How to live on $432 a month in America • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by rconti » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #217

egypturnash wrote: post #23

they’d need to leave behind the idea that snow, overcast, wind, rain, and long winters are all that bad to contend with, because in all truth, they’re actually great. I am glad people like this exist because that means there is less competition for the climate zones I can live in without having to perpetually struggle with the urge to kill myself on a daily basis. I am from the Gulf Coast and the years I lived in Sea…

Heating a space is easier and cheaper than cooling one. I find the midwest is plenty dry and plenty warm, even with multi-month snowy winters.

It's not though. Even though fuel to heat is vastly cheaper than electricity to cool, the winter thermal difference in a cold climate is an order of magnitude more than the summer thermal difference in a hot climate.

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-does-it-take-more-...

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

#262

Post by tshaddox » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

cozzyd wrote: post #214

999900000999 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once it gets cold you won't be walking much anywhere. I guess grocery delivery from Walmart can mitigate this, but that fundamentally changes the situation.

Why not? You can walk plenty in the cold with the right equipment. I walked 2+ km a day at the south pole ...

47 people died in a blizzard in Buffalo, New York in 2022.

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

#263

Post by fullStackOasis » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

viccis wrote: post #41

This almost seemed like it was going to be a Modest Proposal style tongue-in-cheek skewering of this "old man yells at cloud" style of curmudgeonly generational finger wagging. The breakdown of that $432 itself was almost enough to be a farce. But no, the author really does believe this. (Please correct if I'm wrong, as it still seems hard to believe such a fatuous piece could be written and submitted here) >At the e…

> They're angry that ... selfish older generations selling their homes (and therefore much of their generational wealth) to fund either lavish retirements or more medical treatments, etc, etc.

Wait, so they're angry because people are spending their money on themselves for fun stuff at the end of their lives? Or maybe even using it for un-fun medical care? Rather than handing it over to their kids? I don't know what to say. Except that I'm glad I never had kids.

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

#264

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:20 PM UTC

digianarchist wrote: post #227

sweeter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's absurd. I work full time in the richest country on Earth and I can't afford an apartment and healthcare. The problem is clearly not advertising. Real "billionaire goes homeless for one night to prove the stupid poors are lazy and stupid and need to hedge their expectations" type of energy

We're all being asked to sacrifice the living standards our parents grew up with because the utter failure of local, state and federal government to provide housing, public transit, education and healthcare, something most of the Western world manages to pull off without issue. We have never been more productive in this country's history and yet we cannot even meet a bar set in the 1950s. It's frankly ridiculous as i…

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by titanomachy » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:20 PM UTC

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 but I see those same people decry how much the food costs and also that they have no friends and can't find someone to date.

It sounds like they’d find a way to be miserable anywhere. I live in a medium-density neighborhood of a large US city. I have multiple close friends within a five-minute walk, and I’m constantly meeting new people who share my interests. The music venues, restaurants, and yoga studios are nice too, but having so many potential friends in close proximity is what really makes the city great for me.

It’s not necessarily easy to start making friends though, it definitely doesn’t happen automatically. Maybe in small towns, people are more likely to notice you and spend time with you, because they also have fewer people to choose from.

When I’ve lived in small towns I found dating almost impossible, though.

> if I'm going to be miserable, why not do it on my own land for a lot cheaper

Bro. Please go make some friends, or find a hobby or vocation you like, or get religion, or something! You don’t have to be miserable, at least not all the time. Renouncing society will probably just make things worse.

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

#266

Post by triceratops » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:20 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #108

viccis wrote: post #41

This almost seemed like it was going to be a Modest Proposal style tongue-in-cheek skewering of this "old man yells at cloud" style of curmudgeonly generational finger wagging. The breakdown of that $432 itself was almost enough to be a farce. But no, the author really does believe this. (Please correct if I'm wrong, as it still seems hard to believe such a fatuous piece could be written and submitted here) >At the e…

You seem really certain that the older 'way of life' is categorically bad, but you seem very unhappy and angry in the life that you reject it in favor of. Also, you can make any number of easy tweaks to his formula to allow you to have conveniences that would make your life orders of magnitude richer than the true 1910s were. For instance, a $3,000 car, Internet access, etc. Also, anyone coming into this experiment w…

> so we can stretch to afford a million-dollar starter home, two luxury cars, designer clothes, and IG-worthy vacations

Only one of those we have control over. If starter homes cost a million what can you do?

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

#267

Post by fencepost » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:21 PM UTC

So, it's a stationary alternative to the "van life" trend that floats around sometimes.

Massena's about the size of the town we moved my parents from after my father had a stroke, though it's a lot poorer (in 2013 nearly a third of the population was below the poverty line, and that's before Alcoa closed a chunk of operations there). It does have a hospital (25 beds, not-for-profit) and given the demographics I'm 100% positive that it's one of those hospitals that *needs* Medicaid to survive.

I'm pretty sure that doing this really would feel a lot like going back and living like your grandparents or great-grandparents did - all the joys of the 1950s.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was data center work available though - with cheap power there's probably someone there doing cryptomining or maybe even hosting AI processing.

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

#268

Post by Jackson__ » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:22 PM UTC

>Taxes: $41

>Electric: ~$30

>Water: $0

>Transit: $53 for a 30-ride pass for each person living there

>Food: ~$300/mo.

>Telephone: $8/mo

>Entertainment: Fishing and library, free

>Internet: Use library

>Medical costs in case a moose kicks you in the nuts while fishing: ~$500000

Someone help me manage my budget, my family is dying.

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

#269

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:23 PM UTC

fullStackOasis wrote: post #228

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / mon…

Well, minimum wage in NY state is $15.50/hour. ($432/mo)/($15.50/h) is about 28 hours per month, i.e. 7 hours per week. https://dol.ny.gov/minimum-wage-0 He also mentions other forms of employment, like raising rare herbs, so maybe he's got a little homegrown operation going that doesn't take much time.

Good catch on the hourly rates there.

Other than that, again, not sure how different it is from living slums in underdeveloped countries. Me, I'd rather just save up and buy some oil.

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

#270

Post by xp84 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 11:23 PM UTC

I've commented (probably too much) to argue with the harshest critics of this piece, but I am surprised to not have seen much this criticism which is my main one:

Supposing I've made peace with the main gist of this: Cut living expenses to a point where you can work ¼ or so of the time most of us spend working by living somewhere cheap and not being so materialistic.

The missing piece here is social connections. Family and friends. If I could take my in-laws and my 2 best friends and their families with me, I'd sign up to move to a rural place like this tomorrow. But it's impractical for nearly everyone in the whole country to make such a thing happen. This limits its appeal. This place is 90 minutes or so from the Montreal airport, which is actually not bad for rural places, but flights are not cheap, certainly not accessible on the budget described here, so for you to have contact with anyone outside this town, they're likely going to have to drop about $500 per person, per visit, and will be staying at the Super 8 since you probably don't have a guest room). So, implied but not acknowledged in this piece is the assumption that you are almost definitely going to only see your family and friends a few more times (maybe once a year each, if you're super lucky) for the rest of your life.

And unlike questions of money; food, entertainment, family and friends aren't fungible. You can start over and hope to make new friends out there, but you can't replace people. This is what would make this life untenable to me, and I'm not even all that extraverted.