Well according to Thremp and Henry you live an absolutely dreadfully boring lifestyle and have no idea what its like to really live.

reading books, gardening (not free the first year, but free after that if you save seeds), making music, meeting people/hanging out with friends, writing, learning (languages, musical instruments, etc.), cooking (not free- unless you use food from your garden!), playing ultimate frisbee.

How many dependents do you have to bring your food bill up to 800 dollars?! To answer your questions, I have no gym membership, prepaid cell phone that I used to call 911 once last year. Clothes- 25/mo, entertainment- 30/mo, travel- 10k every five years (avg 170 a month), no booze or drugs.

1) Does comfortably include having a place to live without roommates that is not a dump? If so how much do you believe such a place costs?
yes, ~600 a month

2) Does comfortably include owning an automobile? If so how much do you believe that costs?
no, personally I cant stand driving

3) Does comfortably include leaving the house and having social connections with people? If so how many times a week? How much do you think that costs?
yes, 3-5 days a week a get together, dinner and debate, either at your house or someone elses, plus 5-10 meetings with people to discuss books and catch up and play music. it's all free except the food.

4) Does comfortably include having clothing that while not designer or anything fancy at least are such that it is not automatically obvious that you are a poverty case? If so how much do you think that costs?
yes ~25 a month

5) Does comfortably include health and dental insurance? If so how much does that cost?
very dependent on the person. my health insurance premiums top out at age 65 at just under 300 dollars though, so somewhere under there.

fwiw I lived on ~27k a year about 10 years ago. Certainly wasn't rich, but I could make my mortgage payments, association dues, and pay the rest of my bills. I had to keep a close eye on things like how I used utilities, make smarter decisions about where I bought groceries and what kind, and limit credit use. This also meant driving a 6-7 year old car while friends were financing new ones. Obviously if you need to paint a room you do it yourself, and instead of stopping at DD for coffee you get it at work most of the time. But it's not like I had to do anything bizarre or extreme.

And this is NJ where taxes are pretty high. Imo there's no reason can't live reasonably on 30k a year, if you handle money well and live within your means. If you consider things like HBO and IPhones necessities--which even now I don't--then you're probably not able to do it, likewise if you insist on living in San Diego or something.

loliver ITT

how exactly do you manage to spend 800 dollars on food?

in reference to the original question
1,000,000 dollars is 30,000 per year is 2500 per month

800 mortgage or rent
300 utilities
300 food
50 cell phone
150 health insurance
100 gas
150 car insurance
350 savings for a new car or car loan
300 entertainment/blow money

based on a 3% withdrawal rate. with inflation at 4% you would need a 7% return on your investment which you could get through a combination of stock and bond index funds. a 3% withdrawal rate is supposed to last forever (studies have been done). you could bump it up to 4% but it would increase risk of dipping into principle.

my two cents.

Did you miss the simplistic diet I posted that was 440 a month? I consume more calories than that and a wider range of foods. Not to mention I was quite generous with pricing.

I would buy 3MM worth of trailer parks. If that is considered a job then I'd put 100% of it into UOPIX. If you manage to earn 20% a year on your money thats 200k a year. If you lose it apparently thats no big deal since its going to be a hellish existence on your risk free rate of return. So you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

These numbers seem pretty solid. Makes me believe it could be done.

Alone in apartment in a converted house, with car (beater), Iowa, both were studio & small (<700sqft, can't remember exact), 4 blocks from downtown w/private parking, $525/mo on avg inc utils, etc. Food was <$300/mo for mostly organic & local. Insurance on my car right now is $60/mo.

But I'm someone who's content living in a small place. Understandably, most people aren't so content. My dream-house is maybe 1200sqft (don't want kids). Growing up in/around much larger houses than that, I never got the point of having half the space being rarely used or for show. I've yet to see someone actually put a full 2500sqft to good use (imo) without having 5 kids. That's my bias.
Not taken poorly, don't worry. Where I lived, a hardwood floor 1bdrm with maybe 750sqft was about $600/mo for rent+basic utils. That was in a (imo) really nice area on the same block, next to a co-op and lots of gardens, no crime really outside of random drunk people punching the house. Needed some remodeling if you're picky about that, though. I wasn't.

Yes, flyover state, though. During the summer it's gorgeous, peaceful, and laid back, but I'd have a hard time living there for decades.

One million would not be enough to feed your family + you... It's possible if you make really smart investments and bankroll manage very well. That's why poker will help you succeed in life... All the decisions can be factored into real life management skills.

I think the problem with these debates is that the small towns in the middle of the United States come with costs that are just not reflective of the rest of North America. While I don't think we should use Manhattan or Cali as the standard either I do think that the hypothetical should be set in a major city (Chicago, Boston, Seattle, etc). For all I know if I was to move to a small town in Saskatchewan I might think this was realistic but in major cities it is not.

Scanned the rental pages just to make sure I wasn't way off and the cheapest rental listed is $800 for a basement apartment in someone's house. For $850 I could get a place that is above ground but because of the location would come with higher income taxes. $899 would be the highest above ground that did not come with the higher taxes issue. This is without filtering of any kind and simply going by lowest price. Also no utilities are included in any of these except water.

Lol obvious level

This makes a lot of sense, but you are forgetting that we are now unemployed. $30k/year is not unreasonable for an employed single person in a city, but as others have mentioned we now have an extra 40-50 hours a week to fill, and so our increased entertainment costs are going to completely swamp our budget.

How are you people feeding two adults on < $350 a month? I spend probably around that just to buy meat.

I'm vegan so that helps. not too much processed food helps too.

I guess I did, would you care to repost it?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/search...s=1&maxAsk=800
>10 pages

lol vegans. No wonder you have these ideas. You probably think you're some sort of healthy human too.

lalo

Please, I'd really love to see your diet, because I can't fathom how anyone can spend >300 on food per month.

Do you need to upgrade to scroll button 2.0?

That is a lot more than I expected. I mean the places are small but they look decent and the appliances are modern. I'm not familiar with Seattle so no idea what the neighborhoods are like but at least based on just the pictures they are 2/3s to 1/2 of what a comparable place would cost here.

---------

I still don't get how people are suppose to live on $10/day entertainment. I'm going to dinner and a comedy club tonight which isn't anything fancy and I expect it to be at least $250-300 for two people. Even if we remove the dinner and bring it down to one person just admission is $25 and then say three beers $20 and you are out $45 plus transportation. That is a week's budget gone so what would I do for the next six days?

Here is my dairy and meat consumption for a month alone.

Meat: $200-400
Dairy: $100

So I've managed to blow up my dietary budget before I've even bothered to buy tree nut oils or anything else to eat. Awesum1.

The meat is probably 30-45lbs of meat. A pretty reasonable intake, and likely conservative. A few filets, a little crab and some other accouterments and I've blown this budget up pretty solid.

I don't drink, so I didn't factor that in. Yes, if you have a few beers every night your entertainment budget is going to be huge.

If eating meat and dairy is important to you, and you HAD to live on 30-40,000 per year, I would cut down in another area like drinking or entertainment or driving (not getting rid of the car, just driving less, to save on gas). It's all about trade-offs.

If I HAD to live on $0 I could, I would just be homeless and stealing things. I don't really think that is the point of the thread. The point is that you're going to be living an extremely restricted life.

I can't even ***** have the chocolate milk I want?