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

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

#361

Post by onecommentman » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:26 AM UTC

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?

This sort of writing has been popular in the US for over 100 years. A historical review of the field (pun intended) can be found in the book Back to the Land, by Dona Brown, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.

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

#362

Post by starkparker » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #270

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. Fami…

That's the other unspoken side of the boomer-emulation argument, too. People's access to the world when boomers were buying houses and raising families was much less. Their families and friends were already close because few, if any, of them left where they were from (except to get drafted into wars). In some of those who left, they did so to enable the rest to follow.

These things just don't happen anymore. To find better work (especially outside of tech), people move, some constantly. Siblings wind up across the country or further from each other and where they grew up. Elders are either left behind or move into retirement homes.

There are exceptions, and those who keep some of that support network find the real boomer superpowers of sharing costs (financial, time, and labor alike) and inheriting wealth. But the ease with which people could leave home for good is one of many factors that make emulating boomers difficult, if not impossible: that rural cheap house isn't 10 minutes from the rest of your family, your childhood friends, and your co-workers anymore.

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

#363

Post by jefftk » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:34 AM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #345

cjbarber wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The network effects/moats of places! There needs to be a Kickstarter for coordinating groups of people to move to the same place all at the same time.

Then the value of the place would go up fast. This is one way gentrification happens.

That seems to be pretty good for the group of newcomers! They all buy together at lowish prices, then prices go up enough that they ~make their money back on housing appreciation. And it's not bad for existing homeowners either, since they get the appreciation too.

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

#364

Post by stavros » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:34 AM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #334

xp84 wrote: post #270

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. Fami…

Rural living also looks cheaper because most people do not even remotely consider the costs of transportation. The IRS estimates per-mile deduction at well over 60 cents per mile. If you have to drive 15 miles to the grocery store and back, your grocery bill goes up $18/trip. If you need to drive 15 miles to work and back, take $90/week out of your paycheck. Then there's the fact that whoever is The Employer in that…

Wait wait, how much does fuel cost that a 50km trip is $18? Even my diesel car does that for 4 €.

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

#365

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:36 AM UTC

7thaccount wrote: post #330

RHSeeger wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What did you find interesting about times square? I'm asking seriously as there isn't anything to do other than shop or ignore the annoying 50 people on every street corner asking me to get a bus tour.

The lights in every direction, the people interacting with the performers and each other, the naked cowboy, the hustle and bustle. It's just a very unique location. It's like watching a human fish tank.

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

#366

Post by 0x445442 » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:36 AM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #323

QuarterReptile wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Disingenuous" is a bridge too far (and worth mentioning because it impugns intent.) It's easy to get drawn to the cities with friends and high pay, then feel like path dependency precludes one from returning to the lower COL hometown. You tell your story in the third and fourth paragraphs because you find it worthy of mention.

You're right, bad word choice. But yeah, this lifestyle is mostly madness. I watched others stay at home and they have decades of memories, families, and paid off houses. Grass is greener.

A real issue until recently, with remote work as an option, was the lack of opportunity to pursue more intellectual forms of work in a small rural area. I grew up raising cattle and a number of my extended family members were loggers. However, I had an aptitude for science and math and was bitten by the programming bug when I was a teenager. I didn't leave my rural community for fame and fortune but for work that was more interesting to me.

That said, now that I'm near the end of my career I've taken full advantage of remote work by moving to a rural area while maintaining similar pay. Honestly I don't know why more people haven't taken advantage of this significant arbitrage opportunity. To each his own.

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

#367

Post by gyomu » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #319

TrackerFF wrote: post #134

I looked through those numbers, and immediately thought to myself - hope you don't need to see a doctor for anything serious, or go to a dentist for that mater. FWIW, I grew up in rural nowhere (population 150, nearest town 45 miles away) - and I honestly don't know how anyone can live out in the boonies without a car. Taking the bus that goes 3 times a day is one thing, needing to move stuff is another thing. I mean…

You read articles like this every so often, sure. Maybe ~13 years back I read about an indie game dev who lived in a carbon neutral home in the middle of nowhere Arizona or something. Beautiful house, hand built. Talked about how you really don't need all that much money to live - they were living on less than 20k a year from his game sales. Him and his wife were also in their 20's, and their kids I think were alread…

For anyone curious, the game dev is Jason Rohrer:

https://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/simpleLife.h...

Things have changed since:

"In October of 2011, we moved from Las Cruces, NM to Davis, CA. Along with all the good things listed below about Las Cruces came bad things. Vicious dogs loose on the streets (one bit my wife while biking) and in parks (I came close to getting myself shot during a confrontation with a dog owner). Crime (the little old lady next door got burgled twice in one year, once at 3 in the afternoon through her front door). After living in extremely cheap places for 8 years, I came to realize that these places are extremely cheap for a reason (because people don't want to live there if they can avoid it)."

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

#368

Post by nocoiner » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:48 AM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #130

7thaccount wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can go bar to bar to bar to bar until 4am in nyc and then find $2 pizza by the slice that is actual pizza and not 7/11 pizza. You can’t really do that anywhere else what with how the busybodies regulate their liqour licenses and the lack of density justifying many 24hr food establishments. You can do all of this entirely on foot too within a few blocks. Nowhere else in the US is like that with such glaringly obvi…

I feel like on the surface this may seem like kind of a facile comment, but this really gets at what makes NYC a special place. There’s a whole day-to-day experience that may be technically replicable in other large cities in the course of a day, but there’s like 100 things to do in New York every 200 feet. It’s just a different experience.

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

#369

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:49 AM UTC

vitaflo wrote: post #353

sandworm101 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead And the locals start to hate you for buying up land and generally raising prices enough that working folk are squeezed out of the market. Some areas are starting to enact laws to prevent productive farmland becoming condos and hobby farms for retiring city people.

Not in MN. Nobody is moving here to retire. And there’s plenty of rural land to go around.

The land is part of the equation, but more so the impact on government services. More retirees is more burden on local healthcare and emergency response. They may contribute to the local tax base, but the turnaround between increased population and new hospitals/firehalls is often measured in decades. Have a look at how long it takes to get a new firetruck these days, let alone the people to run it.

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

#370

Post by nocoiner » Sat, May 24, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #225

trollbridge wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

432/17 is 25 hours, or otherwise stated one 8 hour shift every week or two.

Right, which is why it's extremely confusing that the author wrote: > In this case, you could work just one ten-hour shift per week, and in so doing, earn more than 30% of what you need to live well at this particular house with just four days of work per month. What he probably did was write that one shift is more than 30% of what you need, then switched gears to write about four days of work per month, but forgot t…

I read that sentence three times. Pretty sure he was trying to hide the ball, but still not sure where he was hiding it or what exactly the ball was, to be honest.