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How to live on $432 a month in America

shagbark.substack.com

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Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#61

Post by RHSeeger »

7thaccount wrote: post #15
HankStallone wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived most of my life in (or outside of) small towns, and some of it in a city. I've noticed that my small-town friends who moved to the city would often talk about all the culture and food choices, but when it comes right down to it, they mostly eat at chain restaurants and go to the movies, same as they could in a smallish town. They might occasionally go to a pro baseball game or the zoo or something that's o…

I recently visited New York City for the first time and honestly wasn't impressed. Outside of a few neat things like visiting the cronut place, I could do nearly everything the same back home. The bagel places were indeed good, but not noticeably different than the hipster bagel places in my city. Wood fired pizza was good at several places, but again...none were noticeably different than the wood fired oven fancy pl…

With the caveat that I've only really visited a dozen or so states, and only lived in 2, my experience is pretty different than yours.

NYC pizza (and even north of the city) is generally a step above most other places. You can find similar quality pizza most places if you look hard enough, but it's nice being able to stop almost anywhere in NY and get good pizza, better than the best you'll find without having to do real research in most places. The common open-front place in NY has great pizza. Where I am now (suburbs of another fairly large city), I have yet to find a good NYC-style pizza.

Bagels in NY fall into a similar bucket. If you search, you can find good ones elsewhere, but it's downright easy to find good ones in NYC (though that's less true outside NYC/Long Island than it is for pizza).

And man, the black-and-whites. To date, I've never found a good one outside NYC.

Times Square is an experience, not a place you go to shop. And not a place you go to wander around on an average Saturday night. Yeah, it's a tourist trap, but that's the experience it is. It's entertaining to walk around/through; on a rare basis.

I loved working in NYC (I lived about 90 minutes north of it at the time, but didn't need to go in every day, so the commute was less of an issue) and I very much miss living in NYS. Rarely, I'm there on a business trip (it's been years) and I plan my time out so I can have pizza for dinner.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#62

Post by aaronbaugher »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #12
xeromal wrote: post #2

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. Ev…

> 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.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#63

Post by DrillShopper »

> Taxes: $41

> Electric: ~$30

> Water: $0

> Heat: (no, it's really blank)

> Transit: $53 for a 30-ride pass for each person living there, assuming you go to town 3x per week at $2/trip. Multiple options to take the bus to town each day from this location.

> Food: ~$300/mo.

> Telephone: $8/mo

> Entertainment: Fishing and library, free

> Internet: Use library

This author cannot be coming at this from a serious point of view with this absolute embarrassment of a cost breakdown. There is no accounting here for heat (which is sort of important in the middle of "American Siberia"), property taxes, homeowner's insurance, healthcare, or saving for retirement.

> I’ve known men who grow rare Chinese medicinal herbs in greenhouses on a tenth of an acre to sell via the mail; or my uncle, who takes lumber from old barns and crafts it into shelves to sell online.

Damn, I be that would be a lot easier with an Internet connection at home and a smartphone.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#64

Post by distantsounds »

this dude _literally_ wrote about a neighboring town that's dying and the government isn't helping them out. https://shagbark.substack.com/p/obituaryland

Convincing people to move to a remote area while at the same time seeing literal ghost towns develop, is not something I would recommend. What happens when the public utilities fail? The roads need repairing? One of the _many_ blizzard-like seasons can knock out critical infrastructure.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#65

Post by dmonitor »

kemotep wrote: post #20
bluefirebrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They suggested working part time at a gas station or seasonally somewhere else which is incredible. I have had to travel across the country multiple times to “live where the jobs are” so I find it hard to believe that the whole time I could have not done that and just picked some remote isolated corner and live like my great grandparents homesteading?

All of these articles need to come with an "About the Author" section that describes how the author makes their living. They claim to be living the outlined lifestyle, but I doubt they are working part time at three gas stations.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#66

Post by Karrot_Kream »

celestialcheese wrote: post #45
Goronmon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are both vague and completely different ways to handle heating. Also, conveniently, neither appear to have an associated cost so we don't have to worry about whether the financial math works out.

It's because when you live rural like this, wood stoves are common, and wood is free. I live in the northwest, so I can't speak to upstate NY, but downed trees on state and federal land near roads is free to take. Every day there's people posting rounds of wood for free to take. It's hard work, but it's good exercise and rewarding. There's some upfront investment: $200 chainsaw, an old maul, and an old pickup truck,…

To add to the sibling comment, collecting this wood takes time. I've collected wood the forest service takes down for use in a stove I use but processing all that wood takes time. You bring it home, cut it into small bits, keep it in a dry area to make sure the green wood dries out, and then you meticulously rotate older and newer stock to make sure you use the driest stuff for heating.

If you're living on $432 / month and working 30-40 hours at this cashier job then using your off days to grab and process wood is honestly pretty miserable. There are slums in developing countries with higher standards of living because they can heat their "house" (read: tent or hut) with oil.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#67

Post by nkurz »

dmonitor wrote: post #56
codeplea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed directly in the article: >And for those who might be quick to point out that there could be a dearth of jobs there, note that when people say “there are no jobs” in a given area, they generally mean that there are no jobs that could produce a normal, upper-middle-class lifestyle there. Which, even in Massena and Ogdensburg isn’t entirely true. But even if it were, the Stewart’s gas stations in both…

I love the stupid math in this paragraph. One 10hr shift is ~30% of what you need. So multiply that by 3.3 and... oh hey you're working nearly 40hrs a week to afford your impoverished lifestyle in the middle of nowhere. Just like everyone else in this country, only now you get to own a shed. Also you have to take the bus, which runs from 5am-6pm, so you need to beg your boss to not be an opener or closer. Your cowork…

> One 10hr shift is ~30% of what you need. So multiply that by 3.3 and... oh hey you're working nearly 40hrs a week to afford your impoverished lifestyle in the middle of nowhere.

Are you possibly confusing "per week" with "per month"?

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#68

Post by exhilaration »

AndrewOMartin wrote: post #7

Just make sure you don't get sick.

At that income level and in a blue state, there might actually be pretty good health coverage.

I've got a relative who lost his job last year, his wife gave birth in Long Island soon after and they paid pretty close to nothing.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#69

Post by jeffbee »

seabird wrote: post #60
jeffbee wrote: post #3

It makes a certain amount of sense and I myself bought a little place way out in the hinterlands of Michigan for similar economic reasons ... but I live in Berkeley because subjecting your children to life without opportunities for art, culture, education, sports, friends, etc is cruel. So if you're white, or just don't care that your ethnicity is absent, and if you have no children, and also don't mind living in a c…

Is there no culture, or no "culture"? When you talk to people from a major metropolitan area about culture outside of a major metropolitan area, they're very often not talking about culture. They're talking about entertainment, and a specific kind of it. I live in semi-rural Michigan and the idea that there's no culture here is just kind of absurd. The culture just doesn't consist of having a constant stream of touri…

I admit the possibility that your idea of culture is a barren plain of consumerism. If that's the case, it's your problem and only you can fix it.

Agglomeration effects are real and there are centers of dance and music around the country that exist in self-reinforcing cycles of training and performance. These scenes come and go but they don't arise by themselves in isolated dying towns.

Re: How to live on $432 a month in America

#70

Post by Karrot_Kream »

HankStallone wrote: post #5
xeromal wrote: post #2

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. Ev…

I've lived most of my life in (or outside of) small towns, and some of it in a city. I've noticed that my small-town friends who moved to the city would often talk about all the culture and food choices, but when it comes right down to it, they mostly eat at chain restaurants and go to the movies, same as they could in a smallish town. They might occasionally go to a pro baseball game or the zoo or something that's o…

> but when it comes right down to it, they mostly eat at chain restaurants and go to the movies, same as they could in a smallish town. They might occasionally go to a pro baseball game or the zoo or something that's only available in the city, but country people can make a day trip to do that too.

This hasn't been my experience at all. I live in an urban area and I haven't eaten at a chain restaurant outside of road trips in years. I only eat at chains when I'm on a road trip and need a bite in the middle of nowhere. Once I drop into where I'm staying for vacation off the road trip, I'm eating local restaurants or cooking for myself if I'm out in nature. The fantastic food scene in my area is a huge factor in why I live here.

FWIW one can make the same comment about large US suburban home dwellers. Most of them just store stuff they rarely if ever use. Most of their less frequently used things are in varying states of disrepair and many of these folks would probably be better served by using communal amenities kept in good condition rather than storing sports equipment that they use once every 5 years in a dusty, mothball filled storage closet. Most folks in car-oriented US suburbs use their cars as mobile living rooms and do all sorts of illegal things (like makeup or doomscrolling their phone) in their car and only incidentally use them as transportation vehicles. But that doesn't stem the demand for folks who want to live in these homes.

The fact is, aside from job considerations, there are people who choose their density based on their actual preferences. One set of preferences may seem silly coming from a different set but that doesn't make them right or wrong; it just makes them preferences.

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