How to live on $432 a month in America

That’s obviously not true, if you change what you “have” to go to.

There are thousands of American towns that are about 10k population - large enough to have a Walmart and other stores, small enough to walk across in an hour or so.

While such towns may have walkable cores, often places like Walmart are a huge pain to walk to.

Once it gets cold you won't be walking much anywhere. I guess grocery delivery from Walmart can mitigate this, but that fundamentally changes the situation.

Why not? You can walk plenty in the cold with the right equipment. I walked 2+ km a day at the south pole ...

It's really dangerous if you don't know what your doing. I'm about .5 km from the closest supermarket.

If it's snowing or just cold out I'm still ordering food.

If I'm mildly sick, ordering food.

I'm going to guess that you're a really good shape that a 2 km walk isn't a big deal, but I don't think most Americans can do that.

One way (not the only way and I get this won't work well for people with medical needs or kids) to handle this is stock up on rice, beans, nonperishables and have a good first aid kit. You go out to get your "freshies" but it's not an issue to be stuck at home for a week except in the most dire circumstances.

> I'm going to guess that you're a really good shape that a 2 km walk isn't a big deal, but I don't think most Americans can do that.

Shit that's horrifying.

I have health issues and walking 2km a day to try to help fix. So I see 2km a day as basic. 6-10km run a day would be "fit" IMO. things as humans are designed to walk.

Living in suburbia means I have to walk "for the sake of it" although I cam make it useful e.g. get some milk!

As for cold. Anything above minus 5 should be OK just wear stuff like skiiers wear which can be got cheap off brand.

47 people died in a blizzard in Buffalo, New York in 2022.

Let’s not pretend that the cold regions of the world were uninhabitable before the invention of the car.

77% percent of young Americans aren't fit for service.

2 km of walking in a day, even in great weather is exceptional for me. I probably average 1km or less.

And I'm not a car owner. My family members will literally hop in a car and drive 30 minutes over walking .5 km to the grocery store. They like the other one more they say.

If you need only $400 a month, you have a looot of time to spend walking to Walmart.

0.5km is like, 6 minutes of walking?

How? It just doesn’t compute to me that someone would ever see that as onerous.

There are no sidewalks, so you are walking in a street in the snow asking to become a statistic.

They weren’t, but they were zoned and organized a lot differently compared to our post-war world of today.

Huh? I'm not in great shape but I get 2km of walking a day just with my commute. According to my watch I've averaged 13k steps a day this week (something like 9-10 km a day, I think?). Ironically the days I walk the least are when I decide to bike to work instead of taking the train...

Surely you walk that much inside any reasonably sized grocery store.

This is just utterly astonishing to me. I've just checked a map and it's ~0.5 km between where I park at work and my office!

It's not the distance, but hostile roads with no safe crossings.

Your going to have to walk both ways, in the rain/snow, etc ?

Like a lot of comments have already mentioned these towns don't even have sidewalks. You'll be walking on the side of the street risking an accident

What are you buying this equipment with in this scenario?

> I'm going to guess that you're a really good shape that a 2 km walk isn't a big deal, but I don't think most Americans can do that.

Most Americans would be able to do it if it became a regular occurrence for them. 2km of walking is not much even if you sit around 24 hours a day.

You need to be in good shape to fucking walk 2km? WTF is wrong with people in murica? Well is guess they are just ordering fast food all day

My admittedly unscientific survey of small Midwestern towns with Walmarts (that are NOT suburbs!) is that you can walk to the Walmart on sidewalks. At most, you have half a block to the nearest sidewalk, or have to cross the street.

Some of the middling-old sections only have one sidewalk. The oldest have them on both sides of the street, and the newest developments have them also, usually.

500 hundred metres? This is long for you? If there is snow you can't walk? Why? Snow is much beteer than rain. And still it is just a couple of minutes. You most probably would not get wet with proper clothes. Are you from US by the chance?

In IKEA you probably walk around about 1km for just one visit considering how they design their space.

I am sitting in front of PC probably around 10hours a day and drink and sit rest of my day (excluding sleep) and still it is not a big deal for me to have a 7km walk to the city or back is not a big deal.

I think in US it just cultural. "You are walking?! With your feet?! How?!". Unless you more likely to get shot walking via some neighbourhood I can't understand that.

Is there a lot of traffic in places with 10k residents?

Are you sure you mean .5km? That's only 0.3 miles, 1500 feet. That is the distance if you drive to a Walmart supercenter and park in the center of the parking lot and walk to the door.

The two smallish towns I've spent significant time in (Tomah WI and Palestine TX) both have difficult to walk to Walmarts. But glad to hear it's not universal!

I see from Google maps that here in Illinois the situation seems to be a bit better... (E.g. Morris, Rantoul and even Du Quoin). Du Quoin seems very inexpensive and seems like it would make a better argument than somewhere truly rural (it even has Amtrak service)

..in what National Weather Service described as "once-in-a-generation storm". Walking 2 km on a normal winter day (or even a mild blizzard) is not dangerous.

I am 50 years old and don't think I'd pass fit for service either, but I can still easily walk a few Kms.

The Walmart in the area from this article is separated from the main town by a four lane road with no sidewalks, across which the nearest crosswalks are more than half a mile away in either direction—so you’re either playing high stakes Frogger, or, depending on your starting location, you might conceivably have to walk nearly two hours out of your way round trip along the shoulder of this road to use a crosswalk. They also get five feet of snow per year, so a good part of the year that walk is extra dangerous and miserable.

I can’t say for sure, but I think this is much more typical of American Walmarts than it is to be able to easily walk to them.

Streetview of your opponent as a pedestrian trying to access the Massena Walmart: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ufTWTHxHCReFP8VA9

And to be clear, driving in a blizzard is very dangerous too. But blizzards happen a minority of the time.

We're talking about towns of 10k. Traffic in these towns is pretty sparse and easily navigable as a pedestrian.

Gimme a break. I walked and biked year round in the Yukon. Past -40 I had to keep moving, but it was fun

This is true. I recently read that the real reason that the Vikings left North America was that the Native American authorities informed them that their site on L'Anse aux Meadows was not zoned for boat repair and construction.

Right, I mean obviously the scenario in the article is unrealistic budget wise (and good winter equipment is going to be at least several hundred dollars), but I'm pushing back against the idea you can't walk when it's cold ...

The average American walks 2.4 miles per day per the CDC.

> I'm going to guess that you're a really good shape that a 2 km walk isn't a big deal, but I don't think most Americans can do that.

... Wait, what? That's less than half an hour walking at a fairly relaxed pace.

The average American walks 2.4 miles per day according to the CDC, this person is truly exceptional even among people the most car centric American towns.

You’ll walk more than 500m through the aisles in Walmart buying your groceries.

And 10k is not even that small. I have family in a town of 4K and it has 2 full grocery stores and a Walmart super center.