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How to live on $432 a month in America

(shagbark.substack.com)
526 points cactusplant7374 | 1 comments | 23 May 25 16:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.318s | source
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stickfigure ◴[24 May 25 14:13 UTC] No.44081260[source]▶
On one hand I agree with the general premise of the article, which is that you can live a lot cheaper than you choose to. Homes in the passably-cute downtown of Massena are under $100k; you could live on $40k/yr comfortably and if you're here on HN you can probably earn at least than that with a remote job. Cutting it to $5k/yr is just trying to prove something.

The missing thing is health care. If you're young and immortal and willing to take risks, sure. This attitude won't last into middle age. My wife had cancer, and without health insurance I'd be a single parent right now. Maybe you can lean on public assistance like Medicaid (if it continues to exist), but this isn't really a scalable solution for "we can all live cheaper". It only works if enough people stay in the rat race to pay for it.

"Cheap" health insurance for a youngish small family is >$1000/mo. That really isn't optional in the US.

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1. rufus_foreman ◴[24 May 25 18:24 UTC] No.44082894[source]▶
>> It only works if enough people stay in the rat race to pay for it.

Given the reaction to the article by the commenters here, I don't think we need to worry about a mass movement of people wanting to live like dirty hippies in the Massenas of the country.

The article is just saying, "Here's one of the things you are allowed to do". There are trade-offs, the same as there are trade-offs for the people moving from India to Silicon Valley to make money, but who won't see their families more than once every year or two or three.