How to live on $432 a month in America

This suggests that there might be a market for a rural "community", as opposed to solo living.

Not any, but a sufficiently large amount of options. You may not enjoy those, which translates into “you will need time to adapt to it“, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

I meet with most of my friends der outdoors, for walks and hiking. We bring our own bottled tap water (I could never imagine to live in a place without good tap water) and snacks or cooked food, blankets, games. We usually take our bikes, or trains for longer distance trips. We throw parties in public parks. We go camping with tents on semi-illegal public areas. (The Park4night app for example is great for that.) All of this and more can be done for daily social activities and vacations at very little expense.

I’m writing this from a bakery with self-service, and there’s a family teaching chess to a girl at another table. Beautiful.

Compared with most of my social environment that decided to work full time, I think I have a lot more flexibility and voluntary social interactions. They are usually tired after a day of forced interactions; I manage to almost exclusively have voluntary interactions. I do not work with people who I don’t like. My time on this earth is too precious to waste on that.

It’s totally fine if the adjustments and adapting (not tradeoffs, because on a needs-based analysis it doesn’t require any) are not worth it for you (which raises the question of currency), but you and others in this thread make it sound like a horrible lifestyle for anyone, which is simply not the case. I would go as far as to claim it’s easier to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle with lots of money than with little. It’s just that most of us are so used to the stress that we had to stop listening to our own bodies (and often silence it with pills once it starts screaming). Spending money helps to obscure the real underlying need, and too often serves as a short-term patch. A limited budget forces you into thinking and feeling into what it is really about.

It can be inspiring to some to hear stories of people who found creative low-cost solutions to get their needs met. No need to question their ability to take care of themselves, and imply that they need to do without some crucial element of life and suffer.

> Not any, but a sufficiently large amount of options.

...

> tents, blankets, bikes, train rides, bakery...

(also, depending on amount of hiking also shoes, backpacks and some other gear)

To quote myself, "Oh, I'm sure you do plenty [of things], you just don't assume there are expenses in what you do. I'm not claiming they are huge expenses. I'm just saying things are not free"

> No need to question their ability to take care of themselves

There's only one need: to read what your opponent actually writes.

How much did your legally required car insurance cost? The median rate seems to be around $200 a month from a quick google.

Just adding in the most modest vehicle completely destroys the author’s budget.

I believe your reality, but I don’t believe in the amount you are romanticizing it. If it is so amazing why are you not doing it anymore? Because you just told me there’s no need for internet out there because it’s so jaw-dropping amazing, you wouldn’t spend any time on the internet arguing with a loser like me?

Every electric and mechanical device we use produces waste heat. Humans and pets produce waste heat. The sun shining on a roof and through the windows heats a house.

Take the example of DC with average summer highs of 87 and winter lows of 28.

If it’s 87 outside a house with no AC full of people and pets, running appliances computers and lighting with the sun coming through the windows will easily get up to 100.

You AC needs to effectively move the temperature from 100 to 74.

The same thing applies in the winter. If it’s 28 outside a well insulated house full of people and residual solar heat would likely never drop below 48 or so.

Also the article picked 74 degrees which is fine for the summer but insane for the winter. Especially at night when the low temperatures hit.

If you pick something more reasonable like 68, you now have 20 degrees of heating and 26 of cooling.

Then when you consider that adding 20 degrees to the outside temperature means that in the summer you will need to run the AC pretty much all day. While in the winter day time temps + 20 degrees puts the indoor temperature right around 70 with no heat.