How to live on $432 a month in America

also, if you have a social "thing" like tennis or climbing or drugs or whatever thing you like that tends to have an active and welcoming social community that you're willing to engage with, then the social issue can be dampened somewhat

> if you have a social "thing" like tennis or climbing

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

Social thing assumes expenses. Hobbies assume expenses.

wait... drugs? I don't get it. the dark net is a thing. or do you mean doing them with other people?

> Social thing assumes expenses. Hobbies assume expenses.

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.

A very social activity if done right

Social things are free! You just have to understand that being social is what you pay with.

Fishing licenses aren't actually free but at least they're cheap

Just find npc sims friends who like to walk on sidewalks and turn around when they experience interactions with animals.

A tennis racket is $13 at Goodwill and tennis balls are $1.30/ea. In the case of living in Massena, NY like the author you can play at Alcoa Park for $0.00.

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.

Have you ever tried to do those sports with cheapest equipment? Because I did and it ended up the same as everyone else who tried it in a cheapest possible way - you stop because it is not fun nor pleasure and equipment limits you.

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.

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

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

Now we’re back to the point where you’ve saved so much money by not carrying health insurance.

Your social "things" adapt somewhat to the environment. Since moving to rural Vermont, my wife and I have taken up hunting, and she has gotten back into fishing. There's a group of (mostly older) people who get together Wednesday mornings and shoot muzzleloaders and have coffee. I join them when work allows.

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.

Libraries are highly dependent on the town you're in. Ours is open six (6) hours a week. The one in. The town we were renting in before we bought was open reasonable hours and the librarians were great.

Not available in winter and rain. Requires equipment (crash pads and shoes at least)

It can be exceedingly difficult to fund and staff a library system, especially considering that libraries are no longer big rooms with moldy books on the shelves.

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

You need more equipment to make them safe. You need literally more then you need in climbing gym, you need to know what you are doing too.

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

Even hosting friends at your house incurs a cost, however small: for extra food and drinks.

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

Fishing equipment isn't free, and you will have recurring (though small) costs in hooks and line, at least.

If you equate a good time with spending money it is always going to cost money. I do almost nothing with my time that cost money, I have a lot of perks paid by work that I do not use because I just see no use for them.

> If you equate a good time with spending money it is always going to cost money

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

> 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".

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.

> > 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".

> 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.

That’s the thing about the discussion in this thread, and generally on HN. People just don’t consider that virtually without exception the realities of life, the choices we make, and the choices we can make, all form and are part of systems. Life isn’t a set of unrelated logic exercises.

Ok, so you feel not heard with what you wrote, and thus assumed I didn’t read what you wrote. Sounds like you feel attacked by my perspective, and misunderstood. And then turned it completely unnecessarily into an insinuation. I understand this is standard procedure for many but I am not interested in insinuations and consider them to be violent speech. There are other ways to express discontent.

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.

> "oh it's so easy to ...

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

At $17/hr even 10% (versus your 5) works out to $3536 at the end of the year ($17/hr × 40 hrs × 52 weeks @ 10%), which is a fair bit short of the $15,000 standard deduction; it doesn't really matter whether those donations are tax-deductible or not—you're not going to be able to deduct them.