How to live on $432 a month in America

I looked through those numbers, and immediately thought to myself - hope you don't need to see a doctor for anything serious, or go to a dentist for that mater.

FWIW, I grew up in rural nowhere (population 150, nearest town 45 miles away) - and I honestly don't know how anyone can live out in the boonies without a car. Taking the bus that goes 3 times a day is one thing, needing to move stuff is another thing. I mean, obviously there are plenty of people that do manage - but sooner or later you'll become completely dependent on others for certain types of transportation.

Also, there's clothes, house maintenance, and lots of other things.

What small town even has a bus? The closest bus line to me is in the closest large town (40k) about an hour away.

Are there bus lines in the middle of nowhere?

Granted, this was 20 years ago, but I remember taking the Greyhound and people were getting on or off the bus in the middle of nowhere. By nowhere, I mean the nowhere in the literal sense: at the intersection of two highways in the northern Ontario with no other development in sight. Of course, they also serviced the other types of nowhere: the lone gas station or the tiny village.

The author is being somewhat misleading in the sense that this is not the type of bus service that one would use for your weekly commute to that 10 hour shift at the gas station, never mind the three or four times per week that you would need to cover the bills. It may be fine doing errands in town, where the arrival time and departure time don't much matter. It may also be fine for spending a day or two in the city, assuming you have the budget to stay over night.

I'm not saying that the type of lifestyle alluded to is impossible, but it is not going to be the type of lifestyle accessible to young people. Then there is the question about whether they are equipped to live that type of lifestyle.

I agree that the bus in the scenario is implausible for most. But in real life, most rural people would simply own a car. The author describes car ownership's costs hyperbolically, but unless you're doing long-distance commuting, driving a $5000 car wouldn't add more than $200 to his monthly budget, which wouldn't change the math dramatically, while I'd argue it would improve quality of life tremendously, especially because rural America of 2025 most definitely assumes car ownership in a way that it didn't 100 years ago.