How to live on $432 a month in America

This is one of those articles where the comments are really interesting to read through. I see a bunch of comments who don't agree with the exact math, which might be warranted, but it seems at least directionally correct to me. However there's also a bunch of people commenting that this lifestyle isn't viable for some reason or another, that mainly just boils down to a personal preference those commenters don't want to live without.

But having read through most of the objections I still find myself enticed by this. If I mentally place myself in this position I think I could quite happily live a few decades without talking to anyone for weeks or even months at a time. I'd still have my pets to give me companionship. Load my kindle up with a thousand books I want to read and just work my way through it. Pick up writing as a hobby and spend the rest of the time working at a gas station and fixing up the house and/or grow some food to offset the reduced income.

Healthcare is an issue. Doesn't seem like a viable place to grow old. Once you become too frail for physical work it's probably just time to die, which isn't great.

You might also like a documentary called Alone in the Wilderness, which tells the story of Dick Proenneke, a man who moved to the remote Twin Lakes region of Alaska in 1968 and lived alone in the wilderness for 30 years.

Proenneke built his own log cabin entirely by hand, using only simple tools (many of which he made himself), and filmed his daily life, including hunting, fishing, foraging, and crafting everything from scratch

> However there's also a bunch of people commenting that this lifestyle isn't viable for some reason or another, that mainly just boils down to a personal preference those commenters don't want to live without.

Given humans are also just animals that had lifestyles before money and modern society was invented, this doesn't seem like a useful distinction. Either you're talking about your personal preferences you don't want to lice without or money isn't even part of the picture in the first place. Where that line is personally drawn is just as arbitrary to this point at $1 as $1,000,000.

Overall though I agree the article sheds light where we don't normally tend to think. At the same time it crosses points too often to make that those focus of conversation. That is to say it makes a good point with just a little too much PoV twist inserted so people who don't agree will think about that statement instead. E.g. don't complain about not having the home prospects of a boomer because you can live like your great grandparent - which would be something ~40 years prior to the boomer comparison, even for a zoomer (-> driving pushback against the idea owning a house at all is the same as the lifestyle the article laments hearing about -> driving conversation like the above paragraph).

Man, I don't wanna see someone going to live as a hermit in the woods and shit in the bushes for $400. I've got plenty of examples of people living in mud huts in Africa for much less.

I wanna see how it's possible to live a decent life in civilized conditions (roof over your head, running water and sewage system, electricity, heating) on $400.

I think a lot of the complaint I see is people want to have 100% of everything they want, within a 10 minute walk, with zero compromise. I.e. they have unreasonable expectations.

I see people come to London from other parts of the world and ask where they can live that is nice and a 5-10 minute walk from the office and I usually laugh in their faces. If you can afford to live that close in central London (even before you think about "nice"), then you don't need to work. Even single car parking spaces in central London cost more than family houses elsewhere in the UK.

When I got my first place it was on the outskirts of London, cost 20x the average UK salary (and for which I obviously took out a huge mortgage for that basically took 75-80% of my salary at the time to pay), and took over an hour on public transport (which was also not cheap - walking is free but probably about 4 hours each way) to get to central London. And this was just in the 2008-era - it's never been cheap (or even reasonable) to own nice property in the center of a large global metropolis like London where you are 10 minutes walk from your office AND transport AND entertainment AND everything else unless you are ultra wealthy.

People need to lower expectations about locality/proximity and affordability before things become viable. This isn't a new problem.

You can go to not quite as extreme levels. There are thousands of small towns all through Appalachia, the Midwest, and the Northeast with a bit of interesting local culture and a low cost of living. Not this low but they also have hospitals and often colleges and other things.

If you are a minority concerned about the culture of red America, the 2016 and 2024 elections both provide excellent county by county color coded maps for you.

Telework is what really unlocks this if you’re a developer.

The Midwest also has many medium sized cities. Not as cheap as small towns but not as expensive as the coastal real estate cost traps. I live in Cincinnati, which has three universities, four Fortune 500 companies, a small startup scene, and over a dozen small neighborhoods with walkable streets (overall you’d want a car but you could get away with not using it every day).

At some point the only economically rational decision is to leave very high cost of living cities. I tell people for cities like SF that it might be good to go there to launch your career but look at it like a college. If by 30 you are not making — for SF I’d say over $300k — then leave. You will never get above real estate in those places unless you are approaching mid six figures.

It also negatively impacts what you can do. Even if you can earn that, it might be with golden handcuffs to a FAANG. Think about that. If you want to start a startup, one that is not lavishly funded enough to pay that, then leave. If you just don’t want to be golden handcuffed to a monster mortgage, leave.