How to live on $432 a month in America

Supposing I've made peace with the main gist of this: Cut living expenses to a point where you can work ¼ or so of the time most of us spend working by living somewhere cheap and not being so materialistic.

The missing piece here is social connections. Family and friends. If I could take my in-laws and my 2 best friends and their families with me, I'd sign up to move to a rural place like this tomorrow. But it's impractical for nearly everyone in the whole country to make such a thing happen. This limits its appeal. This place is 90 minutes or so from the Montreal airport, which is actually not bad for rural places, but flights are not cheap, certainly not accessible on the budget described here, so for you to have contact with anyone outside this town, they're likely going to have to drop about $500 per person, per visit, and will be staying at the Super 8 since you probably don't have a guest room). So, implied but not acknowledged in this piece is the assumption that you are almost definitely going to only see your family and friends a few more times (maybe once a year each, if you're super lucky) for the rest of your life.

And unlike questions of money; food, entertainment, family and friends aren't fungible. You can start over and hope to make new friends out there, but you can't replace people. This is what would make this life untenable to me, and I'm not even all that extraverted.

But that aside, I suggest this is front page and meaningful not because it brings up a third option (to stay home, move to a city, or move to rural NY), but instead because it advocates accidentally for just staying home. Your family probably already lives in an area that is more affordable than SF/NYC/Paris, and they are there waiting. It's entertaining as an extreme data point but motivating for other reasons

This article is most interesting to me because I tried moving to the big city to be a big shot techie, and have been substantially happier living outside a major city in Minnesota.

Absolutely nobody that I knew in those cities lived near their family, absolutely all of them moved away to chase fortune and fame.

The NYC metro area is 23 million [1] which is about 7% of the country (23/300). There's a good chance somebody who works in NYC grew up nearby.

That said, if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead... Even if rent is twice as expensive in SF, if your salary is twice that then your savings are also twice as much which will go a longer way anywhere but SF.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

FWIW, I've crossed the border at both Cornwall and Ogdensburg when driving to Ottawa, and they were quiet when I crossed. Going from the US side to Canada was fast and easy, but the reverse wasn't true, and that was several years ago when crossing the border was quite a bit less stressful.

But yeah, this lifestyle is mostly madness. I watched others stay at home and they have decades of memories, families, and paid off houses. Grass is greener.

The demographics of NYC require and support the idea of a huge and constant flux of people from distant areas moving into and out of the city which matches people’s observations. Even the gender divide is abnormal, the largest age group is 25-29 for women and 30-34 for men despite more men being born vs women living longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City

And the locals start to hate you for buying up land and generally raising prices enough that working folk are squeezed out of the market. Some areas are starting to enact laws to prevent productive farmland becoming condos and hobby farms for retiring city people.

The IRS estimates per-mile deduction at well over 60 cents per mile. If you have to drive 15 miles to the grocery store and back, your grocery bill goes up $18/trip. If you need to drive 15 miles to work and back, take $90/week out of your paycheck.

Then there's the fact that whoever is The Employer in that region - if you lose your job there, you're fucked. So The Employer gets to abuse every rule in th book because who's going to complain and risk losing their job? If The Employer decideds to drop everyone's pay by 25 cents/hour, what are you all going to do? Answer: nothing.

Meanwhile in the city you can go anywhere you want within a 500 square mile area (or more) for well under $100/month and commuter rail will take you even further for not a lot more. And you can do other things while using said transportation. No "self driving car" needed.

As a sidenote: the same author complains about the "loss of the $50 motel room" and laments they're 3x more expensive now. Days after complaining that housing isn't actually that expensive. The guy has to be a troll...

Oh, and also not factored in: almost every aspect of rural life is heavily subsidized, and I don't just mean direct assistance. I mean literally everything you stare at when you roll through a rural town was subsidized in some way by the federal government, and most of them either don't know or will never admit it.

For fucks sakes the government actually runs a program to subsidize rural Americans getting to fly around on barely-occupied turboprop planes. But heaven forbid a city get some federal funding for electric or hybrid transit busses that will serve several thousand people a day.

Your comment does focus in on the interesting point in that connected places have perhaps not scaled as well. Or perhaps there is some pareto front of locations on cost vs connectedness we need to imagine in our heads. Very interesting.

Unfortunately the appeal to ancestry fallacy is always a terrible idea.

You see this in the nutrition space where “influencers” go on and on about how our ancestors ate, forgetting that our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans.

Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways.

The reason to complain about the high cost of living is that the U.S. has an incredibly high GDP and yet Americans live highly precarious lives, not that in certain very specific ways our ancestors had it slightly better, which as you point out leads to all sorts of issues.

This is one way gentrification happens.

Starlink and a local grocery store means the vast majority of the US is able to support a lifestyle most of humanity could only dream of until fairly recently without actually being that expensive. Year round bananas for dollars per pound is a fucking miracle of logistics.

Not that long ago one of my coworkers was effectively living in minimum wage in a major US city and tossing everything else into savings. Excessive number of roommates, no car, cooking simple vegetarian meals at home etc. At the other end if he had a major medical condition, drug addiction, etc he’d have been “fucked,” except for the fact modern medicine simply wasn’t available at any price again until recently so should we assume it’s normal.

It’s because rural voters are both active and reliable regardless of their party affiliation, they get out the vote. This in turn for the fact that many rural counties account for a great many house seats and can swing senate elections, they have more power than numbers suggest.

If urban voters were as persistent and consistent as rural ones they could easily flip the narrative, but in my experience (and by looking at a lot of election statistics) a huge chunk of apathetic eligible to vote voters live in urban areas, so you don’t have the same en masse consistency and persistence

I also wonder how close it is to the nearest hospital or urgent care.

No they didn't, stop using averages.

These things just don't happen anymore. To find better work (especially outside of tech), people move, some constantly. Siblings wind up across the country or further from each other and where they grew up. Elders are either left behind or move into retirement homes.

There are exceptions, and those who keep some of that support network find the real boomer superpowers of sharing costs (financial, time, and labor alike) and inheriting wealth. But the ease with which people could leave home for good is one of many factors that make emulating boomers difficult, if not impossible: that rural cheap house isn't 10 minutes from the rest of your family, your childhood friends, and your co-workers anymore.

That said, now that I'm near the end of my career I've taken full advantage of remote work by moving to a rural area while maintaining similar pay. Honestly I don't know why more people haven't taken advantage of this significant arbitrage opportunity. To each his own.

Your original text, edited for sequence and clarity while preserving your voice:

This doesn’t apply to the U.S. or Canada, nor has it ever since their foundings, possibly excepting some natives. The American frontier was declared closed by 1890, long before the post-WW2 population surge to California. Before that, New Englanders left farmland to settle the Midwest. Later came the Great Migration of mostly Black Southerners to northern cities. Anglophone North America has never been a peasant society where families remained rooted for generations.

And honestly, based on some cultures, home isn't free either. The moment I got back home, I was given a few months to find work, but had to pay rent in 3 months no matter what. I was doing temp work for one month while interviews finished

That said, I don’t know if I’d want to live in a depressing small town, unless it had a good diner.

It's basically that ancap meme of building your own infrastructure: water, electricity, access roads, clearing the vegetation that constantly tries to reclaim your property. I've never owned so many things in my life until I moved here, many of them just to be able to tend the wilderness around me.

But shoveling and cutting things has been an eye-opening experience in terms of how many processes the high-energy urban civilization hides from us. Even with steel/power tools, it’s brutal out there.

I'd hazard that a few parts of Appalachia remained relative stable, and poor, across more than a couple generations.

Silicon Valley is not populated by people who are there for family and friends. Silicon Valley is populated by people who left their family and friends to go participate in a gold rush.

Silicon Valley is populated by people from other continents who came to participate in the gold rush, family and friends be damned.

I really don't understand the antipathy towards the fact that you can live on $432 a month in America. I just really don't. With some tradeoffs, you can live on $432 a month in America, and this fact makes some Hacker News commentators very very angry.

Sure plenty of locals move into the city just as with any city, what sets NYC apart is it draws in people from much longer distances before most of them leave. The elderly population in NYC being relatively tiny.

However I don't think that's what the parent poster meant. I think he meant "home" is the "home town" sense.

There's a perception that young people (for probably 60 years now) see "getting out of this town" as a major life goal. Small towns find it hard to hold on to folk in their 20s as they head off into the world seeking the excitement of a bigger city, industry location, or indeed just the option of choosing from a list of more than 2 places to eat.

The parent poster is suggesting that after experiencing that, and discovering the negatives (high housing cost being one), if you have a job which can be done remotely, then Starlink allows you to do that from your home town.

Of course this is a viable option for some, and likely not for most.

These towns are somewhat popular with retirees, rural and quiet enough but within 2 to 3 hours of the city, international Airport, and so on.

Getting closer to my own retirement, discussions about "where" have occurred.

Thing is, I actively don't want to retire there. Frankly because there's nothing to do.

As I'm slowly gaining more free time, I want to learn new things (music, ceramics, etc) go out more, play more golf etc. Small towns with their small shops are lovely to unwind in, but personally, not for me full-time.

So yeah, to each his own. Which is great, we are all different, with different circumstances, different opportunities, different goals.

And yes, high speed internet removes a huge part of "have to leave" (or at least adds a big part of "can come back") to the equation. Plus remote work can pump significant revenue into a small-town economy.

I can use electric scooter to move around most days. It's a lot more fun than driving my car.

Really, what these places really need is major policy reform to make them more livable. There's a reason why these places are where people want to live after all.

To help make this happen, I donate to two non-profit that works to improve transportation and housing accessibility respectively.

Parents telling kids in this world to "go work 24/7 on the treadmill without being able to save" should wonder if having kids wasn't something selfish they did like having a pet.

I was always welcome at my mother's home and she told me there would always be shelter and food for me, whenever I'd come.

The selfish people who kick their kids out of their home at 18 y/o are people best let out of my life.

If a kid is working, I see no reason why parents shouldn't let them

Okay, but you're inventing a strawman there, since there are millions of places to live that are far closer than 15 miles away from basic services. The outskirts of Massena for instance, are about 2 miles from Walmart.

> whoever is The Employer in that region - if you lose your job there, you're fucked

The article is specifically about how with a low cost of living you don't even need full time work. It's not about moving to a company town to work a 9-5 at a factory.

> a city get some federal funding for electric or hybrid transit busses that will serve several thousand people a day

I mean, they most definitely do get that federal funding -- this fiscal year there is $1.5 billion available. Here's[0] last fiscal year's winners. But I assume the meaning of your comment is that it bothers you that someone somewhere complained about that fact? I doubt it's the rural folks complaining, probably car drivers in the city complaining that the money didn't all go to fixing the potholes, the same cranks who complain about bike lanes, etc.

It is interesting how this proposal that people even just consider rural living as a thought experiment seems to have triggered a lot of people. If you love the city yet simultaneously think it's too expensive, other people opening their minds to living somewhere else is good for you. It doesn't have to be for you for it to be an okay idea.

[0] https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grants/fy24-fta-bus-and-...

I just noticed that Syracuse has an airport with passenger service, only 2 ½ hours away, so that's another option, if the "international flight" hassle plus border crossing actually burns an hour.

"Keeping in touch via Internet" for me is a pale imitation of what I want from a friendship. We text a few times a week. I visit each of them 1-2 times a year. I miss them a lot.

This isn't to claim it's impossible to do better. But I have a feeling that especially those on the "urban" side of the friendship just have a hard time making time for say, a Zoom call with you on the same frequency as they may have gone out with you for dinner or drinks. Especially group dynamics don't allow this: If you were part of a group of 5 friends that hung out together, they'll just start hanging out without you, and no time will be opening up in all of their schedules to devote to tele-friendship. Those friendships will suffer.

And remember, the "low cost of living, low earning" thesis we're discussing does mostly rule out even those "cheap" flights (which stop being cheap really quick once you have a family, so multiply all prices by 2, 3, 4...)

They would move 1,000 miles or more, or even across the sea and then send back and forth letters every few months. "Alice had a baby, she named him Robert Joseph. I have secured work at the textile mill, and am saving to buy a plot of land. The weather here is cold in winter, but the summers are somewhat more tolerable."

The interesting thing is, I feel like they moved back then mainly because there wasn't sufficient land or jobs where they came from. Today, the urban dwellers this article is talking about has an equal dearth of land and jobs available to them in the city, but they don't feel like the countryside has anything to offer them either.

From the time I had to live a year going to paycheck advance every month because of an unexpected auto repair bill (leaving that cheap typically requires a used beat up car).

Or the time I woke up with an excruciating pain in my side and went to ER which resulted in bills that lead to years of payments.

People do this experiment every day in the USA and the experience is pretty bad.

EDIT I’ll grant this is all a fine trade off for some people. But having lived it, I can definitely say no thank you.

Just checked flights from sfo to there, 500 bucks. I don't get how this is different than moving to another state for work.

I think you are manipulating and substituting concepts, and these calculations of the cost of the trip include expensive cars of highly paid city workers. And if you recalculate the cost of the trip taking into account cars that are used outside the city, then the amount will be several times lower. Probably 5 or more times lower if people are interested in the maximum reduction in the cost of travel.

>almost every aspect of rural life is heavily subsidized

I don't know, show me the data. Maybe the city guys are just saying that it's all subsidized, while they themselves are completely stealing all the allocated funds, taking advantage of the lack of control. I recently watched a program about how government-funded projects were costing 10 or 20 times more. So, without credible evidence to the contrary, let's assume that what we see around us in rural areas has roughly zero subsidies, and all allocated funds have been completely appropriated by contractors.

>But heaven forbid a city get some federal funding for electric or hybrid transit busses that will serve several thousand people a day.

This is blatant hypocrisy. We have already sorted out how rural areas are "subsidized". And under these conditions, we are asking rural residents to pay for the transport of pompous urban asses? If this transport really moves so many thousands people as you said, why don't these city people pay for it themselves from their huge city salaries? Why do you want to put your fat fingers in the pockets of the rural guys?

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states...

And if you and you spouse have jobs and kids you probably need two cars, and school is another cost so I would say 400$ is pure fantasy unless you want to live insolitude, fishing in forest.

Normal people need near school/preschool/highschool/job/store etc. And this is why you have cities. It is cheaper for society to concentrate population around those buildings.

Every round trip ads maybe $5 right now. We don't have to drive to the city every second day.

Then you wouldn't be able to cut down expenses to "nothing"/month.

Social thing assumes expenses. Hobbies assume expenses.

Unless those nonprofits work with local government to improve transportation, you're donating to scammers

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project

It sort of is. Opportunities in the small towns is limited compared to urban areas. As well as other social aspects like night life, entertainment, the culture of the residents, etc. The people argument of being irreplaceable works both ways; you're simply going to get more options when you're around more people.

> if you have a job which can be done remotely, then Starlink allows you to do that from your home town.

Perhaps. Both Starlink and jobs in general really don't want us to have such options, as seen in the last few years of layoffs and crashouts. Add in the cable monopolies and you see how WFH really isn't stable right now without a good connection.

Like I said, it's cultural. Some parents literally need extra income just to keep the roof over their heads, and having an adult dependent at home is still an expense. . Some parents simply don't want to facilitate a full on NEET lifestyle and want to encourage a proper work ethic.

I agree that a kid won't just figure everything out the moment they turn 18, but I can empathize with a child also needed to leave their nest one day. Uniersity was the perfect environment for that transition, but we decided to cut funding for decades and move the costs to the 18YO's with no financial sense. A "party school" just doesn't make sense anymmore so if we don't treat it as a vocational school, you may as well have saved money and let them be a NEET for 4 years.

Ans it's also why there are homeless people un big cities when from a material point of view they could be living a half-decent life in a rural place instead.

Humans are social animals, and most of our behavior are shaped by this characteristic, even if some people don't seem to realize that.

Also if your primary goal is a cheap lifestyle, you're much less likely to gentrify anything.

Childhood mortality is only one factor, and I think at this point we're all aware that the "life expectancy was 40 years" statistic has a huge asterisk next to it. But yes, our ancestors really did die much, much younger than us.

No, people who say that they “died extremely early relative to modern humans” mean the bunk dying at 40 due to old age myth. Not dying at 65 rather than 80.

Your link seems to show graphs going up but not why.[1] The medical breakthroughs have been, like first of discovering hygiene, vaccines and antibiotics. Which does exactly nothing to debunk what the OP[2] called “appeal to ancestry fallacy”. That we know medicine now (like hygiene, antiobitics) do not discredit claims like, you should eat like a hunter-gatherer or something like that.

[1] This seems typical of “data” outlets.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44078093

Seriously. I don't wear them a lot, but when I do the lack of stimulation is instantly relaxing.

Only downside is you can't sleep in them.

Entertainment is a line item in the budget: Library + Fishing = “Free”

Libraries can be amazingly social, for eggheads. Lots of groups and events meet there in my town. It’s a full-fledged Third Space.

[Neither the library access nor fishing gear is without cost, but at least they already account for taxes.]

By the way, anyone who benefits from free stuff, for example installing ad blockers, and earns $17/hr, should seriously consider tithing 5–10% to tax-deductible donations. It’s a matter of economic justice.

Yeah, it is a bullshit/clickbait article. No healthcare? Yeah, let's see how long his wife will put up with that. And, literally, there is zero cost for heat. Do you know how cold that place is in the winter? Here is what he wrote:

    > as far as heat goes, well, one could either pay a little extra in electric for that — or they could have the Amish deliver their scrap wood from their sawmills to burn in a wood stove, very cheaply.

Still: This person should setup a YouTube channel to document their life. It would be like the boring/suffering version of people who sail around the world on a yacht.

It's all some variation of "crowded into a dark room with hundreds of strangers with deafening music, can't see anything, can't hear anything".

I charge them rent though - 33% of their gross pay. Not cause I need the money but because it allows them to afford to move out one day. In other words their lifestyle has "rent" built into it.

In other words I'm happy to offer a backstop. I'm less happy for them to simply ignore "becoming self sufficient adults" just because it's cheaper to live at home.

Our ancestors also had more children, less rates of depression and mental illness and the modern rates of socialization, marriage, etc are all in steep decline.

Therefore maybe the cardboard box apartment, transient friends, and access to all that nightlife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While we’re a lot richer and more well off it doesn’t seem like people are happier.

The single time I got pulled in to go pay tax on a gift for someone ($150 USD) they looked at my card and went "I'm not dealing with the tax paperwork on that (due to some native exemptions)" and waved me back out.

As for local air travel: you'd have to go 30 minutes from Massena anyways for 'proper' air travel - Ogdensburg now has once-a-day service to DC via Breeze. Traveling to Shmoocon was hilarious for only $30 roundtrip.

OGS-IAD flights are great though.

As for climbing, you don't need a $200 climbing harness you can tie your own Swiss seat out of rope ($2/ft.) and buy a couple of snap links ($4-10/ea.). I would buy a lower-end harness for $30 though.

Spread out over several seasons that is as close to "nothing" as you can get, and is well within reach of any person with a pulse.

35 years ago I played DnD with a single AD&D 2e player's handbook and DM's guide shared among us all, campaigns and items out of Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine hand-copied from issues at the library, and a player miniature made out of a film roll canister that I used whiteout to paint a design on. Our greatest individual expense was dice and I think those were less than $10 for a set.

Hobbies are only expensive if you let them or want them to be.

Couldn't you say the same for cities since they live on food produced outside of cities, energy from the Gulf and products imported from China?

They ain't got no clue, and will almost certainly make things worse.

That being said, for tenista you need to pay entry. For climbing, you will be kicked out of gym on top of it being uncomfortable. Climbing gym don't want you injured due to badly made seat - it makes other guests feeling bad.

One who sneers at rural people and habits will probably not get along. And if you take too much offense at rural people sneering about urban things, likewise.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of racism in upstate NY. I do know rural NY black people, and they do fine, but I'm not sure they appreciate the way insults are thrown about "present company excluded". It's those attitudes that kept me from wanting to stay.

Then the Free State Project happened and the intense liberty seeking of the Libertarian party kept everyone occupied with arguments about bears and taxation. Meanwhile the rest of New England legalized cannabis while New Hampshire remained in a strange state of suspension. The influence of Libertarians has been so chaotic and unpredictable that what was considered the most likely result of Libertarian influence now seems completely out of reach.

This powerfully demonstrates how seemingly minor or irrelevant factors like political networks, tone, and tempo can end up being as important as core political issues and their direct consequences. Metaphors like piloting the ship of state through stormy waters take on additional meaning in this context.

Climbing gyms aren't cheap. Climbing rocks outdoors is fairly cheap.

That's entirely subjective. My grandparents are no longer alive but I'm confident they would find many aspects of the average life today to be terrible.

As others pointed out these claims are often skewed by high childhood mortality rates.

Beyond that, though, I'm curious why you consider the number of years lived to be a primary concern?

I'd rather live 50 good years than 80 miserable ones. I'd also rather live to 65 than make it to 80 with the last 30-40 years spent increasingly propped up with medications, doctors appointments, and invasive treatments.

While it's true that average life expectancy has increased, it's not really accurate to say that "our ancestors died extremely early". See "Did Ancient People Die Young?" at https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/ :

> Mortality rates in traditional populations are high during infancy, before decreasing sharply to remain constant till about 40 years, then mortality rises to peak at about 70. Most individuals remain healthy and vigorous right through their 60s or beyond, until senescence sets in, which is the physical decline where if one cause fails to kill, another will soon strike the mortal blow.

While it's true that average life expectancy has increased, the point is that it was absolutely routine for people to live into their 60s, and not uncommon for them to live into their 70s or 80s.

See e.g. https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/

As a happy side-effect, it let me get into muzzleloader season with some support from people with a lot of experience. In Vermont, muzzleloader season falls during the damnable month between Thanksgiving and New Year's when the days just keep getting shorter, and there isn't usually enough snow (where we live) for snowshoeing. Having a reason to get out in the woods and be really present and observing nature when I otherwise would have trouble is outstanding for my mental health during that month.

That's not to say there aren't opportunities to climb. A rock gym just opened near-enoughish-by and I have friends who climb outside weekly at a nearby crag.

This is so heartbreaking.

I live in a suburban area, and have friends and neighbors from around the world -- Trinidad, Sri Lanka, Korea, Canada, and I _love_ that aspect of where I live. As I get older, I don't like the din of lawnmowers and leaf blowers. Many of my neighbors have lawn services, and the ZTRs and backpack leaf blowers are even louder than what your average joe would have to do the same job.

On top of that, since there is land by me, the local government's zoning board has approved of more and more warehouses. As such, semi truck traffic has increased significantly, and somehow they all seem to have unmuffled straight pipe exhausts. I've contacted my representatives, but none of them seem to care. The state rep passes it off to the district rep, who passes it off to the township, who passes it back off to the state. The only winning move is to leave.

The point of my tangent here, is that a place like rural NY seems idyllic to escape the noise. Anecdotes like yours, though, steer me away. I understand that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard.

Assuming everyone is only out after appreciating house prices. While the locals who lived there before you might like that the house gains in value, depending on how large the group is and what the culture is, they might not like it at all. There is a reason some rural people continue living in rural areas, and bringing parts of the city to them might not be ideal for those people.

On a return trip from Florida we booked a room in Florence, SC for the night. Everybody was staring at me, but I was exhausted and figured that it was just in my head. We ate breakfast there the next morning and that's when I realized that we were the only white people there. About 50% of the population of Florence is black.

It was an interesting experience, and it gave me the opportunity to understand a fraction of how it would feel if the roles were reversed. And this was with friendly people with no malicious intent or fear!

It gets tricky if you want a civilized humidity level, though. You need to control leakage to achieve decent humidity and you need to control condensation to avoid damaging the window trim or other parts of the structure and to avoid growing mold.

Rather, the friction is making them endure the travel time is, I would say .

Libraries are high-tech and high-maintenance. If the community prioritizes their mission and invests in them, it works out. Sometimes, not so good.

For example, my daughter took a small fall on a jungle gym, so small that I didn't even think she really got hurt but she landed really unlucky and broke her arm. We went to urgent care but she needed surgery to put pins in. Modern medicine is amazing. Totally healed, not even scares from the pin, but it is not cheap. Expect to pay at least $17K [1] for this w/o insurance, our was significantly more. And with insurance, you're not living on $400/month anymore...

Cars break down, pipes back up, etc. etc. etc.

[1] https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-...

Fake numbers but for the sake of arguments: he bought a $100k house, I bought a $300k house in a more expensive city. Real estate did a 2x, his house is worth $200k and now he can't afford to move to a $600k place like mine - while I can move to an area with a similar cost of living as where I live now.

The gap is even bigger because prices go up faster in big cities.

And you need to travel to the place where that climbing suitable rock is.

Who in their right mind would put their lives at such risk?

This is pretty naive. Farmers aren’t subsidized so that farmers have cheap food, they are subsidized so that the city you’re hyping doesn’t riot because they run out of food. Farm subsidies exist for everyone who’s not a farmer.

There’s also ACA credits that don’t have an asset test.

The article describe a life of low spending/low revenue, so suddenly buying a plane ticket becomes a huge expense.

There is no antipathy against the $432 a month life, just comments that people have valid reasons not to choose this life.

Things like farming, forestry and so on aren't possible without basic local infrastructure. It's also reasonable that farmers can buy groceries, their kids can go to school, and they have access to healthcare services.

Without farming city folks would starve to death, so I wouldn't complain about things being subsidized. Feds fund lots of less important things.

Literally every human activity incurs a cost. Well, you can become a Hikikomori, so your only expenses will be electircity and internet.

This area is unincorporated and the nearest towns all have a few thousand people or less.

When we moved here I was actually surprised that we had a hospital in one of those small towns. Its part of a larger network that and the city an hour away has a big training hospital and med school, I assume that's why there's a smaller hospital in our area.

For reference, our only "grocery stores" withing 45 minutes are Walmarts and Dollar Generals.

I dislike having to drive long distances to do anything. In a city, my block alone has tons of stores I can go to.

Anywhere else I want to visit is just a subway ride away.

I do agree it's good to have parents and family around to help take care of your kids. That's even better in the city since the kids can just walk to there themselves once they're old enough.

I know some older seniors who can't drive anymore and it doesn't affect them at all because they can either take the bus or subway.

I'm not equaling anything with anything. I'm pointing out the reality to people claiming that "oh it's so easy to maintain any kind of hobbies and/or social life without spending a penny"

> I do almost nothing with my time that cost money

Oh, I'm sure you do plenty, you just don't assume there are expenses in what you do. I'm not claiming they are huge expenses. I'm just saying things not free

Whether thars worth wanting to move closer is a personal opinion. But a notable one in my eyes.

This suggests that there might be a market for a rural "community", as opposed to solo living.

Not any, but a sufficiently large amount of options. You may not enjoy those, which translates into “you will need time to adapt to it“, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

I meet with most of my friends der outdoors, for walks and hiking. We bring our own bottled tap water (I could never imagine to live in a place without good tap water) and snacks or cooked food, blankets, games. We usually take our bikes, or trains for longer distance trips. We throw parties in public parks. We go camping with tents on semi-illegal public areas. (The Park4night app for example is great for that.) All of this and more can be done for daily social activities and vacations at very little expense.

I’m writing this from a bakery with self-service, and there’s a family teaching chess to a girl at another table. Beautiful.

Compared with most of my social environment that decided to work full time, I think I have a lot more flexibility and voluntary social interactions. They are usually tired after a day of forced interactions; I manage to almost exclusively have voluntary interactions. I do not work with people who I don’t like. My time on this earth is too precious to waste on that.

It’s totally fine if the adjustments and adapting (not tradeoffs, because on a needs-based analysis it doesn’t require any) are not worth it for you (which raises the question of currency), but you and others in this thread make it sound like a horrible lifestyle for anyone, which is simply not the case. I would go as far as to claim it’s easier to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle with lots of money than with little. It’s just that most of us are so used to the stress that we had to stop listening to our own bodies (and often silence it with pills once it starts screaming). Spending money helps to obscure the real underlying need, and too often serves as a short-term patch. A limited budget forces you into thinking and feeling into what it is really about.

It can be inspiring to some to hear stories of people who found creative low-cost solutions to get their needs met. No need to question their ability to take care of themselves, and imply that they need to do without some crucial element of life and suffer.

> Not any, but a sufficiently large amount of options.

...

> tents, blankets, bikes, train rides, bakery...

(also, depending on amount of hiking also shoes, backpacks and some other gear)

To quote myself, "Oh, I'm sure you do plenty [of things], you just don't assume there are expenses in what you do. I'm not claiming they are huge expenses. I'm just saying things are not free"

> No need to question their ability to take care of themselves

There's only one need: to read what your opponent actually writes.

Please edit swipes out of comments. It's one of the first and most important things we ask for in the Comments section of the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I’ve been gifted 3 used tents in my life, and offered a lot more. You do not even need your own and can join friends in theirs. In most places there are free bikes that need less than $20 in parts to repair. Friends of mine collect free bikes by the dozen and repair them in their community bike shop, as volunteers for a non-profit. And so on. Nowhere did I mean to imply that you might not benefit from money. The topic is not about free living, but living on the cheap.

That being said, I know people who lived completely moneyless on purpose, as a challenge, a life experience, and without suffering/unfulfilled needs.

    > Frequently Asked Questions
    > Who qualifies for the Essential Plan?
    > Residents aged 19–64, living in New York, with incomes 138%–250% FPL (e.g., $21,597–$39,125 for a single adult in 2025), U.S. citizens or eligible immigrants, not on Medicaid or Medicare.

That I agree with it is only easy for me because I do not have to care if I spend too much. It is easy to make the choice though, doing it effectively is of course hard. I do believe this article is pretty bad, but you can build a life along those lines if you want to.

I think the hardest is living cheap is when you do not have any money

Perhaps you feel like this needs to be called out more explicitly rather than just hinted at. I think another concern that the author doesn't _highlight_ but is plenty clear is that this sort of lifestyle probably is more amenable to the able bodied, with their frequent allusions to hunting and fishing.

So while the author doesn't explicitly list out all possible issues, and everyone will have different priorities and opportunities in their life, I think the author is plenty clear on what they're describing, and the concern you raised is easily inferred from what they're saying.