away.

Have you not read the article? The whole point of it is once you get your costs down to this manageable a number, you have a lot more options for "how you're going to support yourself." You could clear $5,000-10,000 a year, which I should remind you would be tax free money simply due to the standard deduction, doing any number of things either local or remote. Ideas I'm just making up:

1. Buy, repair, and flip MacBooks on eBay 2. Do stuff on Fiverr 3. Mow lawns 4. Clean gutters 5. Set up a little stand and sell baked goods or tamales 6. Make YouTube videos or shorts about (insert your nerdy interest) 7. 3D print something and sell it on Etsy

All these things are things I'm sure I could do personally, but don't have time to do because I have to work 40 hours a week to earn enough money to pay for my mortgage in the expensive place I live. But all that goes away when the only thing you need to shoot for is to clear maybe $800 on a good month.

And also, if you have modest savings for a city person you could do with far less earnings, as interest on $200,000 = $10,000.

"impoverished lifestyle"

"live of poverty"

You're really doing a great job exemplifying the attitude which guarantees misery.

The whole point is that living a simple life in the country, with minimal amount of time spent working (thus maximum free time) is arguably a much richer and more fulfilling life than, say, a life where you and your spouse each earn $200,000 working 40-50 hours a week at a Very Important Job that you drive to in your Range Rover and BMW, and getting to spend 1 hour most nights with your family before falling exhausted into bed in a house that cost $2 million, just to wake up and do it again tomorrow.

With a partner, like he mentioned he had, each one could easily be doing a part-time job + some minor side hustle like Etsy, YouTube, etc. The living expenses are about the same for 1 vs 2 other than food, and his food budget was for 2.

What?

First of all, unless you're 18 you should, if you're playing the game correctly, be saving for retirement already, right? That money, which you get to bring with you, will go a lot further in the country.

Plus, Social Security exists, and again, that check will be the same amount regardless of where you live in retirement, so that'll go a lot further there too. The longer you've worked for "city money" already, the bigger your SS check will be.

Even if you wait until you're just before retirement, moving out of the expensive market is one of the best ways to ensure a retirement secure from the worry of having to keep being economically productive till death.

> few opportunities to build a life

for certain values of "a life" of course. The article alludes to our 'great-grandparents' and indeed, we wouldn't be here if the majority of people 100 years ago didn't build "a life" in rural areas without any of the things most of GenZ (and if i'm honest, millennials too) think "a life" requires.

But the word "build" you used is telling. I think you mean "buy a life" -- that's what pursuing only the City Life is doing. In the country you would indeed have to build a life. To figure out what would make you happy and build it, whether that's a club of fellow board game enthusiasts, or a restaurant that you open, or a small chicken farm, etc.

I don't blame the young people, they've only ever been shown a fashionable, extreme-consumption-based narrative of what "a life" should be. Expensive vacations, designer handbags, luxury cars, kitchens bigger than that whole $29,000 house (and that cost $100k for the kitchen alone). That's what we've been told happy people need.

I'm just deeply unconvinced that any of that automatically brings happiness, and I am very convinced that the amount of work it takes to pay for all that is 100% bad for those of us who weren't just born into wealth.

Also small towns attract less serial killers.

> 3. Mow lawns 4. Clean gutters 5. Set up a little stand and sell baked goods or tamales

Those might pay well in the city, but nobody making $17/hr is going to pay more than $10/hr for lawn mowing.

>1. Buy, repair, and flip MacBooks on eBay

No internet at the house in this scenario, so that's a lot of trips to the library.

>2. Do stuff on Fiverr

See above.

>3. Mow lawns 4. Clean gutters

These are both viable in the summer, provided there is some "landed elite" in the area that makes more than the $17/hr the gas stations pay. I guess you could shovel snow in the winter.

>5. Set up a little stand and sell baked goods or tamales

Doing that legally requires licenses and registration, but good idea. Do the people of upstate New York enjoy tamales?

>6. Make YouTube videos or shorts about (insert your nerdy interest)

The first point again.

>7. 3D print something and sell it on Etsy

The first point again.

> unless you're 18 you should, if you're playing the game correctly, be saving for retirement already, right?

I think you underestimate the financial resources of those who most need to take a route like this. They're not likely to have anything saved and likely have lot of debt, too. Which leads into...

> Social Security exists, and again, that check will be the same amount regardless of where you live in retirement

That is no longer a guarantee, and my retirement planning assumes that it will no longer exist in the near future. I have spent the last 25 years paying for it money I could have saved for retirement instead, and likely won't see a dime in return because the Republicans want it gone. We're realistically looking as a full elimination, means testing to receiveh benefits, massive cuts to benefits, or a work requirement (or some combination of these) all in the name of giving massive tax cuts to the group of people who will never have to work ever again in their lives, and neither will their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

> moving out of the expensive market is one of the best ways to ensure a retirement secure from the worry of having to keep being economically productive till death

Let's constrain ourselves to just the location that the author of the original post suggested. How far away is the nearest hospital if I need treatment for cancer, a heart attack, or a stroke? What are the healthcare opportunities out there? Will friends and family be able to get out there to visit?

The author is so disconnected from reality that its wild that none of this crossed their minds. It just seems like a "those damn millennial and their avocado toast and Macbooks" instead of actually looking into what it means to move out there

The author also commits what to my parents, would be a cardinal sin - suggesting that the next generation have a worse quality of life than their parents, which used to be something that got you disqualified from running for dog catcher in most of this country.

Murder rates are higher in rural Canada than they are in urban Canada, and Massena is basically Canada.

Food is next level in the NYC area compare to most other places. It's not just pizza, it's Ethiopian, Afghani, Iranian, real Chinese food (Szechuan, Hunan, etc.). The music scene and clubs can't be beat outside of other major cities, if you're into that sort of thing. The museums and galleries too. It all exists if you want to find it.

You'll also find some of the most ambitious people in the world.

Does the cost of rent justify it? Depends on what you are looking to do.

Don't tell people that. The common belief that small towns are some cross between Deliverance and Children of the Corn is one of the things that keeps small towns nice.

> suggesting that the next generation have a worse quality of life than their parents

To me, it's advocating that "number of dollars you earn per year" and "number of dollars spent on luxuries" is not so simply correlated with "quality of life." That's one aspect, but "number of dollars it takes to satisfy each level of Maslow's pyramid in the place you live" and "number of hours you have to work" and "how stressful is your work" are huge contributors to whether you can be happy (have a good QoL).

Many people work 40-60 hours per week and hate every minute of it, despite earning six figures. Some of those people might be much happier working 5 hours a week and living in the country.

My smartphone plan is $45 (happens to be same company as article suggests, US Mobile) and supports 50GB of tethering which is plenty. This doesn't appreciably change the cost of living but yes, obviously you'd have that as an expense. Who cares? Yes, it would enable like half those work ideas. You could afford it. What's the problem.

> licenses and stuff

What? No, nobody selling tamales outside in the country (or probably the city either) has a formal license to do so. Nobody cares unless they're trying to get you shut down because you're being a jerk (say, selling them right outside their restaurant). Also, what if I told you, you could pick whatever kind of food the people in the area do like, and teach yourself to make it?

Yeah, I haven't eaten fast food in — I don't know how long. Maybe it's an age thing? I ate at chains when I was younger....

I grew up in Kansas City, lived 27 years in the Bay Area, and now back in the midwest (in Omaha).

Guess what I miss most about the Bay Area? (It's not the traffic and it's not In & Out.) It's all the amazing Asian restaurants. C'mon Omaha!

Having said that, the wife and I have found a decent Asian grocery store and figured out how to make some pretty good bulgogi....

That's fine, you don't need them to pay more than $10/hr. You only even need to earn say, $800 a month (I'm assuming you'd want a pickup truck to transport your mower and get around, so padding the $432 a bit) so if you worked 5 hours a week at the gas station for $340 then you need about 11 hours of $10 work per week for another $440 and you're done. If you have any savings, the current interest on $100,000 would alternatively give you $416 so you could just not work at all.

You can go bar to bar to bar to bar until 4am in nyc and then find $2 pizza by the slice that is actual pizza and not 7/11 pizza. You can’t really do that anywhere else what with how the busybodies regulate their liqour licenses and the lack of density justifying many 24hr food establishments. You can do all of this entirely on foot too within a few blocks. Nowhere else in the US is like that with such glaringly obvious economies of scale going on in your favor.

Honestly, this is the weirdest way the author could've written that sentence.

He should've said either "one 10 hour shift per month will make 30% of what you need to live here" or even "one 10 hour shift per week will make more than what you need to live here."

> Some of those people might be much happier working 5 hours a week and living in the country.

Have you ever lived out in the country, grown your own food, made your own clothes, and such? That's so much more work than five hours a week, and at peak times, much more than 40 hours a week for a harder life that you do not get to retire from when you get old.

I think you've arguably left out some interesting options in the middle.

Name that town!! --

There is a growing divide and there are many towns (and many parts of metropolises) where its a weird class inverted food desert. There are tons of boutiques and vintage shops, and more tatoo shops than you'd think is necessary. Maybe there's a upvamped "bodega" with fishwife tinned fish, and apples for .80 each. "Main street"s that seems pulled out of Disney's imagination and Rick Caruso's execution. Six coffee shops and a bunch of restaurants but no grocery without driving, no affordable gas without driving, no public schools without driving etc.

"Just break the law, it'll be fine"

Great financial advice happening on the orangesite.

Really good stuff.

YES! this is the question.

How are we the homes of the largest economies in the world, cities known not just by name but by brand, around the world and: - day care worker can't make enough to move beyond improverished and day care is expensive - teacher can't make enough to move beyond lower middle class and school (even public once you add in all the trips, certs, childcare for non-school days) don't make enough - your burger is $15! but the person making it apparently should live in a wifi-less shed.

Not very long ago at all, this economy was about finding opportunity. Now it seems to be about aiming to reintroduce feudalism.

there is a huge market distortion in that dense, walkable living is illegal to build in most of the country. i've seen polling that suggests walkability is in demand for about 40% of the population but there isn't 40% of available homes in such a configuration, so there are also a lot of people who get priced out of that and into suburbia.

It doesn't seem to be caused by his lifestyle as the posters above also cant divide by $7 per hour. Its 62 hours or 11 shifts.

I think hé means one should do all kinds of small projects.

>> With no jobs in the area $432 may as well require to work a lot more for lower pay

>> the Stewart’s gas stations in both towns are actively hiring part-time cashiers at $17/hr. These places will let you work just one day a week if you like, and seem to be pretty good about flexible hours

432 / 17 = 25.4 hours a month. A few more hours than that to pay social security, but no income taxes and they would get the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A big part of it is how you want to find friends.

If you have a “friend profile” and you want people to match it, a city is wonderful - more people, more matches.

Thing: all friends within 5 years of my age, similar jobs, education, etc. Go city! Or college maybe.

But if you’re old country or old rural and want to be friends with those around you a suburban or rural area can be fine. You end up making friends with the ten year old next door, and his parents, along with the retirees on the other side, etc.

The problem with these lifestyles is that when you have it all finely tuned to live on $400/mo you have no capacity to absorb a $400 water heater expense.

>> my old friends and neighbors to point out that I could buy a 27-bedroom house on a 100 acre lot in the country for what I pay in rent in the city. They fail to realize that not having to drive two hours each way to have fun is worth the 35% premium in housing for me

Good point. There's no possible way to have fun in a 27-bedroom house on a 100 acre lot.

Ironically, I think this is a "blind squirrel finds a nut" situation.

When you're at the absolute bottom, you're not gonna make ends meet by playing by the rule and the enforcers generally leave you alone because you can't get blood from a stone. So for the people living on $400/mo running an unlicensed tamale stand or parting out cars or breeding pitbulls or whatever isn't as risky as it would be for someone making real money.

But yeah, the advice here is generally out of touch.

$17/hr is the rate

Most of the country by land area has no zoning and people can build whatever they want. Despite that, where I live the only thing anyone does is the SFH and the occasional duplex.

Buddy, the entire world is being hollowed out by globalism and a financial race to the bottom vis-a-vis labor costs. Your entire way of life is predicated upon no one invading the country, global supply chains remaining intact and usable, and a lack of war -- as soon as that changes your way of life disappears.

That gas station in the article? Gone once the corporation that owns it deems it a frivolous expense no longer worth the upkeep. Now what are you going to do? Find a job at the diner? Ok, how sustainable is that -- the town is not growing, the economy is dying, and the incomes are stagnating.

The author made his way by hitchhiking and vagabonding after leaving his folks' home. Guess what, surviving like that relies on civilization's infrastructure remaining viable and maintained -- it's leeching off others work and toil to selfishly sustain oneself without giving anything back.

And what about how the author currently sustains himself? Is it by humbly working at the gas station? No, he maintains a substack and social media presence to pay all his bills. He's an entertainer larping as an outbacker. He's an older Christopher McCandless -- developmentally arrested and antisocial.

It's not about fashion or luxury or "buying a life," it's about securing a means of self-sustainability, managing risk, and being a part of the growing world around you -- and not recoiling from it, shutting one's eyes, and pretending everything will be alright (tell that to anyone whose nation transitioned into communism -- hah!).

> Having said that, the wife and I have found a decent Asian grocery store and figured out how to make some pretty good bulgogi....

This is the move. My partner and I are Asian and we participate in Asian community things in the Bay. A lot of asians that came from less urban areas made their own food sourced from the high quality but unknown-outside-the-community Asian grocery store!

I’ve never really been super confident with remote jobs - a recession hits and you can’t find another job.

When I lived in NYC, it was a given it would take at least an hour to get to an airport, and then I’d budget an extra hour for something to go wrong.

Driving to smaller airports - just arrive 50 minutes before departure.

432/17 is 25 hours, or otherwise stated one 8 hour shift every week or two.

This isn't a good take. When was the last time you lived in NYC? Surely maybe there were glory days at one point, but there used to be a LOT more crime too. NYC is still one of the all time great cities.

Cities wreck your finances and your health.

That isn't especially surprising, given that there's no point in raising (or using) the capital to build urban infrastructure where none exists. It's a flywheel-shaped problem; the fact that the average American lives in a local optima of suburban sprawl doesn't itself indicate the absence of a better optima.

actually, i'm now noticing it may be cheaper for me to buy used skis than to rent them. buying used i can get it cheaper than even renting just once or twice

Right, which is why it's extremely confusing that the author wrote:

> In this case, you could work just one ten-hour shift per week, and in so doing, earn more than 30% of what you need to live well at this particular house with just four days of work per month.

What he probably did was write that one shift is more than 30% of what you need, then switched gears to write about four days of work per month, but forgot to remove the 30% number.

> Everyone claims it's about living in a city with available services but I see those same people decry how much the food costs and also that they have no friends and can't find someone to date.

It sounds like they’d find a way to be miserable anywhere. I live in a medium-density neighborhood of a large US city. I have multiple close friends within a five-minute walk, and I’m constantly meeting new people who share my interests. The music venues, restaurants, and yoga studios are nice too, but having so many potential friends in close proximity is what really makes the city great for me.

It’s not necessarily easy to start making friends though, it definitely doesn’t happen automatically. Maybe in small towns, people are more likely to notice you and spend time with you, because they also have fewer people to choose from.

When I’ve lived in small towns I found dating almost impossible, though.

> if I'm going to be miserable, why not do it on my own land for a lot cheaper

Bro. Please go make some friends, or find a hobby or vocation you like, or get religion, or something! You don’t have to be miserable, at least not all the time. Renouncing society will probably just make things worse.

Small towns can be great if you fit the mold.

They’re terrible if you don’t. There’s inherently less diversity within a smaller population.

I grew up in a small town. (4000 people, largest nearby was about 15 miles away and 20k. The nearest “city” was 100k and 80+ miles away. Maybe visited that city region once a year. Major city (500k) that was 180 mi away I never even saw growing up.) Even being a straight cismale nerd was considered the bane of my existence. There wasn’t anyone else I met who shared my level of interests. I saw how people who were gay were treated and it was quite grim. Imagine now you’re adding in multiple facets like race, politics, etc.

These small places work well for those who fit a certain mold. You’re not gonna have an easier time dating either if you have any modest requirements either like education, income, beliefs, etc.

The main issues with cities is that they’re very competitive. If you’re not a competitive person or don’t have whatever attributes the market rewards, it will be very challenging. Especially with dating as the pool to most people feels “unlimited” and therefore people will keep looking than settle for someone who is ugly or whatever issue you have.

> remote jobs

> a recession hits and you can’t find another job.

Suppose you avoid all remote work. You live in San Francisco. If a recession hits and you're laid off, now there are 10,000 local unemployed tech workers trying to get 5,000 local jobs. Similar risk of unhappiness.

I don't believe that remote positions as a class are more likely to be eliminated than any other, so I just think of jobs located in "Remote" to be just like jobs in any other city, "Remote" just happens to have more jobs than any one city, and has unlimited housing for sale or rent at every price point.

I went remote in 2018 and couldn't be happier with my choice. I'm on my 3rd job, although Job #2 required me to be onsite for about a year starting in 2019.

Yep. My airport has less than 20 gates and is a 30 minute drive and 10 minutes to get through security. You frequently have to fly through hubs though.

Thanks. Yeah, if I do go back it won't be in Manhattan. I was alarmed by how every place was pretty much closed by 6-8 PM near me. Again...my medium city has plenty of cool stuff open much later -especially on a Friday/Saturday night.

What did you find interesting about times square? I'm asking seriously as there isn't anything to do other than shop or ignore the annoying 50 people on every street corner asking me to get a bus tour.

This is my thesis about the size of where you live. There are three types of people:

1. People who like the mega cities/metastacities. They genuinely enjoy the idea that they could never “fit into their head” the city in which they live. It’s just too big. You can never possibly exhaust all the possibilities, much less keep up with all of the changes. They can be intensely loyal to their abstract city, abstract because they can never physically/socially experience the entire city, so it mostly exists only in their head. But the endless horizon of that abstract city is where they really live, and why they like it so much. Never boring…of course neither is a war zone.

2. Smaller right-sized cities, defined as cities/regions that you can just about fit into your head. Big enough that they are rarely boring, especially if you take advantage of the third dimension of time/local history. But small enough that you can experience the coziness and stability of fully living in that one space…in other words, a home.

3. Smaller towns of which you can exhaust the possibilities in just a few years. If you grok the place, it is supremely cozy, and you can deepen the sense of that by raising a family and becoming (an old phrase) a pillar of the community. You go deep socially instead of craning your neck across an endlessly broad horizon. You also have the third dimension of time/local history. And you have the additional option of defining your location not just as the small town, but rather a whole surrounding region as your actual home. For Americans this is easily an area of 60-100 miles/100-160 km radius, given our love affair with the automobile. That regional view then gets you into the second level of a small city, enough stimulation so it’s rarely boring.

And there’s always cyberspace. The small town life isn’t so extremely different when that part that is online is so similar for everyone, big city or small town.

For extremely different, try 19th Century Western life, or 20th Century non-Western life.

This sort of writing has been popular in the US for over 100 years. A historical review of the field (pun intended) can be found in the book Back to the Land, by Dona Brown, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.

The lights in every direction, the people interacting with the performers and each other, the naked cowboy, the hustle and bustle. It's just a very unique location. It's like watching a human fish tank.

I feel like on the surface this may seem like kind of a facile comment, but this really gets at what makes NYC a special place. There’s a whole day-to-day experience that may be technically replicable in other large cities in the course of a day, but there’s like 100 things to do in New York every 200 feet. It’s just a different experience.

I read that sentence three times. Pretty sure he was trying to hide the ball, but still not sure where he was hiding it or what exactly the ball was, to be honest.

That makes it even more funny. No wonder we cant find a cheap place to live.

$17 x 26 h = €442

One 10 h shift per week is to much apparently.

People raise families and live generations in cities. There's plenty of rural poverty and poor health outside of cities.

One wonders why anyone ever left the country to move to the city then. Maybe not everyone wants to live a simple life in the country. Maybe that's considering boring and socially isolating. Maybe some people want more kinds of experiences and even things. Maybe they want a kind of community that's a lot harder to find in the country, or is even discriminated against.

Young people might also recognize that there's a lot more going on in big cities, a whole lot more to do and experience. And attitudes tend to be more excepting of differences. They tend to be more cosmopolitan.

To be fair, my impression is most people have highly contradictory desires along these lines.

They say they want to be able to walk to places more. But they also want a big suburban-style house with bedrooms for everyone and storage and garage and lawn etc, easy parking for them, nice wide roads to drive everywhere on and tons of free parking when they get there. This makes it impossible for the area to be walkable unless everyone else lives in small apartments and there's actually only enough parking for just them to drive if they feel like it.

In my opinion, it doesn't work that way. Yeah everyone wants to be the special 1% like that, but only actually 1% will be. If you really want to be walkable, you personally will need to live like that too.

My understanding of the issue is that while walkable communities are in demand they are a minority and generally speaking, also a minority that is less politically active than single-family homeowners.

Pretty much everywhere has a political majority of single-family homeowners, and if each locality decides on its own it doesn't want to have multifamily housing, then you wind up in a situation where almost nowhere actually allows it.

This is so weird to read. My cultural bias is showing: I'm from the Netherlands. As most of you know, walkability is the norm here. And while the country is flat, so is the area described in this article.

In my experience law enforcement in rural areas generally are squeezing stones for blood, you think the local cops or judge are going to be living on $20,000 a year? No. And where do they get the money? By extorting poor people that live in the area. Oh you literally can't afford their fines? Well then you can spend the next month or two in jail, now having a criminal record, likely losing your job, and when you are released owe the courts and jail a few thousand dollars on top of all that for the mandatory minimum court and jail fees which will cost just as much as the previous fine you couldn't pay and got sent to jail for.

Sure you might get lucky if you keep your head low, but maybe you won't get lucky and you lose the gamble and are put in a WAY worse situation.

> I would in a heartbeat if my partner shared the same mentality as me.

And what are the chances you would find an acceptable partner for you in the small town if you didn’t already have one?

I guess my palette is just not sophisticated but I have eaten many times in NYC, in other big cities famous for food, in suburban places with one or two restaurants, and in rural places with only Applebee’s, and I honestly don’t see that much of a difference. To me, food is food. You eat it, you’re not hungry anymore. The only difference I notice is the cost. I’ve had pizza in New York, and I’ve had “New York style” pizza from a no name pizzeria in upstate California and it tastes exactly the same to me.

My wife, on the other hand goes bananas when we visit the city and just can’t get enough of the food. She’ll eat when she’s not even hungry because she just wants to experience this or that meal. I play along because I think it’s cute and we support each other’s goofiness, but I legit don’t get it.

Cities are lecking grounds. They're places for people to date. Once they get married they move to the suburbs.

I mean we're talking about someone who thinks living on $432 a month with absolutely no government assistance and including housing is a reasonable claim to make. (In the comments, he reveals he goes to Mexico for medical care... I'm really curious how one travels round-trip to Mexico from New York on a $432 a month budget.)

I'm remote too (sort of), but I do sometimes dislike the fact that the kind of tech jobs I'm best suited for are all an hour+ away.