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.

> 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?

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.

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

> 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.