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How to live on $432 a month in America

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

#501

Post by kotaKat »

jmb99 wrote: post #358
drewg123 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that its across an international border from the Montreal airport. So you'd need to cross a border twice to fly to a domestic US destination and twice more on your return. Crossing a border is always an unknown in terms of delays, so I question the practicality. I'd personally feel like I needed to leave way more than 90 minutes to ge to the airport. FWIW, I've crossed the border at both Cornwall and O…

Oddly enough, I always spend more time crossing into Canada than the US at Ogdensburg, even though I’m a Canadian citizen and travelling on a Canadian passport. Had my car searched last time. As always, your mileage may vary.

Same crossing, different experience: American citizen (with NY Enhanced Drivers License), Canadian First Nations (with Secure Certificate of Indian Status). They look at my native card and just wave me through.

The single time I got pulled in to go pay tax on a gift for someone ($150 USD) they looked at my card and went "I'm not dealing with the tax paperwork on that (due to some native exemptions)" and waved me back out.

As for local air travel: you'd have to go 30 minutes from Massena anyways for 'proper' air travel - Ogdensburg now has once-a-day service to DC via Breeze. Traveling to Shmoocon was hilarious for only $30 roundtrip.

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

#502

Post by zamadatix »

Version467 wrote: post #499

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…

> 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).

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

#503

Post by sgerenser »

triceratops wrote: post #266
xp84 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Move to a place where starter homes are cheaper?

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

#504

Post by kristianc »

> Moreover, the vision that I am going to postulate here would not even require very much in the way of work. I say this because by all I have seen, many young people today find the idea of indefinite wage labor to be a dismal one. They seem to prefer a “low-work lifestyle,” but very often, the manner of living that such a lifestyle would require is completely foreign to them. Because of this, right alongside the many social media posts on the topic of the awful expense of buying a home — there are just as many posts, it seems, complaining about “life in the 4HL,” or pining for remote work, or (rightfully) bemoaning the scam-infested, difficult-to-navigate, often cynical and fake job market that they’ve encountered.

It's cheeky because it frames itself as rejecting the status quo, when actually what it is doing is saying "accept the status quo wholesale and just move to somewhere the status quo hasn't reached yet." And of course, if enough people do that, no one will be around to fight against the status quo anymore. The main difference between this and Thoreau's cabin in the woods is that Thoreau could have chosen to do differently.

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

#505

Post by mettamage »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #469
rubitxxx15 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an introvert, I believe I could live in a remote location without problem. I often wish I could switch off my hearing to just enjoy silence, and dream of getting a chance to spend time in an isolation chamber. That said, I don’t know if I’d want to live in a depressing small town, unless it had a good diner.

If you get a sense of relief from silence, I recommend Peltor ear defenders. The more expensive/better ones. Seriously. I don't wear them a lot, but when I do the lack of stimulation is instantly relaxing. Only downside is you can't sleep in them.

I sometimes sleep with them, especially while traveling. Paper thin walls? Hostels? Not a problem. It takes some getting used to.

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

#507

Post by MichaelRo »

discordance wrote: post #500
Version467 wrote: post #499

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…

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 f…

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.

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

#508

Post by kotaKat »

xp84 wrote: post #423
drewg123 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that its across an international border from the Montreal airport. So you'd need to cross a border twice to fly to a domestic US destination and twice more on your return. Crossing a border is always an unknown in terms of delays, so I question the practicality. I'd personally feel like I needed to leave way more than 90 minutes to ge to the airport. FWIW, I've crossed the border at both Cornwall and O…

Indeed, though you could probably do pretty well by getting a NEXUS membership for this use case. At least for now, though obviously US-Canada relations are getting stupider by the week so who knows how many dumb roadblocks will end up being thrown up. I just noticed that Syracuse has an airport with passenger service, only 2 ½ hours away, so that's another option, if the "international flight" hassle plus border cro…

Begrudgingly, neither the Ogdensburg nor Massena crossings support NEXUS. Closest ones with lanes are up in Plattsburgh or Alexandria Bay, and to get a NEXUS interview you have to travel the 2 or so hours to central NY.

OGS-IAD flights are great though.

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

#509

Post by bregma »

skyyler wrote: post #154
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…

The lack of a budget for heating in an article that uses the term "American Siberia" is so hilariously out of touch that it makes the rest of the article farcical.

I live just over an hour north of this place. Until recently I heated my log cabin exclusively with wood.

It takes somewhere between 7 and 9 cubic metres of wood a year to heat about 800 square feet of house. It costs about CAD 1500 for a tandem load of sawlogs plus the cost of fuel and maintenance of the chainsaw and hydraulic splitter plus about 100 hours of labour bucking, splitting, hauling, and stacking. And still there are mornings when I had to break the ice on the dog's water bowl in the kitchen when it's been below -30 C for several days in a row.

You're not going to survive a winter in that part of North America with just "a few scraps of wood" for heat. "A few carloads" is maybe going to take you to Christmas and they'll simply find your thawed corpse during a warm spell in March.

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

#510

Post by brokegrammer »

I think living in rural areas sucks because you'll end up feeling very lonely. And I'm speaking as a hardcore introvert who didn't feel lonely at all during the lock-down. But after extended periods of isolation, human connection becomes important, especially if you're young.

I'm currently living below my means in a small village in Mauritius, but I'm planning on moving to a big city in a big country ASAP because while living like this is good for my bank account, my mental health is taking a heavy toll. Not to mention how challenging it is to find a date.

As a young person, IMO the best thing to do is move to a place where you can make some good lifelong friends, and build a solid network for employment opportunities. Saving money while living frugally only served to dampen my social muscles.

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