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How to live on $432 a month in America

(shagbark.substack.com)
526 points cactusplant7374 | 7 comments | 23 May 25 16:40 UTC | HN request time: 1.22s | source | bottom
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999900000999 ◴[23 May 25 20:15 UTC] No.44076233[source]▶
>Though I and my wife do not presently live in Massena, we live nearby, and we’re doing exactly this — we do not have an automobile, nor do we want one. We use the rural county transit bus, which we have found to be extremely cheap and quite reliable; and it has certainly saved us thousands and thousands of dollars by liberating us from the onerous expense of keeping a car.

This part has me screaming shenanigans. Unless you basically don't leave the house, you need a car outside of like 8 American cities. More believable would be a pair of used bikes.

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bombcar ◴[23 May 25 21:45 UTC] No.44076913[source]▶
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.

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1. cozzyd ◴[23 May 25 22:04 UTC] No.44077037[source]▶
While such towns may have walkable cores, often places like Walmart are a huge pain to walk to.
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2. Aeolun ◴[23 May 25 23:40 UTC] No.44077602[source]▶
If you need only $400 a month, you have a looot of time to spend walking to Walmart.
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3. cozzyd ◴[24 May 25 01:07 UTC] No.44078025[source]▶
It's not the distance, but hostile roads with no safe crossings.
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4. bombcar ◴[24 May 25 10:36 UTC] No.44080142{3}[source]▶
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.

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5. cozzyd ◴[24 May 25 13:19 UTC] No.44080929{4}[source]▶
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)

6. macNchz ◴[24 May 25 14:27 UTC] No.44081351{4}[source]▶
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

7. lolinder ◴[24 May 25 16:58 UTC] No.44082285{3}[source]▶
We're talking about towns of 10k. Traffic in these towns is pretty sparse and easily navigable as a pedestrian.