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How to live on $432 a month in America

(shagbark.substack.com)
526 points cactusplant7374 | 10 comments | 23 May 25 16:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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xeromal ◴[23 May 25 17:10 UTC] No.44074588[source]▶
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.

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aaronbaugher ◴[23 May 25 18:21 UTC] No.44075163[source]▶
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.

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1. Karrot_Kream ◴[23 May 25 19:32 UTC] No.44075838[source]▶
> 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.

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2. JKCalhoun ◴[23 May 25 21:07 UTC] No.44076610[source]▶
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....

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3. bobthepanda ◴[23 May 25 21:37 UTC] No.44076857[source]▶
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.
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4. trollbridge ◴[23 May 25 22:15 UTC] No.44077108[source]▶
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.
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5. Karrot_Kream ◴[23 May 25 22:15 UTC] No.44077112[source]▶
> 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!

6. woodruffw ◴[23 May 25 22:43 UTC] No.44077258{3}[source]▶
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.
7. tomcar288 ◴[23 May 25 22:43 UTC] No.44077261[source]▶
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
8. ufmace ◴[24 May 25 04:36 UTC] No.44078812[source]▶
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.

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9. bobthepanda ◴[24 May 25 06:37 UTC] No.44079205{3}[source]▶
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.

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10. mettamage ◴[24 May 25 13:06 UTC] No.44080822{4}[source]▶
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.